Designing a policy training package: Supporting Alison’s team to upskill jurisdictional policy capability
Alison (name changed) leads the learning and development team that provides training across government departments. Alison’s team had been driving a big policy training push as feedback from whole-of-government surveys identified policy capability as a significant gap. Alison’s team had training packages though they weren’t hitting the mark.
Identifying the challenges
- Departments weren’t registering staff to attend the policy training sessions.
- Alison’s team didn’t have the in-house capability to develop an appropriate training package.
- Alison understood that an off-the-shelf policy package wouldn’t solve the problem they were facing – they needed tailored training to meet their specific needs.
Our Solution
- Understand the problem: we worked with Alison and her team to understand what was and what wasn’t working including reviewing participant feedback and analysing their training package.
- Clarify what good looked like: it was important to have a clear understanding of what good looked like – to the learning and development team, department heads and staff.
- Ideate, ideate, ideate: Once we had a sound understanding of the problem and what they wanted the training package to do, we were able to turn our minds to identifying as many solutions as possible.
- Test and stress test: Once we had identified and developed the most feasible solution, we rolled out a pilot program to test it and continued to refine it based on participant feedback.
Results and Impact
- Alison and her team can now offer departments a contemporary and dynamic policy training package that has been designed to meet their needs.
- Participants in the pilot program were instrumental in enhancing the policy training package to make sure it worked for them.
- Through the pilot program there is increased awareness of the new package and individual departments are now enrolling their staff to participate.
- Participant feedback from the new package is identifying increased levels of satisfaction and confirmation that they would recommend others to attend.
- As more staff complete the policy training Alison and her team are steadily upskilling cross-department policy capability.
Conclusion
Alison knew she had to deliver policy training to upskill policy capability across the service and she knew she needed external expertise to develop and deliver a new program. By working closely with Alison and her team, and with participants from a range of departments we were able to develop and continue to deliver a training package that has met their brief.
Quote on policy design and implementation
Engaging The Policy Room to design and implement a new training package made sense. Their deep knowledge and experience of policy and their ability to share this with others was really important to us - and they delivered.
Selwyn (name changed) leads a large government department team that has a mix of policy and operational staff whose focus is improving outcomes for families and their children. Selwyn is responsible for an extensive policy suite that includes strategic and operational policy, guidelines, and procedures. The department works within a complex legislative and regulatory environment. Selwyn’s team has a mix of skills, experience, and expertise. Selwyn wanted to provide her staff with engaging and impactful policy professional development that would give her team a shared understanding of what policy is, a kitbag of tools and methods to ‘do policy’, and a re-energised appreciation of how their policy work can deliver exciting and important outcomes for families and their kids.
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Elly (name changed) worked in Sydney for a not-for-profit organisation that delivers tailored services across Australia to meet the everyday needs of people experiencing vulnerabilities and to support their families and communities.
