2010/11 - What are our priorities over the next 12 months?

[Denise Hudson Lawson]

As we approach the start of a new financial year, many of us are being asked to do 'More with Less'. 

 

• Have budgets been increased, decreased, stayed much the same?
• What are you going to be doing to 'Do More With Less'?
• Is there an apitite to collaborate more across government departments?

 

Just a few thoughts to get the ideas flowing.

 

Den

 

 

 

[Denise Hudson Lawson]

On June the 8th I am facilitating the Special Intrest Group for Central and Local Government. I would like to get some questions ready for discussion and welcome the input from individuals who may or may not be attending the session.

We already have 3 questions above that people may wish to discuss, any more for any more?

Den

[Denise Hudson Lawson]

We had an excellent session in the 'SG1' group on Tuesday 8th June. I will be posting up some findings soon

[Sarah Lowes]

Look forward to the discussions we started on Tuesday continuing here. Be really good to share ideas about positive actions that we can take in spite of the current climate!

[Denise Hudson Lawson]

I would like to say a BIG thank you to everyone who attended our group on the 8th June 2010. We certainly had a lot in common and managed to bring up a lot of issues in 45 minutes. Indeed I felt that 45 minutes just wasnt long enough and we could have spent the entire afternoon workshopping the main points.

It appeared that across the board the 3 main blockers for a successful learning intervention:

* IT
* Senior Managers / Board Members
* Budget and Costs

IT - in that it was felt that many of the issues surrounding providing a stable learning intervention centred around the infrastructure and security blockers placed on elearning and social media. It was stated that even some teams couldnt access their own sites that they had written, or needed to use for e-learning becuase of security issues. The majority of the group had little or no access to social media so were prevented from leveraging these mediums for learning.

Senior Managers - many felt that L&D had been diluted and were not getting the backing of many senior managers within the organisation, particularily HR. L&D is a profession and should be recognised as one which can enhance any organisation, but that many HR teams were absorbing the L&D functions and not giving as much emphasis on learning as could be. One suggestion was to have a group like this (or even a conference like this) and invite those managers who have influence over L&D to ensure that they understand the requirements and frustrations on the ground.

Budget - A big blocker at the moment as there is so much uncertainty. Being asked to do more with less, cut classes and learning opportunities etc.

Other areas of Pain included:

Too much demand for e-learning
No demand for e-learning
Compliance
Time
Culture
Resources & continual restructuring
Not enough emphasis on planning
Too much emphasis on ROI, KPI and performance monitoring
Efficiency drive and savings
...the beancounters!..
Risk & Change averse
Too detached from the business to understand requirements

We finished the session with a What is Good round-table, and I think this is where we all brightened up.

Sussex have worked to create a 'Joint Consortium' enabling local authorities to benefit from spare places on externally provisioned classroom sessions.

One organisation had been using 'Yamma' to sharing content around, it grew organically and became very successful - (yamma is an internal twitter)

TVP showed that by putting Police into the community and shadowing other peoples jobs helped them to understand the community they are working in better and to forge stronger relationships.

All in all, so much to discuss and not enough time to work anything through.

I hope that we can continue these discussions on a regular basis on this forum, but also if there is an appetite to meet up to network?

Thank you for making my job of facilitating such an easy one.

Den