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MICHAEL DEMPSEY - Cranfield University

MICHAEL DEMPSEY - Cranfield University

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Staff development<br />

Staff development<br />

In terms of staff development, the CWU does not have a strategic<br />

training plan. Skills training is provided in functional departments, for<br />

example for staff in the Legal Department on developments in the law,<br />

and this is often provided to staff by the manager herself. But access to<br />

training is not in any sense subject to clear principles and management<br />

training is non-existent.<br />

Whether you get trained depends very much on whether you ask<br />

for it. Okay, when you do you are likely to get it but it's very hit<br />

and miss. It is random. It smacks of lack of managerial direction<br />

(Interviewee O)<br />

Unions just don't train for management do they? (Interviewee G)<br />

The lack of a strategic approach to training does not seem to be<br />

because staff are not interested in it:-<br />

You would be amazed at the number of our PAs who have done<br />

their IPD. I have two or three on this floor that I have been<br />

helping with projects. But they can't get anywhere here. So we<br />

have quite a lot of IPD trained people here. The staff are very<br />

keen on getting access to training so that will help but unless<br />

you get the psyche that says that we are going to run this<br />

organisation as an efficient unit on a transparent set of<br />

managerial principles and company values, it's never going to<br />

work. (Interviewee G)<br />

And, indeed, this lack of strategy in dealing with staff development was<br />

the subject of comment in the Equality and Diversity report:-<br />

Overall, it appeared that training provision is delivered in a fairly<br />

ad hoc way and is based on individuals asking for it and<br />

persuading individual managers to agree to it. There appears to<br />

be no strategic overview and development of what the kind of<br />

training that the organisation needs to deliver for its staff in order<br />

to make them more effective as part of the organisation. There is<br />

also no co-ordinated career development strategy running<br />

across the organisation. As stated earlier this potentially relates<br />

to the development of an appraisal and supervision systems that<br />

form part of an integral staff career development programme. A<br />

telling comment about training was made by a senior member of<br />

staff: "In terms of training and development the way it works is<br />

that basically whoever shouts the loudest gets on the training<br />

courses. In fact the union is very good about training but it is up<br />

to the individual to find the course, make the case for it and<br />

argue for it. However, in terms of systematic training for staff<br />

across the organisation, this does not happen in any consistent<br />

way at all." (Delivering on Equality 2000)<br />

113

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