MICHAEL DEMPSEY - Cranfield University

Staff development
Staff development
In terms of staff development, the CWU does not have a strategic
training plan. Skills training is provided in functional departments, for
example for staff in the Legal Department on developments in the law,
and this is often provided to staff by the manager herself. But access to
training is not in any sense subject to clear principles and management
training is non-existent.
Whether you get trained depends very much on whether you ask
for it. Okay, when you do you are likely to get it but it's very hit
and miss. It is random. It smacks of lack of managerial direction
(Interviewee O)
Unions just don't train for management do they? (Interviewee G)
The lack of a strategic approach to training does not seem to be
because staff are not interested in it:-
You would be amazed at the number of our PAs who have done
their IPD. I have two or three on this floor that I have been
helping with projects. But they can't get anywhere here. So we
have quite a lot of IPD trained people here. The staff are very
keen on getting access to training so that will help but unless
you get the psyche that says that we are going to run this
organisation as an efficient unit on a transparent set of
managerial principles and company values, it's never going to
work. (Interviewee G)
And, indeed, this lack of strategy in dealing with staff development was
the subject of comment in the Equality and Diversity report:-
Overall, it appeared that training provision is delivered in a fairly
ad hoc way and is based on individuals asking for it and
persuading individual managers to agree to it. There appears to
be no strategic overview and development of what the kind of
training that the organisation needs to deliver for its staff in order
to make them more effective as part of the organisation. There is
also no co-ordinated career development strategy running
across the organisation. As stated earlier this potentially relates
to the development of an appraisal and supervision systems that
form part of an integral staff career development programme. A
telling comment about training was made by a senior member of
staff: "In terms of training and development the way it works is
that basically whoever shouts the loudest gets on the training
courses. In fact the union is very good about training but it is up
to the individual to find the course, make the case for it and
argue for it. However, in terms of systematic training for staff
across the organisation, this does not happen in any consistent
way at all." (Delivering on Equality 2000)
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