MICHAEL DEMPSEY - Cranfield University

Staff development
The majority of available training, however, seems to be menu driven
rather than related specifically to identified needs:-
We ran customer care training. We ran about 17 courses all
through last year looking at what service you were giving to your
members… About three of them were for managers (if they all
turned up when they were supposed to turn up you could cover
all your managers but unfortunately some were very reluctant
and would never come for various reasons) and since then we
have done some leadership training and we have dealt with
specific skills like recruitment on selection. We could do a lot
more and hopefully we will. (Interviewee J)
One manager defends himself in respect of his non-attendance:-
The priority is people not saying to me, "why weren't you at that
meeting with Jack McConnell that took this decision or Andy
Kerr that took that decision or whatever?" "Oh, I was on a
course at head office, it was very good." I mean, that would be
the lay people's response to it but the staff at headquarters,
Personnel, that are trying to do the job and bring people up to
standards are saying "well, this is unacceptable, you have not
been on this course, not been on that course." (Interviewee D)
It will be noted that some of the training provided is managerial. In fact,
the researcher is aware of the fact that one day seminars on
managerial topics have also been provided in PCS by arrangement
with Cranfield School of Management. So a body of such training has
been made available. In only one case is feedback available on it:-
We have recently been through a programme of training that
was targeted at managers. Very lowest common denominator
stuff actually but I guess that process in itself identified us as
managers….It was all run by the Industrial Society. I found it
personally extremely frustrating because it was just not what I
needed or wanted. Part of it I could see that maybe this was the
place to start. We had two days of what was
management/leadership training and certainly for me it was not
that. It’s interesting in itself that it was called management and
leadership. There was training and development, staff
recruitment and selection procedures. (Interviewee G)
The same manager has taken her own initiative:-
I have a consultant, a coach, that I'm paying for at the minute --
and J is still humming and hahing about whether PCS should
pay for it, worrying about setting dangerous precedents. …My
consultant costs me £32 a week and it is such a good
investment. When you go to outside training, it can be brilliant,
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