Overview

Chair’s Opening Remarks

Sir Robert Worcester KBE DL, Chairman, Ipsos Public Affairs Research Advisory Board (Confirmed)

Utilising Leadership and Engagement for a Better Workforce: New Professionalism

• An engaged and motivated workforce – A positive impact on services delivered
• Working in collaboration to improve access to learning in the public sector
• Engaging with employees to understand their needs and communicate value of benefits
• Raising skills and increasing consistency in the quality of practice across public services
• Managing skills provider contracts to ensure the right skills and training is being delivered
• The benefits of bespoke training solutions provided by external learning and development organisations
• Greater freedoms for high performers, both for excellent organisations and front-line staff
• Rewarding success
• Achieving excellent leadership and management
• Allowing professionals to define their own challenges
• Improving occupational health, reducing absenteeism and improving employee retention
• Fostering talent, maximising potential

Paula McDonald CBE, Deputy Director, Efficiency and Reform Group, Cabinet Office (Confirmed)

Skills Utilisation on the Frontline: Are Leaders and Managers Ready?

Throughout the developed world there is a general acknowledgement that skills are still central to economic success. Recently, in a number of countries, including Scotland, there has been an increasing focus on skills utilisation. In the current state of the UK economy this shift in focus has clear implications for those on the frontline, and also for leaders and managers at all levels.

Trevor Carson, Director Northern Ireland, LSN (Confirmed)

Joint Approach - Government, Employers and Unions Working Together

• Building a joint commitment on delivering the Skills Pledge across public services
• Working in partnership with Trade Unions
• Raising the skill level of employees to improve the quality of services delivered under Government contracts
• Role of trade unions in actively supporting the implementation of the sector skills agreement
• Encouraging employers who recognise unions to engage with them on the sector skills and workplace learning agenda
• Engaging with workplace representatives on issues relating to learning
• Working together to improve the quality of training and development

Elizabeth Bullen, Unions2Learn Project Co-ordinator, Blackpool Borough Council (Confirmed)

Commercial Skills for Complex Government Projects

• Enhancing commercial skills to ensure value for money in major government projects
• Developing commercial leadership and commercial awareness, and filling commercial skills and experience gaps in project teams
• Tackling an over-reliance on interim staff and advisors to fill skills gaps
• The necessity to invest in commercial directors, established commercial units and introduction of skills initiatives to ensure efficiency

Richard Wade, Corporate Finance Adviser, Private Finance Practice, National Audit Office (Confirmed)

Leadership, Organisational Culture and Performance

Dr Robert A. Cooke will discuss his research on leadership, organisational culture, and performance

Dr. Robert A Cooke, CEO and Director of Human Synergistics International (Confirmed)

Developing Workforce Skills through e-learning

• The success of the Protecting Information e-learning programme
• Delivering a programme to over 250,000 people achieving cost savings of approximately £20 million
• The preparation involved in rolling out a large scale e-learning initiative across the whole of government
• Working with government departments and the private sector to produce comprehensive e-learning across government
• Using e-learning moving forward in order to efficiently upskill the workforce

Ken Ingram, Head of e-Learning and Networking, National School for Government(Confirmed)

Ambition 2020: World Class Skills

• Progress towards becoming world class in productivity, employment and skills by 2020
• Enabling government to work with business to provide a vision for the future and strategic leadership in the development of the economy
• Benchmarking the UK's position internationally with other leading economies
• Are we investing in the right skills?
• Changing demands on apprenticeships
• How has the public sector fared in developing home grown apprenticeships?
• Business performance is improved through the use of apprenticeships

Michael Davis, Director for Strategy and Performance, UKCES (Confirmed)

Questions and Answers

Seminar Session I

For full seminar information, please click here.

Afternoon Keynote: The Government’s Skills Agenda: Delivering Long-Term Prosperity

• Implementing Skills for Growth: Equipping Britain with the skills that underwrite the industries and jobs of the future
• Creating a Civil Service that can help Britain compete more effectively in the global economy
• Developing skills to achieve a low-carbon economy
• A vocational qualifications system that is more responsive to the specific needs of public sector employers
• Vocational qualifications reform and the Qualifications and Credit Framework – More flexibility for the system to respond to changing skill needs
• The new role of the Skills Funding Agency
• Improving employers’ ability to identify the skills needed for future success
• What will these reforms mean for employers and providers?
• Providing  a better match between skills supply and demand by the first National Skills Audit agenda

Invitation extended to: Department for Business, Innovation and Skills

Productivity, Skills and the Workforce: Delivering Lasting Impact

John Hill, Chief Executive, Pera (Confirmed)

Public Sector Reform – Strategy, Governance and Cross-Departmental Coordination

• Developing effective coordination across government to realise the effectiveness, efficiency and innovation that results from ‘joining up’
• The role of front-line civil servants – Embedding customer insight into policy initiatives
• Working in partnership: The role of the Innovators Council
• Re-imagining the relationship between the national and local government
• Learning from the private and third sectors to be an efficient, capable and professional organisation
• Creating a Big Society - employee engagement and third and private sector involvement in the delivery of public services

Zoe Gruhn, Director, Learning, Institute for Government (Confirmed)

A High Quality Workforce Delivering High Quality Customer Services – The DWP

• Providing greater choice, personalisation and a higher quality of service for customers
• A leader in workforce health and wellbeing
• DWP Change Programme - using technology and lean approaches to:
• Base products/services around customer needs - making them accessible, efficient and based on customer insight
• Improve access to services
• Remove barriers to provide an integrated customer experience
• Making DWP a great place to work – by involving staff in making changes, and making sure that everyone has the support, skills and tools they need to do their job well
• Using all resources efficiently so that high and consistent standards of service are provided
• Looking outwards – Working with others and learning how to get better at what we do

Jonathan Lindley, Integration Director of DWP Change Programme, Department for Work and Pensions (Confirmed)

Boosting Productivity in Public Services through Leaner and Fitter Government

• Lean government: raising productivity and reducing costs – how increased productivity could have saved £31b between 1997-2007
• Ensuring the right public service management is in place, with more control and more accountability
• Engaging and empowering staff - involving employees in shaping services and learning from their frontline knowledge
• Learning new skills through training and development to create a workforce that can work more effectively and with new techniques
• Encouraging your workforce to think innovatively about their skills needs beyond 2020
• Utilising new technologies to take innovation to the next level
• Implementing new incentive schemes to counter public sector pay freezes

Lizzi Holman, Senior Policy Advisor, Public Services and Skills Directorate, CBI (Confirmed)

Closing Keynote: Up-Skilling for Growth

• Achieving world-class public services to deliver a highly-skilled, people-driven economy
• New Professionalism: Unlocking the creativity and ambition of public sector workers and establishing new relationships between the Government and professionals
• Harnessing the talents of the workforce: Developing strategies to reward, motivate, and inspire high performance in the public sector
• Closing the IT skills gap and maintaining investment levels in IT skills and infrastructure and using technology to improve learning
• Accelerating the development of e-skills for those entering the public sector workforce
• The Public Services Forum; Assessing achievements to date in improving public services through skills-investment
• E-Learning solutions – working with suppliers to provide flexible training solutions online
• Equipping the public sector with the skills they need to meet the ever-evolving challenges ahead
• An update on the Skills Pledge – Is the Civil Service doing its part?
  

Hannah Boardman, Senior Policy Adviser, Public Service Workforce Reform, Cabinet Office (Confirmed)