Recruitment
Hiring and promoting brilliant people.
Becoming a world-class Civil Service means hiring and promoting brilliant people, and many people have said that the rules that we put in place make recruitment too difficult. We need to make recruitment simpler.
We are going to start by scrapping success profiles, instead introducing a new model that emphasises skills and expertise — and will make further changes over the coming months.
Talent Strategy
Continuing to find, attract, and grow the very best people.
We have extraordinary talent right across our organisation, and across the country — but we must continue to find, attract, and grow the very best people. To do this, we will review how we identify, develop and deploy talent across all departments. This will ensure the Civil Service has a world class talent pipeline, recognises excellence from within, and invests in the skills of the future.
We run one of the most highly-rated graduate schemes in the country. We need to make sure the Fast Stream continues to be a world-leading scheme which opens doors for a diverse range of recruits with the highest potential to join the Civil Service. We are therefore undertaking a rapid review of the Fast Stream to cover everything from recruitment to training and deployment across the country.
Because bringing in great talent is essential at all levels, we are also going to consider how we offer a new entry point for talent into the Civil Service for those joining mid-way through their careers. Finally, we will also explore how we can enable all civil servants to develop a wider set of skills through improved secondments and placement opportunities across local and regional government, the wider public sector, business and voluntary organisations.
FCS Capability Reviews
Building a Civil Service fit for the future.
To build a Civil Service fit for the future, we need to understand where we are already brilliant, and where we need to target interventions to improve our capability. Therefore, we will be launching cross-cutting Future Civil Service capability reviews, assessing the whole system against three priority areas (Delivery and Accountability, Innovation and Productivity, and Pride and Trust). This will help us focus our efforts on where they are most needed, and hold ourselves accountable for making things better. We will update you as we kick these off.
Performance Management
Tackling poor performance and rewarding those making the biggest impact.
The Cabinet Secretary has been clear that we need to get better at managing poor performance. That is why we have already launched an end-to-end review of performance management that will overhaul our systems and approach, and equip managers to reward those making the biggest impact and tackle poor performance.
AI enablers
Harnessing AI to solve problems faster.
The Cabinet Secretary has launched her AI Award, and we will soon host an AI Hackathon, bringing together expert teams to work on innovation in operational delivery, aiming to solve problems in a few days that would usually take months.