What is Workforce Development?
Workforce development is about supporting staff, trustees and your volunteers to acqiuire practical knowledge and skills to enable them to perform their role and duties more effectively. Time and resources are invested to ensure that individuals operate at the best level of their ability and recieve regular and guided supervision and support to achieve professional and personal development goals.
Workforce development can include, but is not limited to:
- Formal certified training
- On the job training
- Informal training
- Mentoring
- Coaching
- Secondments
Workforce development can be about addressing current skills shortages and knowledge gaps and can also be used to help plan strategically for the future of your organisation. This can mean planning for the skills and experience that will be required to help achieve overall organisational aims and objectives and support the effective delivery of your services.
Members of your workforce should feel valued and workforce development is tool that can be used to help achieve this. Professional and personal development can lead to a highly motivated, skilled and dedicated workforce. Dedicated and skilled staff means results and a positive, vibrant work environment.
Workforce Development Mapping Report: June 2010
In May 2010, Skills Third Sector commissioned a series of mapping reports to scope the VCS workforce development structures that exist across England's regions. The report states :
The VCS in London
- There are 26,634 registered charities, over 60,000 community groups and 5,000 social enterprises
- The sector contributes over £3 billion to London's GDP and delivers volunteering opportunities worth £932 million pa.
- Perhaps as much as one-third of all VCS income is from government sources
Profile of London’s VCS Workforce
- The sector employs around 250,000 people - 6.5% of London's working population.
- Local and sub-regional research suggests that London’s VCS mirrors what is known about the sector nationally: a high percentage of the total workforce is voluntary with many organisations having no paid staff at all; a high percentage comprises small and medium-sized organisations with many having fewer than 10 staff; and the sector employs higher proportions of part-time workers, women, people from black and minority ethnic and refugee (BMER) communities, and people with a long-term illness or disability.2
- The sector provides an important route into paid employment for many from disadvantaged communities who gain vital skills, knowledge and experience through volunteering within their communities.
- The workforce includes paid and volunteer staff, and many thousands of volunteer trustees who play a vital role in ensuring the good governance and sustainability of VCS organisations.
The full report for London can be found here:
VCS Workforce Development London Regional Mapping Report June 2010
Where do I start?
The first step will be to carry out a skills audit of your workforce. This will involve listing the key skills and experience of your members and then mapping the skills and knowledge areas that are needed by each individual or team to support the achievement of organisational aims and objectives.
For templates of skills audit and further resources, you may find the following websites and their resource section helpful:
www.ncvo-vol.org.uk/advice.../workforce-development
http://www.volresource.org.uk/Workforce Wheel: Outcomes tool
How effective is your organisation's workforce?
The Workforce Wheel is one of a family of tools available from NCVO that take an outcomes approach to organisational capacity building. Others include Governance and Sustainable Funding.
The Workforce Wheel is a tool that takes an outcomes approach to all aspects of people management.
The Wheel is easy-to-useand aims to help voluntary and community organisations understand where they want to get to as they grow into their full potential. Effectively, itis a model of a high performing organisation with strong leadership.
The Wheel is intended to be used as a joint process involving a range of people - managers, staff, trustees and volunteers. It can be completed with an external facilitator, such as an advisor or development worker, or with an internal facilitator such as a trustee.
Upon completing the tool and identifying where you are as an organisation, you can then develop a plan to address the areas you are weakest in and build on where you are doing well.
Please click on the following links for further information:
http://www.ncvo-vol.org.uk/workforce-wheel
http://www.ncvo-vol.org.uk/sites/default/files/files/ncvo-workforce-wheel.pdfEast London:
The East London CVS Network has worked with the Workforce Development
Coalition to develop a Workforce Development Strategy for the voluntary and
community sector in East London.
Please click here to download a copy of the report.
If your organisation has an interest in this area of work at a strategic sub-regional level, please contact us at info@elcvsnetwork.org.uk
Latest updates
Free Workforce Almanac from Skills - Third Sector
Skills – Third Sector has produced a report based on the 'Work' chapter of the NCVO UK Civil Society Almanac 2010.
The report covers key trends and characteristics of the voluntary sector workforce, employment and volunteering.
It was produced in partnership between Skills - Third Sector, NCVO and the Third Sector Research Centre. Electronic copies can be downloaded from the Skills – Third Sector website, or email Skills – Third Sector for a paper copy.
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NCVO workforce Development monthly e-briefing
October E-Briefing
September E-Briefing
August E-Briefing
July E-Briefing
Workforce development courses and events
Or contact your local CVS for assistance. A list of CVS and links can be found in the left hand column and bottom each of page of the ELCVS Network website.
Human Resources