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[craigworc]

For those authorities with Training Officers, do you have a Training Team Leader above you? If so, how big is your team and what does the team leader do that you don’t?

Craig

[Anonymous]

Hi Craig,

I am one of two Training and Policy Officers and we work for the Training and Policy Manager. Apart from the onerous task of managing me, my boss does write some training material and courses but leaves the deliver to us. (We don’t want her anywhere near our training room, even if she wanted to do it!). She does the “strategic planning” for the service’s training needs, she does a lot of the commissioning of outside training and a lot of project management, for example LHA implementation. Basically, she deals with the management and political cr*p that allows us to get on with the job of identifiying needs and designing, delivering and evaluating the training that the service needs.

As the job titles suggest, training is only part of our role. My team also takes a lead in advising management on policy and procedural matters (which usually means telling them “you need to do this and do it this way”). Then there is liaison with external and internal partners, budgetary control blahblahblah.

We are a large inner London Authority and I wouldn’t want to do my job without a dedicated Training and Policy Manager to work for.

[craigworc]

Hi Darren,

thanks for that. It would appear that I do a lot of what your manager does. Just out of interest, how many staff do you have and is it just benefits you do or revenues as well?

Craig

[Anonymous]

We’ve about 90 assessment staff. That is, those who do nothing but assess. On top of that we’ve got the Visits, Appeals, Overpayments, Payments, Preassessment, Quality, Subsidy and Systems Teams (I think that’s all of them). Then there’s all the team managers. Oh, and the customer centre (“one-stop shop”) staff at two different sites.

Put it this way, we’re rolling out our LHA training right now. Three different courses of differing lenghts and complexity, depending on the role. We reckon on seeing over 210 individual bodies through our training room. That’s not counting going out to contractors or other interested parties and partners both within and outside the Authority.

I’ve never worked anywhere like it. I was used to small district Authorities where the biggest benefits team I knew was about 25 – 30 people all told. Frankly, 2 trainers and the manager isn’t enough. Don’t get me started on that…

Cheers,

[Author]

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