The Gibson Report led to a cultural and structural change process across the PSNI Learning and Development function. Many of the changes were specific to the needs and expectations of a modern and progressive learning and delivery environment. However the intrinsic nature of a College leads to the sharing of knowledge and good practice across the wider organisation through the support and development of all staff.
Values based leadership, ethical decision making, emotional intelligence, coaching as a leader and personnel wellbeing are all areas that have been integrated into the student officer programme and the learning has cascaded into our Leadership Development Pathways. Emerging Leaders now undertake a Coaching qualification, have sessions on managing performance and wellbeing as well as psychometric insights into their own emotional intelligence. Masterclasses have incorporated learning across all grades and ranks on supporting diversity, ethical leadership, values based decision making and speaking truth to power.
Improved partnership and contractual arrangements with our academic partner is supporting the development of our Evidence Based Policing Unit with the purpose of ensuring quality service delivery through continuous improvement and best practice.
Improvements and investment in the College Performance and Assessment Unit and Quality Assurance Framework has facilitated insourcing of promotion assessments and Detective Exams. This has ensured assessments are fit for the local context and has significantly improved staff confidence in processes.
The development of learning technology capacity within the college has enabled the roll out of e-learning packages that manage risk, facilitate learning in the workplace and reduce abstractions from front line roles.
A Human Rights Training strategy has supported the integration of up-to-date HR learning into all training areas and a new HR E-zine has raised the profile and shared current learning organisationally.
Work is now progressing to translate the trainer delivery standards including Continuous Professional Development (CPD), Quality Assurance and evaluation across all District and Departmental Training functions. Operational Support Department (OSD) CPD support has been integrated into College structures in order to professionalise delivery.
Workforce modernisation has been a collaborative effort with Human Resources and the learning from the College experience in terms of recruitment and selection will cascade into other areas of business.
Additionally many of the team involved in the college review have been promoted to other roles within PSNI taking the experiential learning with them. Constables and Sergeants from the College were successful in the recent promotion processes and will shortly move back into operational roles across PSNI. This has been a challenge for everyone involved and the learning will continue to filter across the organisation formally and informally.