Socitm is working with the Local Government Association (LGA) and the Government Equalities Office (GEO) to deliver the Return to Work – ICT programme.
The initiative is enabling Returners who have had a break from work for a period to care for someone or who have been impacted by Covid-related unemployment, to access a holistic training programme to refresh their skills and return to work.
The plan will help them build their confidence, provide some soft (people-based) and technical training, and enable access to coaching sessions to get them ‘work-ready.’
The cost-free programme will offer training for the key skills and roles that have been identified as important, in scarce supply and of benefit for councils in response to the pandemic. These include data analysis, cyber security, enterprise, and solution architecture, as well as some more standard skills such as project management and software development.
The goal for this initiative is to support our Returners to find employment; the final steps of this programme will help them contact councils to seek jobs or understand if their skills are needed by our member organisations, through the guidance of the LGA.
We will of course use every opportunity to measure how well we have delivered the programme and to monitor the progress that our Returners are making in terms of improving their skill sets. Our final aim of finding work for our participants will also be tracked. We will be providing regular reports to both the LGA and the GEO based on our performance.
Delivering the Returners programme is a real opportunity to align to the society’s ambition to develop the public sector talent pipeline and to create a unique contribution to improve the diversity of the local government workforce.
We already deliver programmes that develop people both personally and professionally; they harness, stretch, and promote the skills that are essential to achieve effective, contemporary leadership.
Our vision is to do exactly this for our Returners – we are keen to ensure that our participants can use this arrangement to seek personal development, retrain and/or upskill so they are able to add value to the local government workforce and feel enthused that they are able to progress their careers after having a break from the labour market.
What a wonderful opportunity to make a real difference to local government’s talent pool. We are contacting our members and their organisations to help them understand how they can contribute to this exciting free initiative and make a real difference to both the participants themselves, but also their councils through securing these retrained Returners.
Want to find out more? Please visit our Return to Work ICT page.
We would be delighted to have you on board!
Nadira Hussain
Director of Leadership Development & Research
Socitm
Highlighted pages
Return to Work - ICT
This programme offered free training in ICT and helped experienced ICT professionals and people changing careers to return to work following a break.
Return to Work - ICT: Council Information Pack
Return to Work – ICT is one of four return to work programmes, developed by the Local Government Association (LGA) and the Government Equalities Office (GEO).