Member Development Political Skills Audit Tool

Background

East Midlands Councils and South East Employers are partnering with Talent Management software provider Kenexa to develop and support an online tool to help councillors identify their skills and development needs.

The tool supports good practice guidelines for Member Development and will help local authorities to achieve Charter and Charter Plus status.

Features

The secure online system requires no I.T resources or capacity and the training requirement is minimal.  The simple, intuitive tool allows a councillor to:

• Complete a brief personal demographic and learning preferences survey
• Self-assess their level of skill across the Political Skills Framework
• Add names of people to provide 360 feedback across the same Political Skills Framework (these individuals will then be sent an automatic email and be provided their own special access to the online tool to give feedback)
• Receive anonymous feedback from contributors and view an overview of this feedback together with additional information

Benefits

The tool provides project leads from the local authority with:

• An identification of areas of strength and areas to develop
• Analysis of trends amongst councillors in an authority, or whole region / sub-region (depending on user status)
• An overview of collective development needs to help prioritise actions and define programmes
• An opt-in mentoring and coaching network amongst councillors, matching those with high skills in an area with those wishing to develop
• The ability to monitor the demographic and personal make-up of councillors (anonymously) to understand trends and links to skill levels
• Evaluation of development resources
• A searchable database of skills (depending on user status) for Talent Management and special project group formulation.

Hosting, support and user license options

• All options include 360 functionality.
• We can be flexible about how these fees are handled, allowing for both  relationship directly with the authority in some areas and for billing to be made through the Employers Organisation in others.
• The annual system hosting, support and user license fees have been re-worked to reflect the size of local authority.

• District and Borough Councils can benefit from a special introductory year 1 fee of just £995 if they commit before the 1^st June 2010.
• Each agreement lasts for one year and there is no obligation to continue subscribing to the service at the end of that year.
• A local authority may choose to subscribe for three years, embedding the tool and benefiting from a 25% reduction in the total cost over that period.  The total three-year fee will be billed in three equal amounts at each anniversary of the contract start date.  The 3 year fee for District and Borough Councils includes the special introductory fee highlighted above.

• All prices quoted are exclusive of VAT.

Authorities signed up/using the Political Skills Audit Tool

• Kettering Borough Council
• Lincolnshire County Council
• North Kesteven District Council

 More information

For more information on the Skills Audit Tool, please contact Lisa Butterfill, HR & Development Manager at East Midlands Councils

Telephone – 01664 502643

E-mail – lisa.butterfill@emcouncils.gov.uk