A major reform underway in the UK’s Civil Service is aiming to teach senior civil servants to take a hands-on approach to developing their own careers.

Long-term civil servants are now having to learn skills such as networking that their peers in the private sector have had to hone since the beginning of their careers, said Hilary Sears, head of brokerage in the Cabinet Office’s Corporate Development Group.

For example, a target date of June 2006 has been set for 93 civil servants identified as “high potentials” to create their own personal development plans. Although this is standard practice in most businesses, it is a new challenge for this workforce. 

Sears, hired from the executive search environment to help develop the “high potentials”, was speaking to the Executive Research Association about the reforms.
The good news for the search industry is that when recruiting senior executives from outside the Civil Service, the government is willing to pay the kinds of fees private businesses pay search firms to fill equivalent roles.

“They’re paying fees and are quite happy to do so as long as they get the results,” Sears said. Currently, one in five senior civil servants are appointed from outside the Civil Service.

Under the reforms, the target annual staff turnover within the Senior Civil Service is 12%. In 2004-05, turnover was 10%.