Leadership in 2019: reflection

Published by Skills for Justice

Woman leading a team meeting in an office setting

In 2019, we launched several new initiatives and you may have seen us at one of the many events we attended. Amongst those, was welcoming new Principal Consultant, Toby Lindsay, to Skills for Justice.

We were thrilled to have Gerry Griffin onboard, founder of SkillPill. Skills for Justice’s partnership with SkillPill, who are a leading online micro-learning provider, was announced earlier in the year, and the release of our podcast series was a great opportunity to share with you some of the key questions, challenges and possible solutions to support the justice sector in leadership development.

Leadership was a key theme for us in 2019 across the board, in May we also announced the national Workforce Development report, with a focus on Leadership and Management in the public sector. The report was written by Principal Research Manager at Skills for Justice, Jon Parry, with collaboration from Edinburgh Napier University, following a national survey looking into a range of topics affecting the UK’s public sector workforce.

In November, after the government announced a new recruitment target of 20.000 police officers by 2023, we hosted a Sharing Best Practice Symposium identifying a number of key issues & challenges around achieving this ‘operational uplift’. Valuable insights were raised by our speakers & delegates on the day from across the sector’s Research, HR, Leadership & current & former frontline officers.

Taking all of the key challenges discussed into account, whilst it’s important we remember that money spent investing in the future of the police service is certainly not money wasted, it is clearly evident that this year, 2020 we need to work collaboratively across the 44 forces & furthermore the wider public & private sector to make this opportunity a success.