Capability Development at a Government Department

A Stratus Consulting case study

Summary of needs

  • A government department regional office faced increasing complexity in their client base
  • They were aware they may not have the capability to meet their strategic challenges and needed to identify what was needed for the next 2-5 years and how closely their current capability matched their future needs
  • There was a tight labour market and they had difficulties recruiting what they needed

Stratus Consulting’s approach

  • Working with Senior Managers the strategic challenges were identified
  • Workshops were held with key role holders and their managers to map 16 key roles in terms of best practice future capability requirements
  • The role maps were verified and became the basis of for recruiting new staff, performance management and talent review
  • Talent review phase – 500 Existing staff were reviewed annually using the role map technical competencies, the organisations’ core competencies and their performance ratings and mapped onto a performance/ potential matrix via individual manager assessment and facilitated management workshops

The results

  • Future capability requirements were clearly identified
  • Action taken to meet future capability requirements through improved hiring, improved performance management and talent identification and management
  • Career pathways were identified and key barriers to progress throughout the organisation addressed
  • A significant improvement in the performance culture – poor performance was identified and addressed more rapidly and key talent identified and developed and promoted more rapidly to create a more vital talent pool
  • Managers collectively owned the management of the talent pool and the performance culture they created

More information:

Capability reviews
Talent management process design and implementation