Develop the skills of your people with Malcolm Taylor

Episode summary

Today we are joined by Malcom Taylor, the Senior People Development Manager at Met Office UK, where we explore the practices of a community of practitioners in a public sector organisation. The Met Office has established the People Framework as a way to support the learning and development of their staff. It was a fascinating conversation where we also delved into the role of openness and trust, how to be seen as more than just a training department, what makes a ‘Good Met Office Citizen’, and Conole’s 7 Cs of learning.

About Malcolm 

Malcolm brings over 20 years’ experience working in the field of Human Resources and Learning & Development, and he is driven by a passion for learning. At the Met Office, Malcolm is currently the Senior People Development Manager, and he established a number of communities with practice as well as his learning tactics.

Key takeaways:

• The People Framework is a tool developed by the Met Office to support the learning and development of their staff. It is divided into three segments: personal effectiveness, corporate effectiveness, and professional effectiveness.
• The Community of Practice Manager acts as a guiding influence and is not tied to any particular community. The person under this role at the Met Office has built a maturity model to help develop the impact of the People Framework.
• The community of practice offers a range of activities including specialist group channels in Teams, and the platform is a great way to connect people that are geographically far apart. They also invite external speakers to speak on webinars, where they get about 60 - 70% of registrants attending recorded or live.

Chapters:

• (00:00:00) Introduction.
• (00:01:10) Why the Met Office established the People Framework.
• (00:04:55) The current leaders and their backgrounds.
• (00:06:34) Guiding the professional leaders.
• (00:09:39) The role of a Community of Practice Manager.
• (00:10:19)Creating content for the community of practice.
• (00:12:28) Building a safe environment.
• (00:16:41) Evaluating the impact of the community of practice.

Links from the podcast 

• Connect with Malcolm on LinkedIn
• Read The 7Cs of Learning Design by Conole
• Read ‘The Five Dysfunctions of a Team’ by Patrick Lencioni