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