As a team, learning and developing together and as individuals is very important. We dedicate the right amount of time and effort and support one another to achieve personal and team goals. We develop skills to let us progress in our roles now, as well as continue our future career paths.

All of our learning and development offer is tied to the national Federation for Informatics Professionals (FEDIP) job families. This divides skills into five levels, each associted with an AfC banding. In our team the relevant bands are:

  • Senior Practitioner (Band 7/8a)
  • Advanced Pracitioner (Band 8b/8c)

All of our job descriptions are set out in terms of FEDIP / Government Digital and Data skills and each role requires skills at a different level.

Our welcome process

Before joining, all staff will be sent an induction pack and a copy of one of our favourite books, which covers many of the concepts we believe in.

When joining the team, each new team member can expect a welcome to the ICB, and a welcome to the ICS transformation team. This includes sessions on:

  • Welcome to the ICB (expenses, benefits, HR processes, etc.)
  • Who's who in the system? (our partners, key contacts)
  • How do I get things done? (governance, finance, procurement)
  • Patient-centred digital transformation - our introductory course on user-centred design skills
  • Data into action - our introductory course on using BOB's tools to do data-driven transformation

We make sure all new joiners have a buddy, who is a team member of a similar level, who can help them with questions and help them settle in.

Our development offer

We develop personally, and together as a team. As a rule we believe in spending 80% of time learning on projects, 15% learning from the wider team and 5% on formal learning (though we encourage apprenticeships and postgraduate education).

Directorate

We join the whole DDaT team weekly for a touchbase and quarterly for an in-person development away day.

Team

We work in two teams - our project teams and together as a whole DDaT transformation team.

We come together every month as a whole team for an L&D day. This is where we showcase the work we have been doing and allow time for smaller sessions and 1:1 catch-ups.

In our project teams we recommend a fortnightly retrospective and wellbeing check-in (taking whichever form the team prefers!). This should also cover reflections and learning on the project.

Personal - Informal

In the Reading office, we are aiming to build up a library of books we have enjoyed as a team. We hope our little library will soon include:

Our (Ideal) Library
  • Content Design - Sarah Richards
  • Health Design Thinking - Bon Ku and Ellen Lupton
  • How to Implement Evidence-based Healthcare - Trisha Greenhalgh
  • Invisible Women - Caroline Criado Perez
  • Immunity to Change - Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey
  • The Creative Destruction of Medicine - Eric Topol
  • The Digital Doctor - Bob Watcher

As part of our monthly in-person team development day, we set aside time for our team members to talk each other 1:1.

We actively seek out opportunities for our team members to shadow teams inside ICS organisations as well as elsewhere in the ICB because we know it's important to understand how other teams work and what they do. This leads to better digital transformation!

We support our team members to mentor and be mentored, whether this is within our team, or more widely.

Personal - Formal

The ICB provides access to NHS Elect which provides a range of free training in cross-cutting skills. We supplement this with access to the NHS Digital Learning Solutions platform, which provides training in basic and intermediate office skills.

We take the following principles when it comes to the various formal courses that are available:

  • The list below contains some of the vast array of training that is available - we encourage team members to find what's right for them and we can add it to the list later.
  • Just because a course is aimed at one job family, it doesn't mean it isn't useful or allowed for others - e.g. if you're a project manager who wants to learn more about data analysis we encourage this!
  • Where courses require funding (or significant time commitment like apprenticeships) we consider these on a case-by-case basis, prioritising those who don't already have a qualification of that level, or in that area. All funded courses are subject to availability of funding.

Cross-cutting (behaviours, leadership, cross-cutting knowledge)

In line with domain-specific skills, we provide and encourage our team to take up opportunities to become (and improve as) leaders in digital health and care.

Associate Practitioner
  • National Edward Jenner Programme - free, self-guided course designed for anyone aspiring to their first leadership role within the next 1-2 years. Aims to develop essential leadership skills.
Practitioner
  • National £ Mary Seacole Programme - 6-month programme aimed at first-time leaders in healthcare covering leadership fundamentals, leading for improvement and management skills.
  • NHS Elect Mentoring - free, 4 hour course for line managers aimed at helping people develop as a mentor.
Senior Practitioner
Advanced Practitioner
  • National £ Nye Bevan Programme - aimed at those aspiring to move into a board role within the next two years, supporting senior leaders to move beyond leadership within their area of expertise

Data

Associate Practitioner
  • National Population Health Management - self-guided online course to support analysts and other health and care professionals working in population health. Covers what PHM is, some of the key approaches and what data sets are available to support it.
  • Appenticeship Data Fellowship - Data Analyst (Level 4) - 15-month programme empowering participants to develop the skills needed to collect, organise and study data to provide valuable business insight.
  • Appenticeship Applied Data Engineering - Data Engineer (Level 5) - 17-month course giving participants skills to build systems which collect, manage, and convert data into valuable information for data scientists/analysts to interpret and translate into business impact.

Product and Delivery

Associate Practitioner
Practitioner
  • £ Agile Coaching Professional (ICP-ACC) - aimed at those doing Agile programme management to give verification an understanding of the tools, skills, and techniques needed to coach agile teams.
  • £ Managing Successful Programmes (MSP) - aimed at all programme managers to teach the principles, themes, and processes that provide a clear roadmap for the programme lifecycle.
Senior Practitioner

User Centred Design

Associate Practitioner
  • £ Foundation in Content Design - 2-day introductory course in Content Design using a case study to learn how to find out who your users are, what they want from you, what they need and how to give it to them.

Our behaviours

No matter which job family or framework our roles are aligned to we make sure we behave in line with the BOB ICB values, namely:

  • Respectful - we embed inclusivity and safe spaces
  • Impactful - we make a difference
  • Integrity - we are kind and fair
  • Leadership - we encourage leadership
  • Collaborative - we work in a positive way

The full list of behaviours can be found on the ICB staff zone [link restricted to ICB employees] and forms part of our formal appraisal process.