Training & Personal Development at ACT Government

The graduate program is still developing, it is only in its second year, so materials are understandably developing as us grads continue through the process and give feedback. For how young the program is I would say they have great resources, and as a grad you really have a say on what you would like to be trained on or how you think the program could be improved.

The training we have received through the grad has been fairly hit or miss, there have been some great introductory training on working in the public service but some of it has been delivered at the wrong time, where the information we have received from it only really benefitted us through confirming what we had already learnt through our actual work.

I didn't gain very much from the trainings.

We have had many formal training sessions throughout the program (~every 3 weeks). Skills included visual design, problem solving, project management, etc. We also learned about our entitlements under our employee agreements. Informal training was specifically related to the work each team was doing e.g. writing a newsletter article or how to talk to stakeholders.

Training is comprehensive. Everything from Writing courses to Cultural knowledge bushwalks.

Training has been high value.

Formal training: - Writing for Government; skill: using active voice - Stakeholder Engagement; skill: identifying and assigning a purpose - Visual Communications; skill: infographics - Successful Workplace Conversations: effective communication for discussion of receiving and giving feedback; skill: preparing feedback and discussion - Problem Solving; skills: differentiating between a problem and a cause, creating a problem question - Project Management; skill: establishing project scope and risk - Respectful Behaviours; skill: recognising differences - Strategic Thinking; skill: conducting SWOT analysis - Easy English; skill: writing in plain and easy English - Design Methods; skill: journey mapping Informal training: - self-directed learning for Excel; skill: formulas - self-directed learning; skill: risk identification and assessment

L&D - extremely unsatisfied. I would say half were very poorly done and thought out. Having them be half-days also ruins the productivity of the whole day and prevents you from doing any issue in depth. The one that I would say are exceptions are the respectful behaviours and the writing for government. My issue with the Respectful Workplace Behaviours is that I don't like all white people talking at me about inclusion, but I understand that the reasons for that are far beyond the Grad Talent's team control. Writing for Government was fantastic. ACT Health's Difficult Workplace Conversations was absolutely phenomenal and I wish that was part of the Grad L&D curriculum.

Grad Learning and Development sessions have been excellent. Education rotations have provided excellent opportunities for integration into planning and decision-making environments.

The formal training has been useful but there is a lot of required training which is hard because we also need to balance work from our supervisors and from the graduate program. Some of the formal training has been absolutely amazing (writing for government training was the most useful session I have ever done) but some of it was long and repetitive which, given other work constraints, has felt like a time sink. Informal training from my current supervisor has been amazing. She has ensured I am up to date with their work, have useful context and information, but also has not overwhelmed me with training and given me meaningful work with guidance from day one to give me an opportunity to learn while doing tasks. Some teams have given me a week or two worth of reading as training and I haven't been able to contribute until that is finished which I don't find that useful because I am someone that learns the best while completing tasks and find it hard to absorb all the information I have read without it being complimented by tasks. The key skills I have learnt include: - project management - writing government documents (briefs, minutes, reports) - organisation structures and approval chains - networking and forming professional relationships

There is a lot of online training to do which is interesting and thought provoking. It does concern me that CMTEDD training centre on culture and psychological safety, it is possible the ACTPS know what CMTEDD is like and trying to change the culture, although most people do not engage in the training as they turn their cameras off and obviously tune out as they do not participate in conversation or even acknowledge when facilitators asked them to. I feel the training is falling on deaf ears and is a tick and flick exercise with minimal change. The people who do have cameras on and participate are not the ones who need the training, they already get it.

A few trainings and graduation specific sessions were cancelled.

CPA Congress Networking Event

The company began with some necessary training programs. However with the opportunities I got later in the graduate program, the training opportunities dwindled.

There are some general online modules that are mandatory to complete when you begin the role (on topics like WHS, Fraud Prevention, Ergonomics etc.). However, I have found that most of the training to actually perform your role is done informally/on the job with your manager and colleagues showing you what to do/how to use certain software that is required.

Training included: - formal graduate training (L&D program), which covered themed like emotional intelligence, project management, resilience, co-design etc. - ASSIST suicide awareness/intervention training - ATSI cultural competency of first nations history / culture training - Brief writing / writing for government - respect, equity and diversity training - SBS Diversity training And others. Opportunity to do some really cool upskilling, you just need to advocate for yourself / communicate to your manager what it is you want to be doing to they can support you to achieve it.

We need a bit more formal training to help support the organisation get better at working together. There are all these incredible tools, but people lack the knowledge or need to go about informal training to figure it out. There seems to be little to no support at Callam for technology support. Corporate is not well-equipped. I have undertaken all the required formal trainings for the construction industry, and been able to attend conferences and talks as needed.

Working at MPC, there would be procurement-based training sessions, which gives a broad overview but it's always changing and is hard to keep up. The graduate talent team had promised a cultural-based excursion but that was cancelled for an unknown reason, out of nowhere. (1/10) Working at ONC, I was guided around how to use ArcGIS as well as learning how to collate data and organise citizen science projects. (7/10 satisfied)

The L & D experience through the graduate program was mixed. When the presenters were dealing with subject matter that they understood and were comfortable with the lessons were mildly engaging. However, when the subject matter was beyond the presenters level of expertise I would say that the lessons were borderline problematic. Dealing with subject matter such as cognitive psychology on a superficial level should never be undertaken. Cognitive and emotional psychology are complex and difficult subjects and never black and white. Pop psychology or psychology speak can confuse people's idea of their own behaviour and that of others. For instance in one of the L & D days the speaker told the class that if they just "found a switch" in their brains then they could become a better person, emotionally and behaviourally. Not a very helpful thing to say to someone with some level of PTSD or, as we are finding out, a myriad of other behavioural problems that stem from some form of unwanted stimuli. For these people it can take weeks to years of behavioural therapy to "find that switch" and even then it can be a constant effort of learned practices to keep oneself calm. This is just an example of where the superficial nature of the L & D days was potentially harmful, though there were others. Mostly though, the superficiality was near numbing in how vague and fluffy it was. I think next year, if the grad talent team take on any graduates, it would be worth asking them to take notes of their experiences. Further, the poor planning and seemingly low priority and eventually cancelled on country culture experience was a blow to the entire graduate cohort. This was especially significant considering the timing of the cancellation. This event should have been at the forefront of the graduate experience perhaps included within the induction period. However, the legislative assembly experience was definitely worthwhile. The workings of the assembly and the speeches were very informative and constructive. The government writing course, while very dry, was excellent.

WHS training, risk management training, project management training, contract management training, leadership training, project examples learning, in-person training, online training