Mark Higgins MCMI

Background:

The General Medical Council (GMC) is the responsible for the regulation of doctors in the UK. It aims to promote and protect the health and safety of the general public by ensuring the highest possible medical standards are practiced.

The GMC started working with the CMI to develop its managers and leaders five years ago. As the relationship between the two organisations has developed, the range of courses the CMI provides has increased, along with the number of GMC staff members participating.  

The challenge:

The GMC has been through a number of significant organisational changes over the last five years, including physical and geographical expansion and a resulting culture shift. The opening of an additional office in Manchester in particular presented the management team with the new challenges.

Learning and Development Manager, Mark Higgins, joined the GMC in 2005. He says: “In 2005, the GMC was growing significantly as an organisation and there was an essential need to develop our leadership and managerial skills to enable the GMC to achieve this growth. We needed a new management direction to progress as an organisation.”

Goals:

Addressing this challenge meant finding a way to enhance and develop the talents and abilities of existing managers. The priority for the GMC’s Learning and Development team was to make the organisations career paths more transparent and develop the leadership style of key individuals.

Action:

Initially, the GMC commissioned a number of the CMI’s short courses in key disciplines including project management, effective leadership, dealing with distressed customers, managing remotely, problem solving and decision making.

Eighteen months in, staff were responding well to the courses and were promoting them, and their benefits, to fellow colleagues. This, combined with the efforts of the Learning and Development team to increase staff buy-in and encourage roll out at all levels, resulted in more individuals taking up and completing the short courses.

The GMC’s Learning and Development team then set about embedding CMI courses into the organisation’s training framework and encouraged individuals at all levels to consider the CMI Diploma in Management as a route to develop their management skills and competence further.

Mark explains: “Instead of offering training to those already in management positions, we wanted to target future managers and leaders with the aim of encouraging anyone who showed management or leadership potential to consider the Diploma as an opportunity to improve their skills and ability to access opportunities for progression.”

Results:

Since bringing CMI on board, the GMC has become much better equipped to manage change. The resulting increase in individual career progression and development opportunities means the organisation is increasingly able to fill management positions internally. Employees now look for new ways to maximise their skills and talents and they are encouraged to develop their own personal career development plans in line with their career goals and those of the organisation. By investing in, and nurturing, existing talent, expenditure on things like recruitment costs has been significantly reduced.

Staff training has contributed to the GMC’s transformation into a forward thinking, outward looking and modern organisation, and leaders in their field.

Mark adds: “Because we are more transparent, career pathways are clearer than before. People can identify routes for progression and know we will support them in the knowledge and skills they need to make the most out of the opportunities we provide. The impact of training and development on the business has now been enriched and is a fundamental to both our performance review system and business plans. Individual managers have clear targets for personal development and are assessed in a way that demonstrates their journey from A to B, monitoring what they are achieving both personally and organisationally.”