Case Study: Training and Development - Cambridgeshire County Council

Cambridgeshire County Council’s workforce is 76% female and 24% male. But at Head of Service level the percentage is 47% female and 53% male, and at Director and above the percentage is 66% male and 33% female This excludes school-based staff.

The Council introduced the Senior Women Managers (SWIM) Programme to offer gender specific management development for women in the Council with potential for progression to senior management roles. The 5-day course is facilitated by Cranfield University and is tailored to look at the specific issues facing women in senior management positions and those aspiring to get there. In the course they:

• discuss managing the market
• have the opportunity to speak with women in senior roles
• practice behaviours in interviews.

The Council has a succession planning programme and the SWIM programme acts as a feeder to this, preparing women to apply for roles at Director level and above.

The Council has also ring-fenced places for women on the generic introductory management development programme.

Over the last 5 years 61 managers have completed this programme. Many have been promoted to heads of service level and in some cases to assistant directors.

The programme content remains the same but it is now non-residential as many managers had childcare commitments. We have now lowered the criteria as many managers at more senior levels have already completed the programme, which is now called Women into Management.

On completion managers now have the opportunity to attend monthly action learning sets to embed their learning and to have the opportunity to, for example, listen to more senior managers talk about their career paths and the steps that they have taken to make this possible.