Building team capability with a clear vision
The Challenge
Immigration New Zealand is the agency within the New Zealand Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment that is responsible for border control, issuing travel visas and managing immigration to New Zealand.
The Investigations Team is key to ensuring the right people are entering the country, so Immigration NZ wanted to ensure they had the best training and development possible.
That in turn meant having a clear view on the role capabilities of the team, and how their learning and development needs could best be met. That’s where we came in.
“Helen and Kim were fantastic to deal with, the work was top notch the communication was clear and regular without being over the top, we were kept up to date with progress regularly and the SMEs also all come back with a positive experience from their meetings. I myself couldn’t be happier and I know that the internal business owners Jo and Janine feel the same. So again, thank you guys for providing us with such amazing people to work with and a fantastic service. “
Lee Flockton, Ministry of Business, Innovation & Employment - Hīkina Whakatutuki
Our partnership
What we deliver always has to be useful, has to be used. That meant we needed to develop a practical, simple, easy to understand capability framework that would make sense to a team member as much as it would a capability specialist. It had to put INZ in a position to make confident choices on exactly what training and development would be provided.
It’s a complex work context, with staff coming into the team with a range of backgrounds and experience. Skills required for the roles were diverse. The way we organised the ‘view’ of capability was going to be key. We settled on Role Descriptor templates that made clear the difference between technical skills and competencies, because the way they would be trained would be different. We also linked explicit learning and development needs to those capabilities and skills, so that INZ could quickly move to making decision on the best learning experiences.
Career progression was also key, so the progress staff would make through and between roles was explicitly linked to the skills and capabilities. The team can see where there they can go, and how. We set out the technical, specialist immigration and soft skills that needed to be developed at the different career stages – from induction to competency as an investigator to progression to a senior or leadership role. In doing so there was a clear pathway that helps someone in the role to develop and gain competence in each of the roles.
Sounds like a complex solution? Yes and no. The Role Descriptors are only three pages long.
The Impact
INZ is now moving forward with confidence on the design and development of the learning experiences – job done.