See where working for the CAA can take you
When asked about the CAA’s approach to learning and development, our people didn’t merely repeat a corporate viewpoint. Time and time again they said things like “I’m a prime example…” or “Just look at me”.
That is not to say that we don’t have a formal commitment to employment development. We do. It is one of our Values and we take it very seriously indeed. It is simply that it is tailored to the needs of every individual.
We are genuinely committed to developing excellence in all our people. Besides leadership and management development, we believe in building on people’s capability in all areas.
You will be encouraged to explore and realise your personal and career potential through on-the-job learning, professional qualification and regular performance review. To achieve our goal – and yours – we use a selection of mechanisms, including training, mentoring and secondments.
We provide a variety of in-house Interpersonal Skills courses and workshops - delivered externally or in our dedicated learning and development area - to meet either individual or team needs. These are complemented by the design and delivery of tailored development solutions.
In-house courses range from Persuading & Influencing or Meeting & Presentation Skills to Time Management and Assertiveness at Work. Since more and more of our people find themselves taking an international focus, we also hold workshops to facilitate understanding and engaging with the European Union.
Our Management Excellence Programme is designed to enhance the abilities of people managers and those employees who have been recognised as having managerial potential.
A significant proportion of our training activity is focused on technical competence and keeping technical skills fully up to date. This is generally job related and managed departmentally.
We believe that mentoring has a key role to play in enabling employees to grow and develop continually. It also helps us to maintain a chain of informal knowledge management which ensures that good practice is passed on.
Our programme teams you with a trained CAA mentor who will share his or her experience and assist you in developing your abilities and your career. You will be motivated and empowered to identify your needs, be they new technical skills, enhanced presentation techniques or effective relationship-building. Your mentor will then work closely with you to achieve your goals.
Invaluable for developing our people’s skills and broadening their career opportunities, secondments are also an important business tool. The CAA thrives on importing new knowledge, experience and abilities, both from department to department and from the wider world.
Internal secondments are generally moves between business areas within the CAA or to our sister organisations such as Air Safety Support International, the UK Airprox Board, the Air User’s Council and CAA International. Typically the move will be made to add new areas of experience which are not available in your current role. A secondment such as this could also provide an opportunity to judge your competence at a higher level.
External secondments are usually mutually beneficial arrangements with third party organisations. They are a way for the CAA to provide expertise, to lead a debate and to influence policy development for the good of aviation as a whole. In return the secondee is able to acquire new knowledge and skills sets – such as commercial awareness, leadership styles and change management – and feed these back into the CAA talent pipeline. These secondments are particularly productive as we grow our European influence.
