Talent management strategy

The Department for Transport's talent management strategy has two key components: an employee learning and development strategy and a succession management strategy.

The employee learning and development strategy supports the development of skills and knowledge in an employee's current role and is supported by an individual development plan.

The succession management strategy supports the development of skills required by DfT in the longer term and is mainly concerned with developing the skills of existing employees to take on leadership roles at middle and senior management levels.

Staff identified as future leaders join 'talent' pools and benefit from accelerated development plans to support their learning and development. The talent pools contain those employees judged to have the potential to be most capable of taking further management and leadership responsibility.

The talent pools provide a structured and focused approach to the development of people to ensure they realise their potential quicker. They also help concentrate the time and attention of line management, the Talent Management division in HR and the development budget where it will bring the greatest return for the Department.

Talent pools

The concept of talent pools is not new to the civil service - the Fast Stream has been running for many years. DfT has expanded this concept to create pools for leaders at various levels of the organisation. Five talent pools operate in DfT.

Two accelerated development schemes, the High Potential Development Scheme (HPDS) and the Fast Stream, are run by the Cabinet Office. Members of DfT who take part in these schemes will join our talent pools. The other pools are exclusively internally managed programmes.