Social and Resource Development Fund (SARD) facilitated a comprehensive Organisational Development Assessment (ODA) of Finance, Education, Home and Health departments in 2018. This program, conducted by an external consultant, was jointly funded by the USAID and SOIR-IM. One of the areas of focus for the ODA was assessing the department’s human resource situation. The major findings were:
- CTA teams are currently designed to operate as bureaucrats with adequate level of coordination work but with limited technical value addition
- The need for value enabling work culture was identified as a key factor to improve productivity and staff retention but lack of middle management limits the internal capacity to build second line of leadership.
- There was a need identified to build systems and processes across departments and teams to improve operational utilization of the team.
- While ad-hoc workshops based training initiatives have been undertaken, there was a need identified for integrated long-term capacity development programs that spans across departments to leverage synergies.
In order to address the issues raised in the ODA reports, CTA has directed SARD to launch a pilot capacity development program where a selected pool of 45 CTA staff will undergo an eleven-month intensive capacity building program. The program will improve the quality of work and deepen impact significantly. At the same time, the program will also ensure development of a cadre of mentors for the future capacity building of the junior team. Success of the pilot will enable similar training to be rolled out to other CTA staff. The key areas for capacity building include:
- Individual skill mapping and build competency framework and conduct individual assessment.
- Strengthen sector knowledge and project management skills
- Leadership development
- Institutional capacity building
- Core competency development
The benefits of the pilot program include: improved efficiencies across the activity cycle will ensure improved utilization of both human resources and funds; improved synergies by ensuring that teams across departments have similar skill sets and goals; improved skills in data tracking and reporting; and improved retention of staff through better roles and responsibilities along with clarity in growth path.
The multi-month program, funded jointly by the USAID and SOIR-IM, will be conducted by a team of external trainers and experts including Intellecap and Holistic Training Solutions. The program formally got underway with the Intellecap team conducting a three-day training from March 4-6. The team conducted interviews to map competencies, roles and responsibilities; introduced participants to capacity building; and conducted training sessions on monitoring and evaluation, communication and project management.
“This is a very important and strategic initiative by the CTA leadership. The selected staff will have the opportunity to progress to the next level and can have a deeper impact on the long-term capacities of CTA. The capacity building intervention will leverage a multi-pronged approach to create a second line of skilled leaders and also build the capacities of the various CTA departments,” said Kaydor Aukatsang, Chief Resilience Officer and SARD Director.
