Learning & Development

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Review this list from the PSA of mandatory courses that all BC Public Servants need to complete & regularly renew.

We’re a learning organization, so we try to live those values. We will always support relevant, free learning opportunities - no cooking classes during office hours unfortunately, but anything that can be applied to your work is fair game.

You do not need to seek approval on free courses where no travel is involved. You are trusted to manage your own time and are encouraged to safeguard capacity for learning and development. You do need to bring up any >2 hr blocks of time you’ll be unavailable to the team by:

• updating the shared Outlook calendar with your availability

• discussing how it affects your capacity during sprint planning,

• making sure your supervisor is explicitly aware of the above.

Some PSA learning will not let you register without supervisor approval. Where that’s the case, reach out to @Justine Houchin if the approval doesn’t seem to be going through in time for your course.

Where a course/event has a cost, you will need to:

1. Be aware of learning budget for the year: DTC tries to support $500-ish of learning costs per employee each fiscal. While it’s important to consider whether each opportunity is what you want to spend your funds on, this range is only an estimate and it’s likely worth putting in a request that costs more or even if you’ve already used funds for the year. You never know.

2. Be aware of timelines. Best practice is to submit a request at least 30 days beforehand, next best is up to 2 weeks beforehand, and anything less than that could be rejected because there wasn’t time to process the request.

3. Send an email to @Justine Houchin outlining the course summary, how it’s relevant to your work, cost, and date/time or other logistics. This email needs to be a summary - think no more than 5 bullets. Attach a Training & Development form to your email, with the first section completed by you.

Where a course/event requires travel, you will need to:

1. Be aware that there is no additional travel budget for learning - it all comes from the same pool and will be evaluated as part of the course cost. It is currently a rare occurrence for travel to be approved for learning; you’ll need a strong business case and leadership support.

2. Be aware how travel impacts the timelines for your request; there are more stages of approval. Get in learning requests that include travel at least 30 days beforehand, but more time is always better with travel requests.

3. Include the total cost of travel in your email summary to @Justine Houchin.

4. In addition to the training form, attach a completed Travel Authorization form to your email.

And that’s it! You’ll likely receive a response within 1-2 weeks and should reach out if it’s been longer than that. The response will include next steps on getting registered for your course/event and booking any associated travel.