Developing our people

While you are with us we want you to grow and develop. There are lots of ways that you can do this at Frontline.

Performance and progression

We believe that talking about performance shouldn’t be a long, arduous, annual process. We expect managers and employees to regularly discuss their performance, and have quarterly informal check-in points to do this. These provide a space to reflect on what has gone well in the last three months, what you are most proud of and what you have learnt or could do better in that time. This is also a time to prioritise talking about your development and what you need to grow in your role.

We have two promotion windows a year that tie in with the quarterly check-ins. Our promotions recognise excellent performance in our more junior roles, and the change in scope of expectations in more senior ones.

Development

Development workshops

Your development is important – it helps you and us achieve our aims. We design a wide range of bespoke workshops based on what we know works on our programmes; embedding practice activities and tailoring the content to individual roles. These range from anything like presentation skills to having honest conversations with peers.

Professional qualifications

If you are doing a role that requires you to have a professional qualification (CIPD, ACA, etc.) there is the option to have this funded by us. We want to help you develop the technical expertise to excel in your role.

Prioritising people managers

We know that the key to our success is excellent people supported by excellent managers! We want our people managers to lead the way and role model what we expect of all employees. We design and delivery practice-based workshops regularly throughout the year to help our managers thrive and get the most from their teams.

Apprenticeships

Apprenticeships aren’t just for those new to the workplace anymore. We’re using our apprenticeship levy to make sure our people have the skills and knowledge needed to grow in their roles through apprenticeship qualifications. We have people studying towards qualifications in senior leadership and management, coaching, and data analysis to name a few.

Coaching

We know that sometimes a more individualised approach is needed and workshop or qualification isn’t going to work for you. If you and your manager have identified a development area that could be best supported by coaching, we offer six one-to-one coaching sessions with a qualified external coach. Coaching is available to all employees after probation regardless of the role they are in, as we know from our programmes the incredible impact coaching can have.

Learning from the frontline

We think it’s incredibly important that all employees, regardless of the role they are in, have a good understanding of our social work context, and the important role of an excellent social worker. To support this there are lots of shadowing opportunities internally and externally to learn more about social work. We encourage cross–collaborative learning as much as possible.