A continuous learning culture will be viewed as no less than a critical means of conservation relevancy, and indeed survival in a constantly changing world. The Service needs to ensure that its employees possess the right competencies to address the conservation challenges for the next decade within this landscape of change in the Refuge System. Threats from climate change, declining water quantity/quality and invasive species will require a new and stronger suite of skills, including, for example:
● Skills in collaboration and coalition building to coordinate with a range of public, private and nongovernmental agency partners, including an understanding of the legalities and business implications of formal partnerships.
● Ability to manage and communicate with “citizen scientists” to enhance the capacity to monitor climatic and ecological variables.
● Expertise in a range of communications tools, including advances in social media, to educate communities that learn differently than in previous generations.
● Knowledge of predictive modeling, carbon sequestration and the ability to use GIS. Knowledge of hydrology and water resources protection, and facility and asset management.
Employee training, continuing education and professional development are mission-critical. This viewpoint has grown significantly due to excellent work of the Service’s National Conservation Training Center in Shepherdstown, West Virginia. The Refuge System has benefited tremendously from sending cohort after cohort of Service employees and managers on wildlife refuges to the various academies and training offered there. Internal training, however, is not the sole source of development opportunities. A number of professional organizations, colleges and universities, and training services offer courses and programs. Regardless of the source, training for employees is, and should be, increasingly offered virtually.
Recommendation: Evaluate the training opportunities at the National Conservation Training Center and other venues in order to ensure that adequate and appropriate training is available for the skills sets that will be needed in the future.
Recommendation: Work with colleges, universities and technical schools to build the knowledge base of future employees while developing programs that develop mission critical skills and abilities.
As our nation changes, fewer people are growing up with experience in the deeply rooted American traditions of hunting and fishing. The Service’s workforce is beginning to reflect these changes. While we embrace a diverse and inclusive workforce, it is important that those with responsibility for managing wildlife refuges understand the historic and current roles of hunters and anglers in fish and wildlife conservation.
Recommendation: The Service must ensure basic employee training explains the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation while also offering training courses on hunter safety and managing hunting programs on national wildlife refuges.
Effective and adaptive training is key to organizational learning, but it is not everything an organization needs to learn and grow.
Comment below and/or move on to next section of Chapter 5 - Transfer of Intellectual Capital
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Please continue to support and invest in NCTC. Virtual training is painful, slow and difficult to focus on. The hands on training at NCTC is not only instructive, it is important to understanding our past, our foundation, and our mission. In addition, the reflective time created on this “walking” campus is inspiring to many of us.
Many Service employees are not aware of all of the training that is available for someone in their career series. To reduce this problem, the Service should identify key training courses and instruction for each major career series that will help employee’s obtain the critical skills they need to do their job well. Then the appropriate career series list of courses, instruction, and necessary skills should be provided to each employee and their supervisor to be used when the employee’s Individual Development Plan is created each year.
To echo the comment above and add an additional idea, many employees, such as myself are not aware of many of these programs. Additionally, many employees have little time to read an email, etc while completing their jobs.
Maybe link through the main FWS website or NCTC website that allows you to research/search the options open to employees BESIDE training. I.e. the mentor programs, shadowing opportunities, etc. Again, it seems the mentoring or shadowing or detail opportunties go to those who happen to be in the right place at the right time. A portion of the website that employees can go to that updates with new listings or possible opportunties for shadows, details, etc, would be extremely beneficial.
Also, the recommendation regarding ensuring basic employee training does not appear to read correctly…”The Service must ensure basic employee training explains the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation…”
Do you mean basic employee training through the use of the North American Model?