EnCompass has won the rebid of the USAID Training and Facilitation Services contract at an exciting time in the Agency’s history of organizational management and development. Since 2006, EnCompass has been a trusted partner for the USAID Office of Human Capital and Talent Management (HCTM), successfully providing a wide range of training design and delivery services. The new work with HCTM is launching right on the heels of the recent release of USAID’s 2015-2019 Global Workforce Learning Strategy (GWLS).
The new GWLS centers on a long-term, sustainable human capital development framework, and prioritizes the building of supervision, management, and leadership capacity to more efficiently and effectively achieve USAID’s mission to end extreme poverty and promote resilient, democratic societies. It includes a number of improvement areas that USAID has identified to better integrate learning, performance improvement and knowledge sharing strategies across the Agency.
More specifically, the new GWLS focuses on competency-based course design, which will better align training with key competencies necessary for a high-performing workforce. The course curricula will include blended learning methodologies to cultivate a strong culture of continuous learning at the Agency. The learning strategy also emphasizes integration of soft skills into technical training, especially in a multicultural organizational context, as well as a robust training evaluation system that will enforce more uniform principles and standards for assessing learning interventions and measuring success.
EnCompass is excited to be a thought partner for HCTM to achieve its ambitious goals and incorporate the strategic objectives into the design and delivery of the Agency’s learning and development courses. One of our initial tasks is the assessment and redesign of USAID’s suite of supervision courses. It is the first time the Agency is re-examining the capacity-building of its supervisors and managers, and emphasizing methods that can best support first- and second-line supervisors during key transitional periods and in multicultural environments. EnCompass will incorporate a blended learning approach into the curriculum that utilizes a breadth of best practices to meet supervisors at their learning point of need and address the diverse contexts in which they work.
The GWLS has reinforced our team’s core approaches for assessing and designing best training practices, while also challenging us to actualize the Agency’s focus on developing an inclusive, multicultural workforce. By conducting in-depth assessments with SMEs, course facilitators and participants, as well as closely engaging with our partners at USAID, we are excited to solidify best practices while establishing new ones for a more strategic and sustainable approach to training and development at the Agency.
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