Training for innovation

An interview with the Training Manager of the City of Turin, Dr. Maria Stefania Salvo, by Loris Gherra (journalist)

The City of Turin, as lead partner of the European project "Innovato-R" aims to transfer the practice of the "Innova.TO" initiative within the administrations of the project partner cities and to relaunch a new improved edition in the Turin context.

The goal set by the City of Turin consists in focusing its action on the implementation of project proposals - an aspect that emerged as particularly difficult in the past edition at local level – particularly by paying attention to some specific elements useful to speed up the realization of projects.

We talked about it with the Training Manager of the City of Turin, Dr. Maria Stefania Salvo, creator of the training plan “Training for Innovation”.

“Today, more than ever, innovation for the public administration is a necessity. The administration has the duty to accompany its employees in the process of change, which consists of sudden technological, normative and social transformations at a speed never before incurred. Furthermore, we are also witnessing an internal demographic stalemate, with a block on turnover and increasingly older employees, with an average age of 54.5 years. To meet these needs, we have devised a training project that we have called "Training for Innovation". It focuses on five thematic areas:

1. managerial, aimed at improving the ability of each employee to better manage their working times;
2. legislative, both administrative and technical;
3. linguistic, at least the knowledge of the English language is essential;
4. digital, technological;
5. psychological, aimed at the well-being of employees”.

From focus groups to project work

Training for Innovation does not limit itself on an educational approach, but also include the organizational aspect: "From focus groups to project work", i.e. allowing the training participants to acquire the methodology to think innovatively about processes and about their work environment.

From an analysis conducted on 700 employees, identified for their great experience and seniority in the various sectors of the city administration (which we have called "Invisible resources"), three areas have been identified to work with, centered on people and organization:

1. The relationship with people, to transform the activity into value;
2. The person and the organization: motivation, cooperation and well-being;
3. Operational mechanisms for managing internal and external relations.

“We then asked ourselves how to overcome the obstacles that held back the previous Innova.TO project – Dr. Salvo said – Even the brighter idea is indeed not always easy to be turned into reality and an effective realization of the project works involved many critical aspects that lead to the failure of the complete implementation of the winning projects of the previous edition of Innova.TO. To go beyond this obstacle, we have therefore decided to involve the organizational positions (PO) and link each project to the EMP objective (Executive Management Plan) under the responsibility of each sector manager. In this way we want to bring the concept of innovation within the public administration closer to a practical and tangible result rather than a mere generic idea. So, the choice of the theme on which to carry out the Project Work has been discretionary for each individual employee and the conversion into an EMP Standard Objective has been done in agreement with every department director”. 

This training project currently involves about 500 employees of the City of Turin, who are the intermediate roles of the organization (PO), so that they can give concrete effect, by the end of this year, to a project work proposal. The aim is to disseminate knowledge on some issues of importance for the life of organizations, thus contributing to the growth of managerial skills of participants. 

Another important aspect to be underlined is the cooperation network that has been set up among the different officials, active in different administrative, technical and social areas, who work together on similar projects to create process innovation and work methodologies together.

Steps

Salvo: “We started in February 2019. 500 officials in the PO received a module from the Training Department, to which everyone had to respond by identifying the area on which they intended to carry out the Project. The training course continued with meetings in the form of "workshops", in cooperation with the University of Torino (the School of Business Administration and the Department of Political Science), in order to guarantee a methodological support to the implementation of the project work. This exercise has been an opportunity for discussion within colleagues and at the same time an opportunity to monitor the activities carried out”. 

350 projects have been already accepted. Reports will have to be presented by the end of November 2019, in order for the projects to be evaluated among peers, that is among the various participants in the training, in light of the following three keywords:

• Innovation
• Visibility
• Replicability

“It is important to underline that the object of each Project Work is the effective implementation of a micro change - concerning one or more of the three macro areas indicated above – in the operations, methods, processes, tools, organizational logics with which an existing activity is carried out. This exercise is intended to improve and innovate from the point of view of the organization and management of an activity that is totally or partially new”, Salvo underlined. 

“Training for Innovation” and “Innovato-R”

On the basis of the three key words Innovation, Visibility and Replicability, support will be offered to a maximum of 5 project works selected from the 44 that have applied for a "Call for Action" launched in September and ended on the October 2.The choice will be analyzed by a commission of experts.

“The budget for the Transfer Network will be made available by the URBACT program for a total maximum amount of € 40,000, to be divided into the 5 project works chosen. Specialized technical assistance will be provided for every type of resource and necessary support for the project realization and thus giving the possibility of a further implementation of the activities already foreseen in the project work”, the Training Manager of the City of Turin, Maria Stefania Salvo, concluded.