Summary
- Learning and development (L&D) in the Civil Service has largely been shaped by senior stakeholder feedback and high‑level data. This can create a gap between design of the skills system as a whole and how civil servants feel about learning in their everyday work.
- Policy Lab partnered with Government Skills in the Cabinet Office to explore how civil servants navigate L&D across their current roles and wider career journeys, aiming to ensure that the skills system is grounded in lived experience and co-designed with those it serves.
- This informed the creation of the National School of Government and Public Services, announced by the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister in 2026. It offers a model for how government can move from lived experience to system‑level insight, and from insight to delivery.
The policy challenge
The Civil Service invests significantly in L&D to build capability and support career progression, yet there is limited understanding of how this system is experienced by civil servants at different career stages. Existing insight has largely relied on senior perspectives and aggregate data such as the Civil Service People Survey. These do not fully capture how learning is experienced in day‑to‑day work or how access is shaped by local context, line management and individual circumstances.
Our initial research highlighted that while the Civil Service skills system enables progression for some, it can create barriers for others. Without grounding in lived experience, there is a risk that the skills system is designed at a distance from its main users, limiting both effectiveness and inclusivity.
In Spring 2024, Government Skills partnered with Policy Lab to address a central question
How can the Civil Service design a skills system that reflects the real experiences, needs and ambitions of its people, and supports sustainable skills development over time?
What changed
Deeper, more visceral understanding of people’s experiences
Policy Lab used sensory ethnography to bring the experiences of civil servants directly into the development of L&D policy. The research involved 16 participants across Executive Officer to Deputy Director grades, reflecting a range of roles, locations and backgrounds.
We designed a novel ethnographic approach, rooted in the principles of both sensory and participatory ethnography, which allowed us to elicit deeper responses and experiences which are often not volunteered in interviews or similar research approaches.
The approach was informed by anthropologist Sarah Pink’s sensory ethnography, which we used to engage participants’ senses. We designed creative, self-guided exercises using visuals, videos, objects and hands-on activities. The exercises were tactile, varied and experimental, inspired by a wide set of references from ancient Andean knotting and record keeping practices (khipu) to British popular culture (my career radio), and clay modelling.
The techniques encouraged participants to step outside standard responses and explore the emotional and contextual dimensions of learning. The exercises were combined with interviews in which participants used artefacts they had created to express deeper insights into their experiences.
One participant said
Some exercises were unexpectedly good. With the khipu one, I thought I’d do it really quickly and put it back in the box but it was really interesting, actually for some reason, it helped me think about things in a different way.
This approach generated richer and more nuanced evidence about how learning is experienced in context. It revealed motivations, barriers and emotional dimensions, while amplifying voices from parts of the Civil Service less frequently heard in skills policy development.
Participants described the process as “reflective”, “insightful” and at times “cathartic”, highlighting the value of creating space for deeper engagement. Crucially, it revealed that experiences of the skills system vary significantly, laying the foundation for understanding not just individual journeys but the structures shaping them.
Another participant said
Some of the tasks led into vulnerable times, but the activity made it feel safe.
Systemic understanding of policy issues
Policy Lab used these individual insights to build a system‑level understanding of how L&D operates across the Civil Service. Recurring themes from the research were identified and translated into a system map, showing factors such as access, support, motivation and organisational context.
This work revealed reinforcing dynamics shaping outcomes within the system. In some cases, a “cascading opportunities” effect enables progression, where accessing one opportunity unlocks further development and accelerates career pathways. In others, a “layering of barriers” effect emerges, where repeated or compounding challenges – such as limited managerial support or inaccessible formats – restrict access and progression over time. These reinforcing loops can widen differences in outcomes between groups of civil servants.
Policy Lab translated these insights into a comprehensive systems map, thematic evidence cards and visual case studies of individual journeys. Together, these outputs enabled policymakers to
- see how policy design relating to Civil Service L&D and skills interacts with civil servants’ behaviours and contexts,
- identify where interventions could reduce barriers or strengthen enabling conditions, and
- understand the system as an interconnected whole rather than a set of isolated interventions.
This shifted the conversation from incremental improvements to system‑level change.
Confidence with new practices, evidence, and technologies
We tested and expanded this emerging system view through a large‑scale online collective intelligence debate, designed to validate and challenge findings from the ethnographic phase. Hosted over 1 week using Pol.is and open to all civil servants, the debate was widely promoted across government networks, with participation from 653 individuals.
Starting from 77 different propositions (known as ‘statements’) seeded by Policy Lab, the debate evolved dynamically as participants contributed and voted on ideas, resulting in 1,766 statements and over 129,000 votes. Using machine learning, the Pol.is platform identified areas of consensus and divergence, providing a structured view of how experiences and priorities vary across the Civil Service.
This process extended the reach of the research, enabling the team to test earlier ethnographic insights at scale and explore how they applied across different roles and contexts. It revealed strong areas of agreement alongside important points of divergence, particularly around experiences such as managerial support, mandatory training and the role of L&D in career progression.
Shared visions of success
Policy Lab translated insights from the ethnography, systems mapping and collective intelligence debate into 5 speculative proposals for how L&D could be delivered in the Civil Service. These were tested through a series of co‑design workshops held in May 2025 in Bristol, London and Manchester, engaging 61 civil servants from different roles, grades and backgrounds. Working as equal partners, participants used creative and interactive methods to explore the 5 speculative scenarios – identifying what should be retained, adapted or introduced, and how these approaches could be implemented in practice.
This process ensured that proposals for how to deliver L&D and skills were directly shaped by lived experience and tested against real‑world constraints, moving from insight to actionable design. By the end of the project, Government Skills had a set of evidence‑based, user‑tested scenarios, alongside a shared understanding of the system’s strengths, limitations and leverage points for change.
This project informed the creation of the National School of Government and Public Services, announced by the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister in 2026, and offers a model for how government can move from lived experience to system‑level insight, and from insight to delivery.