DWP's core purpose is to ensure social mobility opportunities for our customers in our community. We wanted to replicate the same opportunities to develop for our Work Coaches across the South East. Many colleagues join DWP straight from school leading to a lack of confidence and self limiting beliefs to progress to more senior roles in the organisation. 
The Aspire development programme was designed to promote self-awareness sessions, action learning sets, mentoring and formal learning. Each of the participants have been matched with a mentor who is outside of their line management. This was to provide a support system tailored to the participants’ individual needs, helping them to focus on achievable career aspirations and goals. Inspirational Speakers attend each monthly meeting to share their career journey and barriers they have had to overcome. Diversity of thinking and thought was key and we sourced high profile key note speakers from various Civil Service Departments that also included subsequent exchange visits that included the Ministry of Defence. The learning and development the participants receive on the programme is bespoke and tailored to prepare them for career progression.They have been encouraged to discuss within the programme to challenge self-imposed barriers to success and to show greater confidence in the ability to communicate effectively with greater impact and purpose. They have been shown how to build a powerful personal brand and how to set challenging and achievable goals and objectives. Feedback from the participants has been extremely positive, believing the programme has increased their personal confidence levels and sense of purpose by having time to develop their own values and how they can be promoted within the organisation. Due to the programme many of the participants now have a new found confidence to seek opportunities to progress.