The Fast Stream is the front door for talent into Whitehall. Just ask the new cabinet cecretary, himself a former fast streamer. Or go to the Fast Stream website, which promises participants “unlimited potential” to reach the “highest levels” of government.
Yet despite Sir Chris’ career trajectory and the claims of government marketing documents, the Fast Stream is no longer the surefire route into leadership roles it once was. With an annual intake of over 1,000 candidates, split across 17 different schemes, it has adopted a much wider focus than recruiting and developing exceptional talent.
As a former fast streamer told Reform, “if the Fast Stream is for the top jobs, why is it accepting 1,000 people a year?”. And if it is meant to attract the very best and brightest to public service, why does it offer a lower starting salary than the graduate programmes of Aldi and Lidl?
In countries like France, Italy and Singapore, the focus on cultivating elite talent begins at recruitment, with demanding entrance exams that test for pre-existing skills and knowledge. It’s a stark contrast to Fast Stream assessments, which centre on bland situational judgement tests and questions about ‘Behaviours’ – like people’s ability to ‘see the bigger picture’ and ‘deliver at pace’.
To get the very best, we first need a higher bar.
Each Fast Stream scheme should be fiercely competitive. But to secure top talent weighing up a range of alternative career paths, there should also be a new, “Executive Leadership Scheme”, with a tight cohort size, separate, highly competitive pay scale and focus on cultivating the multidisciplinary expertise – across policy, operational and delivery skills – that the civil service too often lacks.
Identifying the next generation of civil service leaders should warrant an investment of time by the most senior civil servants, just as top law firms require final interviews with partners. The Selection Boards used for the Fast Stream typically involve Grade 7s and 6s. Instead we should expect the most senior leaders to be the ones investing their time in assessing and recruiting future leaders.
And unlike ‘seat rotations’ in law firms, our approach to managing Fast Stream talent – and giving them opportunities to succeed – is much more hands off.
Interviewees for a new Reform research paper reflected that many of the placements fast streamers do, which are scoped with HR professionals with minimal experience of the wider civil service “aren’t given much thought”.
One former fast streamer recalled arriving in a posting only to discover that their policy area “no longer existed” and for the next six months they were given make-work, like “designing a poster for their team”. Another told us that a colleague was referred to as the “spare fast streamer” because there was very little for them to do.
This is an unserious approach that, at best, risks talented fast streamers leaving, and at worst, leaves the ones who stay woefully unprepared to tackle the era-defining challenges the civil service deals with.
Government should set out a clear model of the management experiences and hard skills it expects people to have when they graduate from the Fast Stream – and line up placements which actually train those skills.
Secondments to other organisations, which are currently an optional, ‘nice to have’, should become mainstream, connecting Whitehall with trailblazer combined authorities, big hospital trusts, and high-performing companies in the private sector.
In the Singaporean civil service, for example, where secondments are regularly used, it’s common to find their graduate cohort on the boards of government-linked companies as a director. If we want future civil service leaders to have a range of experiences to draw on, and an understanding of how policy is implemented in the real-world, we should give them the highest-quality early career secondments.
The prime minister has said that nothing less than a “complete rewiring” of the state will be needed to deliver his priorities. Realising that means a radical shakeup of how people are recruited and managed in Whitehall, to ensure it can draw on the very best talent. Reform of the Fast Stream is the essential first step to building a workforce fit for the future.