Speak with us and earn the chance to win a free course offering

At the Staff College, we work to equip the UN and its partners with the knowledge and skills to support the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the reform of the peace and security architecture, and management reform. 

At the same time, we focus on delivering something more immediate to you: a good experience for each and every client. Did you come away from our learning programmes with the knowledge and skills that you were intending to acquire? Did you go back to your office to apply your learning? Were you able to bring that knowledge into your job to change the way your team or department goes about its business?

This is important because, at the end of the day, we cannot achieve our big objectives if we don't satisfy the learning objectives of each and every person who participates in a learning or knowledge offering of the Staff College. 

To be sure, we track your satisfaction closely. After each learning programme, we ask our participants to fill out an evaluation form that influences how we deliver our offerings going forward. We are pleased to note that we have very high client satisfaction levels and recommendation rates. In 2018, the client satisfaction level was 5.2 out of a possible 6, while 97 percent of participants said they would recommend their learning programme to others. 

Going beyond our course evaluations

While important, these statistics don't measure something that is more critical: how the knowledge was used and applied. To that end, our colleague Natalia Galat has done some promising work. She asked those who participated in seven editions of UNSSC's Results-based Management learning programme how they were using and applying the knowledge and skills they had acquired.

I think this is an important start. Now we would like to take the approach to a new level by conducting personal interviews with you. We would like to ask all of those willing to reach out to us at comms@unssc.org to participate in a 30-minute conversation so we can learn some key things from you. For example:

• To what extent were you able to transfer the knowledge and skills acquired from the learning progamme to your job?
• How have you applied the knowledge and skills that you gained during your learning programme? How has this made a difference in your job? 

A key element of innovative design thinking

Why should we conduct interviews with you and not distribute an online survey? Because we believe that we can collect much richer, deeper, more useful information through a 30-minute conversation with you.  

At the end of the day, speaking with our clients is a key element of user-centered design thinking (which, by the way, we teach for those interested). Empathizing with your needs and pain points will help us design better experiences for you. 

Even if that means hearing critical feedback. We are not only interested in speaking with people who had good experiences , but those who felt they could have been better served by our learning programmes. In fact, we believe that constructive, critical feedback can serve as the basis for our learning.

Earn the chance to win a free course offering

If you are interested in participating in a conversation with us about the UN Staff College learning programme that you participated in, please reach out to comms@unssc.org. We will put your name in a hat and draw one winner to earn a learning programme free-of-charge (either the e-learning curriculum for national professional officers or the e-learning curriculum on resource management, a $750 value.) 

This is a great opportunity for you to make your voice heard, and to help us influence how we serve the UN of the future.