In this GFiE Blog edition; we welcome our new Going Forward into Employment (GFiE) Deputy Director Dr Victoria Hanna and get to know a little more about Victoria and her first impressions of GFiE.
Tell us a bit about yourself ?
Well my background is in research and lecturing and much of my career has been spent in universities here in the UK as well as Australia and New Zealand. I enjoy bringing qualitative and quantitative data together and working out what it’s telling us. Basically I’m inherently curious and enjoy answering tricky questions!
For the last 7 years I've been working in the Civil Service - first in the Ministry of Defence and then Cabinet Office. Joining GFiE brings together my experience of working across the public sector to deliver positive outcomes with my passion for helping people achieve their full potential. The best ideas and most powerful innovations come when we have the broadest range of minds and lived experiences working on a challenge and the GFiE network of schemes is one way we can help achieve that in government.
Besides work, I am a mother of three sons. I'm still trying to complete my 2024 resolution of completing the Couch to 5K (I am a longtime lapsed runner) but I am pleased to report I have achieved my goal of visiting two more capital cities this year!
What are you most looking forward to in your new role and how have you found your first month?
My role is to help the team work across Government and with Partners across the public sector so we can quickly connect vacancy holders with a range of great candidates they can interview.
One of the things I am looking forward to sharing with colleagues is what GFiE has achieved so far and our ambition to go further. What we do next and how we achieve is an exciting challenge. We want to build on our success, for example, over 650 new starters joined the civil service in the financial year of 2023/24 via one of the network of GFiE schemes across government, and over 120 people were made permanent - I think that’s a great cross-government effort and brings a brilliant range of new voices into the civil service.
My first couple of months have been really busy - and I’ve been struck by how much support the team provides for new starters and line managers, GFiE is not just about recruitment but helping people flourish in their first civil service role.
What do you see as the Priorities for GFiE ?
This is something we are going to determine as a team - over the next four months we will be connecting with our stakeholders to evaluate our work and assess the impact we are having. In tandem we will also be refining our engagement strategy so you can expect to hear more from us - in fact I’ll return to the blog to tell you more about our plans in the Autumn!
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If you would like to know know more about GFiE Life Chance Schemes, or are a civil servant and want to discuss providing life changing opportunities to individuals by using GFiE to recruit into vacancies you have coming up, please get in contact with the GfiE Team at GFiE@cabinetoffice.gov.uk
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