Professional Conservation Employees Program (PCEP)

NC’s conservation partnership has a strong heritage of providing quality assistance to the state’s landowners and citizens.  Because of this, conservation districts have earned a high level of trust with landowners and this trust is the backbone of an effective delivery system that is envied by other agencies and organizations.  To a large degree, the future of conservation districts is directly tied to continued quality assistance provided through employees.

In order to enhance the professionalism and accountability of the conservation partnership’s employees, a committee was formed to develop a training guide to be used across the state. The committee consists of district supervisors, as well as employees from districts, the division and the NRCS. The vision of this committee is to have a statewide professional development program to guide the training and development of employees within the conservation partnership.

The committee identified five areas in need of developement: managerial, administrative, technical, educational and district supervisors. Training plans within each of these focal areas will consist of tiers to guide the training process.  The committee realizes that each employee’s training plan should be tailored to meet the specific employee’s and/or county’s needs but many of the items listed are applicable to all employees.

The concept of a state-wide training tool has evolved into the Professional Conservation Employee Program (PCEP). The PCEP has been introduced at various meetings across the state during the past twelve months and the committee has now completed two of five training plan templates. The conservation partnership will insure its future success by being proactive and supporting employee development. Below is the PCEP training plan for employees with technical and administrative responsibilities.

Technical Training Template

Administrative Training Template

Education Training Template

Draft Managerial Training Template - Recieving comments until Dec 31, 2012

In addition to the Training Templates, the PCEP Oversight Committee has established a proficiency model to guide conservation partnership employees and their supervisors as to generally expected skills and capabilities that an employee should have after 6 months, 1 year, 2 years, 3-5 years, and more than 5 years of work in conservation. In an easy-to-use Excel Spreadsheet format, the Proficiency Model includes separate models for employees with technical, administrative, and educational responsibilities.  Below is the PCEP Proficiency Model.

NC_Proficiency_Model_Tech_Admin_Ed

If you are interested in participating in the one of the current workgroups or have suggestions please contact: