I'd like to make a couple of comments regarding the point you raise, which is a critical one, about the supervisors and the detachments themselves. It's a critical point in what we're talking about.
As far as the senior position that we have created is concerned, it's a position at the senior rank, at the assistant commissioner level, which I am starting as of today. Prior to this, the RCMP created what we call leadership management, which we developed in-house based on studies done outside the RCMP. We have created our own supervisor development program for first line supervisors, and also a management development program for the middle line managers, as well as the officer cadre.
This program started two years ago. As opposed to being a two-week in-class exercise, it's a year-long program that involves pre-course material and pre-course learning. We do a two-week in-class session where we talk about leadership, about relations management, and about how to recognize employees, how to deal with employees, and how to have these difficult conversations with people.
By the time the candidates leave the classroom, they've produced what we call a performance improvement plan, where they've discussed the detachments or the units they're going back to and a concrete plan for how they will take what they've learned in the classroom setting to the unit level or the detachment level. This is followed up on by a person in the training world who will provide support, coaching, and mentoring to make sure that person carries through at the unit level. Some supervisors who have come to us with feedback on this have said that they've completely transformed their units after going back.
That program has been going on for about two years and we are now seeing some benefits from it. Again, this is very specific to the RCMP, as opposed to sending our members on leadership training outside the RCMP at a fairly high cost. That was the impetus for developing our own in-house leadership development programs.