How Learning and Development Came to Reveal
Before 2022, the Human Resources team did not exist at Reveal. In January of this year we welcomed our Head of HR, Emilie Blanchard, and Talent Acquisition Manager Jason Holness. They intuitively recognized in January, a need for learning and development for the team members at Reveal.
After seeing the results of a company wide survey that was executed in July, their intuition was validated by the strong request for training and education by both the individual contributors and their managers. The results of this survey provided data that showed the company faced challenges which could all be remedied through Learning and Development within the HR function at Reveal.
This article aims to share our approach, strategy, and future considerations for the learning and development strategy at Reveal.
The What of L&D
Learning and Development (“L&D”) is an all encompassing term that is geared towards empowering employees to grow and develop their competencies, expertise, and abilities with the aim of helping them to achieve their goals and drive better business performance. To help support opportunities for Reveal employees to grow and also allow the company to achieve its goals, we decided to take a two fold approach:
- Interview each individual contributor to understand where they felt they lacked knowledge or expertise as well as where they felt their team could afford further training.
- Interview each manager to identify the collective skill gaps among our employees and teams.
Using this collective information we began developing a training program to bridge those gaps commonly identified between the manager and the individual contributors.
Why L&D?
As suggested in the introduction, we decided to implement a Learning & Development strategy as a remedy to challenges we faced internally. We recognized that a strong L&D program was important to achieve the following:
- Help recruit the best talent.
- Invest in existing employees’ competencies and professional development with the understanding that their success is key in realizing business strategy,
- Increase employee retention by creating a culture of continuous learning where our team members feel supported in their career development.
As stated, we recognize that this strategy is mutually beneficial for Reveal and our employees. By investing in individuals and teams’ improvement we know that their efficiency and productivity will improve thereby allowing the company to achieve its goals. As our team members grow, so does the company as a whole.
L&D at Reveal
Our approach has been to leverage the existing wealth of knowledge that our team members already have across the organization internally to meet the expressed needs of individuals. This manifested in internally led workshops and biweekly enablement programs. The topics of these workshops and programs were generated from the information we gathered from the meetings with management and the individual contributor.
We feel it's necessary to express here the role of the HR team at Reveal. Our aim is to create an environment where each person feels heard and reassured enough to share openly about their goals and challenges. The trust between our team and the members of our company is essential to the programs that we implement, as is evident in the development of each individual through learning and development. The structure of the L&D at Reveal and the programming are designed to serve the individuals knowing that when they succeed the company succeeds.
Structure of L&D Programs at Reveal
We created four working groups to focus on the different areas of training in order to ensure that our approach was very qualitative. We developed the following areas of opportunity:
Technical Training Programs
The mission of this working group is to upskill team members’ technical skills. In this segment we will focus on offering multi-week courses, single-session training, and bi-weekly talks on specific projects. They are developed and delivered by team members. The courses will cover a wide range of subjects such as experimentation and data visualization, primarily relying on online resources for general learnings and team members for Reveal-specific teachings. The training sessions are focused on specific skills on internal know-how on a specific topic or tool.
Non-technical Training Programs
The mission of this working group is to upskill team members' soft and business skills.
The workstream puts together monthly, employee-led panel discussions to go over topics such as “managing up”, “providing feedback” or “thinking like a product manager”.
Experiential Training Programs
This working group covers opportunities that are hands-on or individualized, with more opportunities for one-on-one interactions. We will offer 3 programs:
- Mentorship programs pair employees with a peer or manager to provide them with mentorship/coaching to help them think through their careers, provide advice, etc.
- Shadow program provides an opportunity for employees to learn more about different roles on different teams or at different levels.
- Lastly, the leadership lunch series provides an opportunity for team members to interact with leadership in a casual, small-group setting.
How to Create a Culture of L&D
Here are the steps we took to craft an L&D strategy so that is both effective and efficient :
Understand our Business Strategies
Our L&D was informed by our overall business goals which made it easy for us to identify—what types of upskilling and reskilling our staff and to ensure there was a ROI in L&D strategy. This provided the blueprint to secure buy-in from our leadership team to invest resources into a learning strategy to develop your internal talent.
Determine Ownership of L&D Between HR and Department Heads
In order to effectively develop our L&D, it was important for us to define clear ownership of the project. We decided to create a cross-functional team incorporating managers from various departments across Reveal who would collaborate with us to identify the learning needs of the team. This enabled us to get proper insight into the upskilling and reskilling needs across different business functions—as well as get buy-in from everyone in the organization.
Set Clear Corporate L&D and Training Goals
After assigning ownership and understanding our business goals, it was imperative to set clear objectives for our employee L&D and training. These were aligned with our organizational development and were people-centric. In order to do this we conducted 1 on 1 interviews with each team member to ensure that the goals we set were trackable, objective, clear, and obtainable (SMART). The next step was then to share these goals with the leadership to make it transparent what our L&D strategy was aimed at accomplishing.
Conduct a Skills Gap Analysis
We then did a skills gap analysis on the key areas of our L&D program. This gave us insights into not only developing a more in depth of L&D training needed for different departments and individual employees but also more personalized learning experiences such as video, mentorship, audio, reading, and interactive training content. In order to do this we conducted 1 on 1 interviews with each team member to identify the skills gap and to ensure that the goals we set were trackable, objective, clear, and obtainable (SMART). The next step was then to share our skills gap assessment and goals with the leadership to make it transparent what our L&D strategy was aimed at accomplishing.
Budgeting
After determining the areas team members want to develop in, we then created a roadmap of the L&D program, which included a preliminary budget to confirm the feasibility of our plan within a reasonable timeframe.
Launching the L&D Strategy
Once all this was done, it was time to launch it. Before scaling it to the entire company, we needed to get feedback from leadership and make changes accordingly. This was done as a way to get the Leadership to be involved as L&D advocates
Moving Forward
As L&D is new at Reveal, the key moving forward will be to ensure that we effectively track our L&D initiatives and to ensure that they are performing. This will be the best way of seeing the value of our programs. We plan to implement tracking metrics such as attendance rates, program completion, and net promoter score (NPS) for each of our initiatives.
While we are still in the process of implementing our L&D strategy here at Reveal, the same strategies we have used can apply for any company looking to create a culture of learning and development. We hope to give you a further update once we have been able to track the success of our initiatives but in the meantime, we hope this motivates you to start your own Learning and Development initiative!
