Welcome back to our Workplace newsletter. You’ve officially made it to February! That’s one month down and 11 more to go. Burnout, anyone? Today: best practices for education benefits, the great Calendly link debate, and the consequences of drifting DEI commitments.
—Amber Burton, reporter (email| twitter)
An education in education benefits
Very early in my career, one of my former employers quietly offered its staffers the opportunity to sign up for an online course to learn Python. The company was paying for it, yes, but there was little information about the time commitment or what a person could do if they actually learned Python. Needless to say, I did not sign up for the course, and I do not know Python. Cue Marlon Brando:“I coulda been a contender!”
My personal regrets aside, Rebekah Rombom, the chief business development officer at Flatiron School, said this is the wrong way to go about offering education to workers. The Flatiron School has made a name for itself over the past decade by training and retraining professionals in software engineering, data science, product design and cybersecurity — some of the most in-demand skills in the tech industry today.
For Rombom, who works with Flatiron's corporate partners, the secret to getting employees to upskill, reskill and engage with education benefits is all about providing awareness and setting expectations. In today’s competitive market for tech talent, offering education benefits is a critical way to retain and promote the best employees. Rombom spoke with Protocol about the current landscape of education benefits and what HR managers should consider when deploying these programs.
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
How has the demand for training to upskill and reskill employees shifted over the past two to three years?
What we see companies really wanting to do is either supercharge employee engagement across different sub-goals — recruit, retain, engage, increase employee satisfaction — or fill in-demand roles in the targeted way. These technical roles that we train for are some of the hardest to fill [and the] most competitive in the market, with a wide gap between talent supply and employer demand. And in addition to companies who are looking for ways to engage and retain their employees, we've also seen companies say, “Hey, I have these really hard-to-fill roles, and are there folks internally that could be repositioned?”
What are you seeing in terms of the amount of time and support that companies are allowing for their employees to grasp difficult subjects?
We have coaches and instructors who work directly with students, both one-on-one and in small groups and in a class setting. And their job is to help folks navigate through the material in whatever way will help them grasp it best … And so for an organization, a lot of companies have seen a ton of value in that. You can give your employees content, but if you're really looking to make a transformational change, part of that experience is often a guide, a coach and instructor to help you through understanding the content.
We have been running a program in partnership with Amazon where we are retraining warehouse associates for careers in software engineering and cybersecurity. The first round of that program wrapped up late last year with over 270 graduates, warehouse associates that now have the skills to start careers in cybersecurity or software engineering. These are folks with full-time jobs. All of those graduates I just mentioned worked full-time hours at an Amazon facility, so we had to structure a program in partnership with Amazon that would work for those people's lives.
It was 10 months, part-time learning that folks could fit into their work schedule. It had both a large self-driven component where there's content you can access at any time and instructor support that was flexible and could work with your schedule. So things like lectures you could pop in to and conversations with peers and teachers. I think that's one of the benefits of working with an organization that does this.
We've seen students already start their new cybersecurity and software engineering careers, both inside and outside of Amazon, which is really exciting.
What do you tell executives who are weighing the pros and cons and the reality that once you arm people with new skills, they might not stay?
I think it depends on the company's goals. So for a company that's looking to attract, engage and retain over a couple-year period, retraining frontline workers for new skills and then giving an opportunity to path into a new job at the company, or start their new career elsewhere, might be a really good option. For a company that's looking to in a very targeted way transition existing employees into high-demand roles inside that company, we would recommend a different kind of program, something that's maybe smaller and more tailored to the technical skills specifically at that organization.
What are some best practices that HR managers should consider to make sure employees are engaging with their education benefits and also finishing the program?
One thing is awareness and inviting people into the experience. We’ve worked with a lot of students over the years who have really different backgrounds than what has traditionally been considered a technology worker. So inviting folks in to participate in the tech workforce I think is one really important part, and making folks aware that these pathways exist.
And then [No. 2] is expectation-setting. This experience is hard and requires dedication. It's pretty uncomfortable to learn an entirely new set of skills that you don't have, and it requires openness and vulnerability and a lot of hard work. Making people aware of that in the beginning profoundly helps set them on a productive course through something that's going to be kind of a bumpy ride. When we're engaging in these conversations, organizations already know that they're going to need to identify the time and get manager support, and I think that's what HR and learning and development teams tend to be really good at.
What's your Calendly etiquette?
There’s an internet debate going on: What’s the correct etiquette for sending a Calendly link? Turns out that’s a more controversial question than you might think. The latest incarnation of the debate comes from a tweet by former Facebook VP Sam Lessin. His thoughts on Calendly links: "The Most Raw / Naked Display of Social Capital Dynamics in Business." In other words, he hates them and argues that sending someone a Calendly link is a way of telling them you're more important than they are. Despite the strong feelings, many participating in the online chatter defended Calendly. What do you think about sending people Calendly invites? Email me and let me know.
A MESSAGE FROM WORKPLACE FROM META
Whether you work on the top floor or the shop floor, Workplace celebrates who you are and what you can bring to your business. Discover the place where you can be more you.
Today's tips & tools
Today, I’m featuring some productivity tips from a Protocol Workplace reader, Sheena Sharma at Envoy. Here are a few ways Sharma gets through the work day:
- Filter your email aggressively. That means building separate email folders for calendar invites, newsletters and Google Doc comments. Use a “starred” or “action” folder to get “to-do” emails out of your primary inbox.
- Find text recaps of webinars; don’t bother watching the whole video. Zoom recordings are often automatically transcribed.
- Use Sunday night or Monday morning to sketch out your priorities for the week. You can separate them into high, mid or low.
- Build your ideal week from a blank calendar. Is there anything you can cancel? How many regular meetings have you accumulated?
As always, if you have any tips you think I should share, feel free to send me a DM or email.
Commitment to DEI
According to a recent report by Deloitte, a lack of trust in DEI efforts can be an even greater hurdle in an already competitive talent market. We’ve learned over the past few years that workers are more willing to exit a company if it does not align with their values. And with more companies publicly recommitting to diversity and inclusion efforts, there is increased focus on whether or not they are following through. Here are some of the findings from Deloitte’s survey of over 1,500 workers.
- 40% of survey respondents said they would consider leaving their job if they can’t trust their organization to fulfill its DEI commitments.
- 56% of people said they wouldn’t feel comfortable recommending their company as a place to work to friends and family if they couldn’t trust their organization to fulfill its DEI commitments.
- Some workers are sensing that their organizations are drifting from their stated commitments to diversity. Nearly 40% of all survey respondents believe “commitment drift” is a likely outcome in the future.
- The effects of not following through on DEI initiatives reaches far beyond employees. 25% of respondents said they would stop doing business with a company if it didn’t commit to DEI.
More from us
Workplace stories you might have missed.
An inside look at the Call of Duty developers’ unique decision to unionize.
You can stop pretending you know what a developer relations professional does.
T-Mobile’s corporate employees have to be fully vaccinated by April 2, or they risk termination.
A MESSAGE FROM WORKPLACE FROM META
Whether you work on the top floor or the shop floor, Workplace celebrates who you are and what you can bring to your business. Discover the place where you can be more you.
Around the internet
A roundup of workplace news from the farthest corners of the internet.
Our issue with work is not a personal problem.
Your next hire might be a former teacher.
What to do if your company decides the pandemic is over.
Good luck getting people to come back to work in your open-plan office.
Thoughts, questions, tips? Send them to workplace@protocol.com. Have a great day, see you Thursday.