Learning at work is work, and we must make space for it
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Learning at work is work, and we must make space for it
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Re: Learning at work is work, and we must make space for it
#2Frankly, if your workplace doesn't already think so, it's a red flag.
Re: Learning at work is work, and we must make space for it
#3That you should “always be learning” is absolutely true. It helps with neuro-plasticity and keeps you engaged.
That said, as a manager I find it hard to get direct reports to accept sometimes that it is not only okay, but required, by me that they learn new things. I do what I can to encourage it, offer to buy books for people, give time to do online course work, etc. They often complain that they don’t feel like they are “Working” even though I explain to them that as long as its work/business related I will expect to be able to call upon them in the future with this new knowledge.
So what can I do as a manager to make it more “okay” to spend time at work learning?
Re: Learning at work is work, and we must make space for it
#4This is why i love my current employer and i won't leave unless i'm forced to.
We have a policy of "Chargeable work always comes first but if you've got nothing to do go learn something, we'll call you when something comes in"
This has lead to times before where we go dead around the same time every year and you spend 2 months being paid to independently upskill. Come the busy November-February period its really obvious who spent their time wisely and who goofed off.
Re: Learning at work is work, and we must make space for it
#5That you should “always be learning” is absolutely true. It helps with neuro-plasticity and keeps you engaged. That said, as a manager I find it hard to get direct reports to accept sometimes that it is not only okay, but required, by me that they learn new things. I do what I can to encourage it, offer to buy books for people, give time to do online course work, etc. They often complain that they don’t feel like the…
If you are actually paying them to learn, which is the key issue here, then they shouldn't complain and i'd have a hard time believing they would.
So the solution is to make it clear you pay them to learn.
Re: Learning at work is work, and we must make space for it
#6That you should “always be learning” is absolutely true. It helps with neuro-plasticity and keeps you engaged. That said, as a manager I find it hard to get direct reports to accept sometimes that it is not only okay, but required, by me that they learn new things. I do what I can to encourage it, offer to buy books for people, give time to do online course work, etc. They often complain that they don’t feel like the…
I empathize and don't have any clear solution. One thing that has helped is actually setting a schedule and following up on it. If Tuesday mornings have two hours booked then you can actually just ask if that was followed any time you follow up with that person. It sort of hacks the categories by turning those moments into clearly work tasks with boxes that need to be ticked.
Re: Learning at work is work, and we must make space for it
#7That you should “always be learning” is absolutely true. It helps with neuro-plasticity and keeps you engaged. That said, as a manager I find it hard to get direct reports to accept sometimes that it is not only okay, but required, by me that they learn new things. I do what I can to encourage it, offer to buy books for people, give time to do online course work, etc. They often complain that they don’t feel like the…
Reduce pressure. When I don't have 7 customer deadlines I'm much more inclined to spend the hour daily I'm meant to on training.
Reward learning with career advancement.
Send your people on relevant training courses out of the office as often as is useful/practical.
Oh and if you have timesheets make sure you can "bill" to training!
Re: Learning at work is work, and we must make space for it
#8Frankly, if your workplace doesn't already think so, it's a red flag.
Yes it is. Another big red flag is micro managing. Managers that want to control even the amount of coffee you drink or how many times you go to the bathroom, if you go out too much etc. Super annoying;
Re: Learning at work is work, and we must make space for it
#9I'm currently a frontend engineer. I told my team lead a while back that I'd like to transition to the server side, especially since our server team is woefully understaffed and our frontend team is overstaffed.
He told me "Sure but you'll need to learn all that stuff on your own time". So I never did it because I'm interested in doing other things at home.
Re: Learning at work is work, and we must make space for it
#10My employer encourages using around 20% of our time learning. Lower level developers can manage this pretty easily. But most of the level 3’s are kind of expected to just know stuff, plus the heavy work load. We still manage about 10% of our time to learn. But if we want to take Udemy classes, paid tutorials, or something else they’ll gladly reimburse us for the costs. They prefer their developers to “be on point”.