This week has been a very busy and exciting week. We’ve completed all of our mid-year reviews, implemented some cool solutions at our clients and started with an Agile QA transition at a new client. There was a common theme throughout all of these initiatives, and that was the need for training/upskilling. This is something we are very passionate about here at QoT. Our value of “Grow and Create” is one of our core values, and is a large driver of the excitement and passion we regularly experience in our employees. As a result, it is important that we make the right decisions around how we support our people and our growth initiatives and this is what we have been focusing on this week.

For the past couple of years, we have had a three-pronged approach to our employee growth methodology- training, coaching and mentoring. One thing that has become more and more prevalent is that we had to provide flexibility in terms of hours that employees were able to access training. It is difficult to take five days (or longer) out of the office these days- with the speed that we are developing and deploying. On top of that, technology is changing so rapidly that it has become very important to provide access to training materials, on an as-and-when basis, to enable employees to upskill at the drop of a hat (so to speak).
For the past four years we have been using Udemy for the majority of our training. We love the platform and would recommend it to anyone. This last week we made the decision to upgrade to the enterprise version which gives us the ability to build our people’s personal development plans within the platform itself. We are able to pull in additional external resources, like youtube, if we feel like bulking up any of our paths with motivational speakers etc. In addition they have recently added support for certifications and the ability to earn badges too. Our staff rate courses and those with the highest “QoT rating” are then reused in other employee’s development paths.
I personally use udemy because I like the freedom I have to learn when I have the free time, which is at bizarre times of the day. Having a license means I can study whatever I want, whenever I want, which is incredibly liberating. The courses are becoming more and more practical (which is very important to me because I believe that we adults learn better if we have the opportunity to practice what we are learning) and you are able to interact with the trainers should you have any questions, which I always do.
Whether it be Udemy or an alternative MOOC (Massive open online course) provider, we firmly believe that providing your employees a flexible, easily accessible, training option is the way to go nowadays. This is not only convenient, because you are able to learn in your own time, but we find that our employees are more motivated to learn and are growing quicker than they were previous to us having the platform. ‘Go Forth and Conquer’ has become a common officehold saying as a result…and conquering we are😊

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