Implementing an education program is the perfect way to show your employees that you not only value their contributions, but that you want to equip them with the skills to succeed. At 360 Digital Starters, we recognized the opportunities that a continued education has for both our company and our colleagues and introduced our own educational budget at the end of 2019.
Providing opportunities to grow as professionals
Investment in our colleague’s ongoing training and development is no less important to us than the products that we create. That’s why we offer each of our employees an annual budget and five additional non-working days that can be assigned to mastering new skills
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“Develop a passion for learning. If you do, you will never cease to grow” – Anthony D’Angelo
While we encourage team members to choose courses that are relevant to their work and that will foster both individual and organizational learning and knowledge, we do (where appropriate) allow our colleagues to take courses that do not directly relate to their position but will further their resume or enhance their skill-set—be that in a language course, leadership course, or in technical skills development.
What our colleagues had to say
Read stories from three of our colleagues, all with different roles in the company, and how they chose to spend their educational budget…
Iuliia, Marketing Manager
I started taking an online Italian language course every Thursday evening, right after work. I would definitely prefer to go to the Italian school in person, but while we’re still in lockdown, and there isn’t much else to do at in the evening anyways, I’m happy taking it at home. So far it has been really fun to learn.
I have also been looking into marketing courses and luckily, many companies, currently offer a free introduction with the option to pay later if you want to continue—so I will be giving some of these a try.
Andy, Software Developer
Recently, I decided to take a few online courses related to frontend programming. It took some time to find the right courses online, but eventually everything came together during the Black Friday period and I even got a solid discount!
The main course that I chose, through a learning platform called Wes Bos, focuses on ReactJS and everything around it. I haven’t worked much with ReactJS in the past, but it is often used for building rapid user interfaces and, as it is very common nowadays in various solutions, I wanted to learn it for possible future requirements. The course itself consists of a large number of video lessons and various tasks, where you can build a small project which is a basic e-commerce solution, such as an online store.
Week by week, when I have some free time for myself in the evenings, I like to improve my skills. I am definitely enjoying the process!
Louise, Project Manager
This year I’m focusing on developing my role toward Product Management, so I’ve been utilizing part of my educational budget for developing my professional skills in this area and in product growth. Unfortunately, with the seemingly never-ending COVID-19 restrictions, I’ll be limited to online studies for now, but luckily I found some great virtual options and I’ve already started with a 5-part specialization run by the University of Virginia in ‘Digital Product Management’ on Coursera.
I’m learning a lot about design thinking, how to create actionable focus around products, and the different modern product management tools and frameworks that can be applied to our day to day. I can definitely see myself applying the course materials to our work when managing new products or amplifying our existing portfolio. Looking forward to putting what I’ve learned into action in the future!