We sat down to speak with People Development Partner at eduMe, Becca Grant, to find out more about her path into the role, and how eduMe approaches learning and development - from using our own training platform internally to running company-wide initiatives.
Watch the video, or read the full interview below 👇
My role at eduMe is People Development Partner and I've been here for just over a year now. I always knew that I wanted to work with people in one way or another. I've always been really interested in development and the way people work and hit their goals.
My background was in general HR work, which gave me a really solid foundation. But because I loved the people development element of it, I knew that I wanted to specialize in L&D, so that's why I ended up at eduMe.
It's been really rewarding setting people up for success, and seeing everyone grow in their roles and doing that every day has been really enjoyable.
My role entails a couple of different things. Something that I'm involved in at the moment is helping to support our people managers so they can do their best work and work really well with their teams. So we do a lot of people partnering.
Another big thing that we're doing at the moment is implementing our personal development plans, which stemmed from career frameworks that we built out with heads of departments. This has been really exciting to give that really fair foundation for everyone to be able to see their growth long term and accurately measure where they're at as well as where they want to go in the future.It’s been a big project getting this off the ground, and we're also going to be using it quite a lot to monitor development as we grow.
I also get stuck into unpicking broader training requirements. For example, we've been doing a lot of company workshops at the moment around topics such as giving feedback, performance management and also improving productivity. So that's been really exciting.
I have also been running a skills gap analysis which is going to help us unpick some of our broader training requirements as we move to the future.
Our company mission is to empower every frontline worker to be successful at work. And this is something that we definitely embody internally as well. Learning and development is critical to our culture and this is something that you can really see from the top down.
We have a couple of different values at eduMe and one of them is about humility - understanding that there's always more to learn and there's always more to develop on - and that really does filter through into our culture.
L&D is really important to everyone. We always make time for it and the senior leadership team always wants to make sure that we're letting people grow in that way as well.
As mentioned, one of the key ways that we support development at eduMe on an individual basis is through PDPs (personal development plans), which pretty much everyone at eduMe has now, and they work on these with myself and with their manager.
This is a long term tool that they'll use as they grow. It's really valuable because knowing where you're at right now is all very well and good, but it's important to see where you want to be in the next couple of years too. So PDPs give people an understanding of a lifetime at eduMe or within their career.
Another way that we support people is with a personal L&D budget. So everyone in the company has a budget to spend on anything that they'd like that was going to help enhance their professional and personal development. Whether it's a course or a webinar or a book, everyone gets that at the start of the year to use how they like.
We also do company workshops around feedback, sharing productivity, and more tailored sessions for managers.
We love using our tool internally and it's really great because anyone in the company can create a lesson to send out to staff and they can do this via Slack, which is really, really easy.
That was a feature that was built at our recent hackathon and it makes learning in the flow of work really easy to do because departments can share their knowledge across the board, it takes no time at all and everyone has access to these resources.
We've really enjoyed seeing some of the courses that our teams have made. We've had a couple from Marketing around LinkedIn algorithms, a few from Sales, and even a lesson on how to play chess from one of our engineers!
From a People team’s perspective, it's also really good because we can share quick information about certain updates and policies really easily and make sure everyone is kept up to date.
Here's an example of an eduMe lesson - click through to experience it for yourself! 👇
I really love just the culture that we've built here at eduMe. It was really evident from the moment I started that there is such a friendly vibe, everyone really gets on and there is a level of respect - and I think that comes from the people that started the company. But we also have values that are really integrated into the everyday practices in the way that we work here.
I love the growth mindset everyone has and the fact that we all recognize that if we want to learn something, that we've got the resources and means to do that. No idea is a bad idea and everyone sort of gets stuck in to make improvements, which is really good. We're moving really quickly on our goals which is really exciting, and I love that fast paced nature as well.
I also really love the genuine flexibility that eduMe offers. I think a lot of companies offer flexible working but it isn’t actually reflected in the day-to-day. At eduMe, everyone’s brought into the business with a certain level of trust to just get on with their roles and do what they need to do. There really is that respect that if you need to take some time to go for a walk or pick up the kids from school, you have the freedom to do so.
We also have some really cool perks like our Work from Anywhere policy where we can work anywhere in the world for up to 30 days. It gives us the chance to travel and work remotely, which is really cool.
If you’re looking for a new role and you’re interested in what eduMe has to offer, head over to our careers page to see our open engineering roles and learn more about our team.