Why Learning and Development should be a focus for companies in 2023

To keep pace with next-generation technology, more than half of all employees around the world will need to retrain or reskill by 2025*. However, in 2020, “talent and skill” was the second-most underinvested area in corporate transformation efforts**.

Upskilling your workforce should no longer be a nice-to-have. It should be built into the very foundations of your organisation’s culture.

If you need further convincing, a study by IBM found a 10% productivity spike among teams who had undergone training and 87% of millennials believe that having learning and development opportunities influences their decision to join an organisation^. For a group that will make up 50% of the workplace by 2025, it’s a point worth paying attention to.

As a tech company, we know how important educated and engaged staff are. That’s why we are committed to delivering a variety of initiatives and resources created for our team members to develop new skills and advance their careers.

If you’re looking for inspiration on how to get started, here is what learning and development at Nasstar looks like;

Personal development

Everyone at Nasstar is encouraged and supported to become active learners. Whether that means advancing in your current specialism or securing a change of role, the opportunities are available to all.

We each grow and develop at our own pace. That’s why everybody in the team has access to on-demand learning platforms, Microsoft Learn and Percipio, to provide a tailored learning experience that’s right for the individual.

In a competitive industry, everyone needs opportunities to replenish their knowledge, develop existing skills and acquire new ones to perform their job more effectively, and to progress within their career.

Structured training courses and career guidance are also provided with our Management Programme and Athena Careers Pathway both being great examples. You can read more about these below.

At an individual level, we think everyone should have a clear understanding of what career progression at Nasstar looks like.

That’s why a Personal Development Plan (PDP) has become an essential part of learning and development upskilling within our organisation, with the opportunity to complete a PDP four times a year.

We encourage our employees to take ownership of their career development by:

Learning from their day-to-day work.
Seeking out new learning opportunities.
Participating in organised educational activities.
Being open to feedback & listening to suggestions from their team and manager.

Our managers are encouraged to act as coaches and mentors, which fosters a relaxed environment, contributes to constructive discussions about performance, and encourages everyone to prioritise long-term development.

People managers assist their teams by:

Coaching/mentoring individuals and helping them complete development plans.
Providing learning opportunities to support continued development.
Setting clear and measurable objectives to ensure they have goals to work towards.
Making sure that learning opportunities are consistent and fair within their team.
Evaluating the impact of training to ensure that it’s hitting the mark.

Learning is a continuous process

At Nasstar, we see learning and development as a continuous process. As an industry-leading cloud and communication services provider, we certainly recognise the importance of formal training and certifications. 44 of our team are AWS certified and 55 team members are Microsoft certified professionals, but we also see the value in the development of soft skills to enhance communication, openness, and equity.

Nasstar’s continuous learning culture has allowed us to cultivate a pool of great internal talent who can deliver creative solutions to the challenges our customers face every day.

To support our team on their learning and development journey, structured professional development initiatives have been put in place.

The Athena Career Pathway has been created to upskill our Service Desk and Technical Operations teams whilst an externally delivered Management Programme is helping our people leaders become better coaches and mentors, ultimately helping the wider team. Find out more below.

Athena Career Pathway

In 2022, we introduced a brand-new career pathway that focuses on increasing technical skills within the Service Desk and Technical Operations teams. This is something we are looking to expand to other departments over the course of 2023.

The Athena programme provides employees with an extensive number of certifications which are pre-approved for them to undertake, and which will equip them with the qualifications and experience needed to drive their careers forward. This is all in addition to helping us deliver better support, and giving our customers an edge over their competitors.

Management Programme

Being a manager in any organisation comes with lots of responsibilities and emphasising long-term skills development within your team is one of them.

To help our managers become better mentors and coaches, we’ve partnered with Synaptic Potential, the workplace behavioural science specialists to deliver a bespoke management programme that helps create a workplace culture that brings out the very best in everyone. We're also looking at further developments in this area to be implemented in 2023.

If you would like to know more about working at Nasstar, and the careers available, visit our careers site here.