Training Budget

(This guideline was approved following a Group Consent Decision on March 8th 2021. For the original blogspot proposal please click here)

Purpose

The Training Budget benefit aims to improve learning, mastery and growth both at individual and organisational level, by providing financial resources/support (1500 Eur a year) that our people can use both for paying training/learning as well as using it as learning hours.

Principles

Self Reflect & Align: Before making a decision on how to spend your budget, you should try to align with something bigger than just your immediate individual needs (ie. Purpose, Strategy, Team Contract & Learning Priorities, etc.). You don’t have to write down your reflection or share it.
Transparency & Accountability: Whenever you are ready to make your decision, please share it openly with the wider team in the #training-budget slack channel using the workflow we’ve created.
Give Back: It would be great if Vizz could benefit from the things you learn. You could do this by sharing your knowledge and/or by applying the learnings at work.

The Process

I want to learn something “Self Reflection & Alignment”

Before making a decision on how to spend your budget, it would be great if you could give a thought to the following questions. “Does this training investment…?

Align with our purpose?
Align with this year’s priorities & themes?
Align with your team’s contract and/or learning priorities? (If you don’t already have team learning priorities maybe you could create the space to get the team together and talk about this?)
Align with your own professional development goals? (Don’t have professional development goals/plan? If you have already prepared your Salary Review Conversations, you could refer to your self reflection)
Is within both time and cost budgets? (See below “Can you explain the 1500 Eur”)

What if I have doubts? Please share your ideas with your team to get advice and feedback, or ask other people in the company for help.

Do I need to write down my self reflection? No one will ask you to share your self reflection and it’s not necessary for you to write it down. The most important thing is to take some time to “align with something bigger” (ie. Purpose, Strategy, Your Team, etc.).

I make a decision & inform the team: Transparency & Accountability”

Armed with the answers to the above questions you can now make a decision and communicate it to the wider team.

Where: Communicate your proposal in the #training-budget slack channel using the workflow. Your proposal will be open for everyone at Vizz to see in the channel (if they wish to do so).
What: Describe “What you want to learn?” and “How do you hope to apply and share your knowledge?”
How Much: Please share the cost of the initiative so we can track overall spend.

After you press “submit”, the Slack Workflow will send you a confirmation message with the following information:

If in 3 working days there are no objections, your proposal will pass, and Liuba will proceed with the payment.
Please feel free to tag any other people in the team you would like to be aware of your decision.

I am done with my learning. “Now I have to “Give something Back”

An important part of nurturing our Vizz community is about being generous with our knowledge, skills and information so we can all benefit from it.

There are 2 ways you will be encouraged to share back so we can all grow at Vizz:

1. “Applying Learnings and/or Sharing Knowledge”:

Ideally all learning experiences should be conducive to new ways of being, thinking, working, etc. We believe it’s fair to assume all learning should provide “some added value” to you and/or Vizz.

If you managed to do a good self reflection earlier on in the process (What you want to learn? How do you hope to apply and share knowledge?), this element should be part, and a natural extension, of your learning experience, and therefore your team’s growth and evolution.

As we will all be learning different things, we don’t want to be prescriptive in regards to what you need to do, or how to do it, when it comes to applying or sharing your learnings.

In other words, we won’t be imposing on you to do a lightning talk, write a blog, deliver a workshop, improve a process or create a new tool, as that would limit your possibilities and creativity to create impact and apply your learnings.

Please feel free to apply your learnings and share knowledge as you see best fit in your role, team and/or Vizz.

2. “I will use this as part of my own annual review”.

You should also remember to give something back to yourself.

The things you learn and give back to the team may form an important part of your next self reflection so make sure you make note of the outcomes of your learning.

Can you explain the 1500 Euros?

First of all, we are moving from 1300 (2021 allowance) Eur to 1500 Eur allowance per person per year.

One reason for this increase is to include within the allowance some budget to cover the hours you will spend learning (along with the cost of the training). By doing this we are responding to a need expressed by the team (“Does this budget include time for learning?”). Another reason for the increase is to also “expand” the scope of the training budget to include topics such as volunteering, innovation projects, etc.

So, when thinking and planning your Training Budget you should now think of both how much it will cost (ie. cost of the course) and also how many hours you are planning to spend learning (if needed/applicable).

How much does the hour cost? We explored a few ideas, and to keep things simple for now, we want to propose a flat rate of 50 Eur per hour. For Example:

The course I want to do costs: 500 Eur
I will spend 10 hours studying: 10 hrs x 50 Eur = 500 Eur.
Total Cost (Course + Hours): 1000 Eur
Remainder Allowance: 500 Eur.

Is the “Give Back” time included in the 1500 Eur allowance? No. As the “Give Back” element is very personal and will vary depending on what you are learning and how you want to apply you won’t have to discount this time from your allowance.

*Is the learning time supposed to happen during working hours? what happens if all the time spent learning is outside working hours?*

As with a lot of things in this proposal, we will trust your judgement so you can make the best possible decision for yourself and Vizz.

As you have gone through the process (self reflection, alignment, proposal), we would start always with the assumption that the learning is BOTH valuable to your team as well as your own growth. Based on this “mutual value”, it will then be your choice whether to count the time you spend learning as work hours (regardless of when it is) and if you do so, then also apply the 50EUR/hr.

And if training happens outside working hours, of course you don’t have to track the hours.

Will this process be forever?

I don’t think so, and we hope you can help us improve it and refine it by using it and providing feedback.

Any questions?

If you have any doubts about this guideline, please feel free to reach out to People & Culture.