Building a successful training academy: the social pillar

Kainos is a growing company, and that growth continues to accelerate. This year more than 100 people will be joining Kainos and will take part in one of our training academies.

Growth of this rate can bring with it some challenges, but as the lead of our Engineering Academy, it’s a great problem to have.

The main problem that we’ve been trying to solve over the last few years is how we increase the number of people in the business without impacting on the quality of those individuals. One of the ways we try to solve this problem is by investing heavily in our training academies to give our talent the best chance to succeed both in Kainos and in their careers. 

Currently Kainos runs a unique training academy for each of our core disciplines: engineering, quality assurance, cyber security, artificial intelligence, data, platforms and business analysts. Some of these academies share common sessions but the main objective of each academy is to ensure that each discipline provides the foundational knowledge which can be built upon going forward. 

While all of these training academies are unique, they all share a common set of themes that make up our pillars for a successful training academy. 

The first of these is the social pillar.

I wanted to focus on this pillar first because it’s often forgot about when it comes to training academies and is almost always the first thing to be cut when time becomes a challenge. However, without developing the social connections between your talent you’re likely missing out on a large portion of the enjoyment that those individuals will bring to their work. 

At Kainos we’re lucky to have a strong group of leaders driving the company who put their people at the top of their list of priorities. There is a huge overlap between employee satisfaction and building social relationships with your colleagues so as a company we want to sure that our talent have the time and space to be able to build those relationships. 

Building social relationships with new people comes easier to some than others. That’s why at Kainos we believe we have a responsibility to be inclusive and supportive of those who may take more time to feel comfortable enough to open up socially with others. 

Social activities that we include in our training academies tend to fall within one of 2 categories: informal socialising and formal social activities. 

Informal socialising is when you give your talent the time and space as part of their academy schedule to get to know each other and drive activities themselves. This becomes easier the more the talent get to know each other and feel comfortable enough to lead discussions and suggest activities. It’s important that you schedule some time each day for the group to focus on something not related to the content they are covering. 

Formal social activities are activities that are arranged by the company or the organisers of the academy beforehand, typically with one activity per week. The activity that you choose is going to be representative of the culture in your company and likely to be repeated many times by the group in the future so it’s important to pick an activity that aligns with your culture. You should therefore avoid picking activities that can exclude group of people such as alcohol consumption. You should aim to pick an activity that is fun, with a low barrier to entry, and a little competition. A great example of an activity that meets these criteria is mini golf. 

Something you may have to consider when planning social activities is remote working. Being able to work remotely has many benefits and we should continue to support those who wish to work remotely. However, it can be difficult to socialise with people remotely as technology can only do so much to mimic the experience of being in the same room as a person. You should still run social activities with remote colleagues and the activity should meet the same criteria mentioned above but in a remote setting. A great example of this is a virtual escape room. 

Even if people choose to work remotely, it’s important to encourage in-person activities during training academies as the social relationships developed here will last long after the academy is over. If your company is remote first you should still provide space for the talent to come together to work, this is especially useful when it comes to group projects. 

My final point is to ensure you celebrate the end of your training academy by bringing the whole group together for an end of academy dinner or party.

There’s a lot of working that goes in to organising, running and participating in training activities so it’s important that a company rewards the effort of all involved by celebrating all that they have achieved. These celebrations are a time when the social relationships of the group and really solidified as they come together to talk about this shared experience which will hopefully create positive memories that will remain with your talent for the rest of their careers.