Building a successful training academy: the technical 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.
If you missed the previous post, I discussed the importance of organising your training academy to support building social relationships which will hopefully lead to improved employee job satisfaction which in turn should have a positive impact on performance and help reduce employee turnover.
In this post I want to discuss the technical aspects of a training academy.
Firstly, I want to clarify what I mean by technical training. Your training academy should aim to teach the foundational technical skills and knowledge required for talent to successfully perform the role that they have been hired to do with support from a mentor.
Your first goal should be to identify the technical skills required to perform the role, this will provide the basis for your training materials.
As an organisation you might also identify technical skills which your existing talent don’t yet possess but which you want to start introducing. A training academy is the perfect time to introduce these new skills to multiple talent at the same time.
You need to consider how you generate and maintain the material that you use as part of your training academy. If the skill that you wish to teach is common, then it will be possible to source that content externally. However, outsourcing of content will not allow you to personalise the material to be specific to your business needs and will likely come with an annual licensing fee. You should always aim to produce your own content when possible.
It will also be possible to outsource the delivery of your content. The ability to deliver technical content requires someone with confidence, strong communication skills and a passion for helping develop talent. You should aim to identify existing talent within your organisation who have performed the role for a number of years and meet these criteria to deliver the content where possible as they will have the advantage of teaching technical skills from experience of having performed the role.
Graduates from your training academy will likely not be experts in the technical skills that are being taught. Expertise comes from experience and the amount of time it takes to become an expert in a technical skill really depends on what skill you’re trying to teach.
It is important that when a person graduates from an academy, they are given a mentor who can help support the continued development of technical skills while working in the role. A mentor should be someone who has performed the role for a number of years as they will be best placed to understand the skills of the talent and help support growth.
Training and development of technical talent should not stop after the completion of an academy. Career progression will be a motivating factor for most of your talent. You should give your talent goals to work towards that will help them make that next step in their career. Goals tend to fall into one of 2 categories: role-based and stretch goals.
Role-based goals should be focussed on the tasks and actions required to perform your role to a high standard. These goals should be achievable and should make up the responsibilities of the role they are performing. This will give your talent validation for their performance and allow you to ensure your talent have the skills required to perform the role well.
Stretch goals should be focussed on tasks and actions that would help identify high performing talent. These goals are should not be part of the day-to-day role that the talent is performing. You can use goals that would be expected of talent in a role more senior than their current role or a goal that helps your organisation such as recruitment.