Internal professional development programs you liked or heard about?
November 4, 2014 6:43 PM Subscribe
I manage a team of software technical support staff. Lately I've been considering a departmental professional development program. Do you know of any good examples?
1. Our volume of work tends to fluctuate quite a bit, and they need something a little more structured during the down time to complement the games of ping pong and walks to Starbucks.
2. It takes quite a feat of concentration and patience to do what they do all day, and burnout is a problem. To help mitigate that, I'd like them doing something completely different with their brains for maybe five to eight hours out of the week.
3. The support team here (and at many software houses I'm sure) is a primary gateway into the company. A lot of these people are coming straight from university and don't have a very diverse work history, which can be a barrier to moving upward and onward internally (to QA, project management, etc.).
A couple of years ago I read Tony Hsieh's book Delivering Happiness, which goes into a bit of detail about the fairly impressive professional development program at Zappos.
So, my question: do you know of any other programs like that? Or maybe you went through one or came up with one yourself that seems to be working well?
Thanks in advance!
1. Our volume of work tends to fluctuate quite a bit, and they need something a little more structured during the down time to complement the games of ping pong and walks to Starbucks.
2. It takes quite a feat of concentration and patience to do what they do all day, and burnout is a problem. To help mitigate that, I'd like them doing something completely different with their brains for maybe five to eight hours out of the week.
3. The support team here (and at many software houses I'm sure) is a primary gateway into the company. A lot of these people are coming straight from university and don't have a very diverse work history, which can be a barrier to moving upward and onward internally (to QA, project management, etc.).
A couple of years ago I read Tony Hsieh's book Delivering Happiness, which goes into a bit of detail about the fairly impressive professional development program at Zappos.
So, my question: do you know of any other programs like that? Or maybe you went through one or came up with one yourself that seems to be working well?
Thanks in advance!
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posted by the agents of KAOS at 10:47 PM on November 4, 2014 [1 favorite]