At Connect&GO, we are strongly committed to providing a work environment where continuous learning and development is at the forefront. In fact, “Growing Together” is one of our core values! We support our team members by offering time and space where they can learn about the topics that matter to them. Recently we have launched a new program for our team – Grow Days!
What exactly is a Grow Day? Each member of the Connect&GO team is given one day every month to devote solely to improving, updating, or redefining their knowledge or skills. There is no limit to what each individual can explore during their Grow Day, from conferences to development projects, seminars, coaching, training courses and beyond. To help employees receive high–quality training on a plethora of topics, we have given our team access to Udemy, an online education platform that offers more than 185,000 courses on varying topics! To make sure team members feel empowered to utilize their Grow Days every month, the 8-hour period can be broken down into half days or bitesize timeslots to provide more flexibility and convenience. Those who participated in the inaugural month of Connect&GO Grow Days were eager to share their insights on the experience and tips for how they will employ their future continued education.
Stephanie Ako – Accounts Manager & Customer Success
“I used my Grow Day to dive deeper into how to adapt my way of communicating with clients in different countries. Looking into more effective ways to communicate also led me down a path of researching ways to become a better teammate by also adjusting my communication style within my team. I also feel like it is hard to educate yourself on best practices and updating your daily habits without exploring new methods of time management. Managing busy schedules is a task that I have learned can always be improved. Overall, I really focused on things to help improve or make the most out of my everyday tasks.”
For her next Grow Day, Stephanie found it was more manageable in her schedule to break it up into smaller time blocks instead of trying to knock out one full day of learning. She looks forward to using Udemy for her next Grow Day, since it allows for structured learning.
Huu Thien An Nguyen – UX/UI Designer
“Since I am a designer, I wanted to research latest trends to help with the current projects I am working on. I was able to devote a full day to educating myself. I felt it was important to knock out all 8 of my hours at once because I knew I would be looking into innovative design trends. During my Grow Day, researching new design trends and practices was a top priority, and I was also interested in learning more about cognitive science. It is an area that I think would be very helpful to me, but I rarely have the time to dive into it. So, it was valuable to spend a few hours exploring those principles.”
Thien let us know that for his next Grow Day, he will dive into a few of the trends he did not have time to fully explore during his previous Grow Day, including learning more about how cognitive science is extremely beneficial to UX/UI design.
Katie Reilly – Director of Marketing
“One of my favorite core values that Connect&GO has for the team is transparency. And in the spirit of being transparent, I completely missed my goal to take my Grow Day! I had booked it on my calendar, but I just couldn’t resist accepting an important meeting, and it all went downhill from there. One of the things I learned from my Grow Day was to be realistic with your time and your priorities. It’s okay to miss your target, so instead of beating yourself up about it, take the opportunity to learn from your experience and hold yourself accountable for making up the time.”
Katie further explained that she will be utilizing a lighter meeting day to make up the time and delve into educating herself on creative ways to employ CRM. For her next Grow Day, she plans to book on a Friday when her schedule is usually a little lighter and the week is wrapping up.
Ariane Desrosiers – People & Culture Director
“I was excited to schedule my Grow Day and pick a topic! I am working on a project that involves SharePoint and I know there is a lot of functionality that I am not well versed on within the platform. I decided to learn how to build a site on SharePoint that I can share with the whole team. Udemy was an immense help and even had step-by-step videos on exactly how to build out the website. Watching the video really allowed me to play around with a lot of features that I did not know were available for me to use. Now I feel like a SharePoint expert.”
For her next Grow Day, Ariane plans to split her education across two half days because of how quickly her weekly schedule fills up. The topic for her next Grow Day is furthering her education on diversity, equity, and inclusion training.
Lynette Williams – Digital Marketing Manager
“I knew from the moment Grow Days were announced that I would be using my first one to tackle learning all the ins and outs of HubSpot. Because I am still new to the company, every day is a learning day for me. I was very optimistic that I would be able to take my Grow Day in two half days in the same week despite being in the middle of a large project. So, while I did get to spend some time in Udemy learning about the capability of HubSpot for Marketing, I did not quite hit my full 8 hours. As a result, I will be rolling that over into next month’s Grow Day, so I do not cheat myself out of any hours.”
Lynette informed us that her next Grow Day she will be focusing on diving into more Udemy classes on the foundations of design and on researching new trends for content ideation. She assured us that she will be splitting her time a few hours every week to make sure she can catch up on all the hours from last month.
Looking to start your own learning journey on how an all-in-one management platform can benefit your business? Check out the articles listed below and connect with our team, today!