Minicast: Employees have rising expectations for professional development

With the upheavals in how we work in recent years, employee expectations have also changed with staff now wanting more opportunities to focus on their professional development.

According to Kat Warboys, APAC marketing director at HubSpot , while 70 percent of Australians are looking for learning and development (L&D) opportunities, one of the biggest barriers to that is time.

She said, “88 percent of workers feel like upskilling should be part of their working hours, it should be part of the role, and then encouraged actively encouraged by that organisation.”

Learning and development can come in many shapes and forms, from tuition reimbursement to in-office workshops.

When it comes to job satisfaction, it is not just simply a question of cash, said Warboys. 

There are many approaches organisations can take, she said.

“The first one is making it known that we support L&D within work hours. Something that worked well for us at HubSpot this year is we launched something called The Great Upskill. We partnered with Google and we gave a dedicated day to our employees to put their tools down and invest in learning and development.”

“Learning is so accessible these days, HubSpot has its own academy, which is our free online learning destination. But also, in Google's digital garage, there's a lot of free online learning available. It can come in many shapes and forms. It's the time and enablement we're giving employees to take advantage of that,” she added.

Warboys said HubSpot is obsessed with creating a great culture.

“Our co-founder Dharmesh Shah says ‘culture is to recruiting is what product is to marketing’. Essentially, talented people are attracted to a great culture,” she said.

“The moral of the story is that from the early days, we've obsessed over our culture at HubSpot, it is very much part of our DNA. Some elements of that culture code have remained the same as they were 10 years ago.”

This includes building a diverse and inclusive organisation, being a hybrid company along with more atypical approaches such as supporting employees going through egg-freezing.