You’re smart. You’re great at your job. So it’s only natural that you’re keen to hone your talent and broaden your skillset. Plus, web design and development is constantly changing and developing in line with new technologies and ideas.
Our wholesome team members are among our most important assets, and we want you to be at the cutting edge of our industry. So we’re committed to investing in your training and development in order to support your professional and personal growth.
Our Training and Development Policy covers all permanent Wholegrain Digital employees, whether on a full-time or part-time basis.
If you’re working with us on a temporary or short-term contract, we may also invest in your training and development if we feel it’ll be beneficial to both parties. However, this policy doesn’t cover you if you work with us on a contractor or consultant basis.
Types of Training & Development
Training and development can take several different forms, including formal and informal training, coaching and mentoring, workshops and conferences, on-the-job training, job shadowing, and job rotating.
We support a range of training and development courses.
1. Training That Enhances Your Current Skillset
We want you to produce your best work, so we’ll support you to enhance and develop your current skillset. This could take the form of internal or external technical training courses, such as the use of different software packages and attending workshops and conferences. Don’t forget our team is full of experts too, so there will be plenty of opportunities for learning on the job and sharing your skills and experience with other team members.
2. Learning New Skills
As well as supporting you to hone your prime talent, we’d love you to gain a deeper understanding of other roles on the team. For example, design and development are two very different skillsets, but if each develops an understanding of how the other works, this leads to better teamwork resulting in outstanding products for our clients. Time spent job shadowing or even rotating jobs is time well spent – the more you know about other disciplines, the more valuable you become.
3. Training That Leads to a Professional Qualification
If you wish to do so, we encourage you to pursue continuous professional development and, where appropriate, gain further qualifications. If you’re interested, please discuss this with us; we’ll make a decision on a case-by-case basis.
4. Training with a Management or Supervisory Focus
Good management doesn’t just happen. It needs a delicate touch along with the ability to motivate and organise your team. Whether you’re a project manager or a senior team member, we’ll support you to develop your leadership skills.
Roles and Responsibilities
Directors and employees share the responsibility for initiating and implementing training initiatives. You’ll have the opportunity to discuss your training needs with us through our check-in process, and together we’ll agree on the appropriate training and development for you. All training and development that we pay for, either in full or in part, must be mutually beneficial for the company and the employee. Please fill out this form and we will decide on a case by case basis.
We expect you to continue working for Wholegrain Digital for at least six months after completing any training that we’ve paid for. If you leave before the six months is up, we’ll ask you to reimburse any fees that we’ve paid. The same applies to the completion of your course. We will ask you to reimburse any fees that we’ve paid for if you do not complete your training.
Our HR and Office Manager will monitor the training and development process to ensure any training we’ve paid for has been completed and check its effectiveness. We’ll also ask you to complete a course evaluation form and share your knowledge with the team. This will help us with planning future training initiatives.
We keep a record of which training and development courses you’ve completed in your personnel file, along with your personal development plan.
Company Training
There may be occasions, such as a change in work procedures or where new standards have been introduced, where we’ll need to implement training in specific job areas. When this happens, we’ll let you know about the training via Slack and give you instructions on how to complete it.
Your Roles and Responsibilities
You will be required to submit a summary within 1 week of completing your training. This can be in the form of an email, Google doc or even writing a blog post if you’re feeling ambitious. Essentially, this is so we knowledge share and make sure we use the time effectively.
You can use this template on what we’d like you to include.
Equal Opportunities
We’re committed to providing equal access to training and development in line with our Equal Opportunities Policy.