Are you developing your team(s) with shadowing or self-directed learning?
In a previous organization, we also could do it with the executive team. It would only be a couple hours or a half day, but that was very eye-opening. The executive would set it up so that the time spent was appropriate in terms of what the person will be listening to and watching. But as an employee, it does make you think, "Wow, there's a lot that they are dealing with."
I remember one occasion when I told my team that we were getting a lot of complaints around something, and they said, "Well, we met all the requirements. Everything is working great." But I convinced them that we should just go upstairs to see how things are. When we sat down with one of the customer service representatives, we found out they were toggling between two screens, losing sessions, and copying and pasting login information from one screen to be able to log into the other. This had been going on for a while and all it took to solve the issue was sitting down with the affected users to figure out where the complaints were coming from. The tickets were not able to articulate the issue, so we were solving the wrong problem. It was so interesting to see the difference that made because they were able to come up with better ideas.
In this way, self-directed learning allows our team members to guide their careers. (Hopefully with some direction from their managers as part of regular 1:1 discussions.)
However, I'm not simply throwing them into the deep end of the pool. I take advantage of our team's daily standups to assess each student employee's progress and ensure that each one is gently nudged in the right direction. I also rely a lot on senior team members to provide knowledge transfer and iterative goal-setting to junior peers. Junior team members are made well aware that their senior peers are their first and best resources when scaling challenging learning curves, and as such juniors do a lot of shadowing of senior peers.
Every new feature request, bug, or compliance requirement is a fresh and engaging learning opportunity for my team members, and because we're university-based, the pressures and deadlines that plague "for-profit" teams are largely absent in our team. We are, by literal definition, an institution of learning, so the processes and expectations of education are baked into our operating philosophy.
I feel this is one of the best way to upskill.
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Our team will have the option to work remotely for all or part of the week42%
Our team will return to the office as soon as it is safe to do so32%
Our team will permanently work remotely12%
Our team has already returned to the office10%
Our team never left the office to work remotely1%
Undecided2%
Salary levels that match the local cost of living28%
In-office perks (free lunches/snacks, fun events, etc.)45%
Commuter benefits42%
Childcare options/reimbursement28%
Pet care reimbursement19%
Updated/renovated office21%
Safety and sanitation protocols in the office23%
Office relocation13%
Opening satellite offices9%
None of these — any company can mandate RTO without these changes13%
Something else (comment if you’d like)1%
organized a virtual escape room via https://www.puzzlebreak.us/ - even though his team lost it was a fun subtitue for just a "virtual happy hour"
On the other hand, younger people in the organization are contacting me because they want to shadow me for certain tasks. For example, they’ll shadow me for some of the policy, risk or compliance work that I'm doing in the security space. Then I might also get them to do the minutes of a meeting for certain things. Those folks are looking for more experiential learning on the job.