Co-written by Tim Hope and Hannah Ryan

Versent prides itself on its depth of engineering capability, and the adaptation of new technologies and their ways-of-working into enterprise environments. As Versent grew from a start-up to a scale-up, we navigated the challenge of supporting our growing and diverse set of people with different capabilities and goals to ensure everyone has an environment to grow and learn new skills. We identified the need for a structured approach to keep pace with the continual evolution of cloud-based technologies. Craft has become our approach to how we learn holistically at Versent.

Craft is not just for our engineers, it is relevant for the entire business, as depth of skills empowers people to both learn and teach others. Everyone at Versent has a craft — whether you’re in engineering, sales, security, marketing or something else and everyone is encouraged become a master of their craft. Sharing your craft enables specialisiation, but also a connection to and understanding of our business.

A culture of craft and continuous learning is not something that happens as the result of a few buzzwords or learning programs. It’s a journey that requires buy in and legitimisation to ensure it can flourish.

We reached a pretty significant milestone recently — 10 years of Versent! — and it’s given the perfect opportunity to reflect on our journey of craft, learning and culture.

The early days — a small team with big ideas

A learning culture takes time to build and evolve, and when looking back at our history that is very clear. The early days of Versent emulated the classic start up experience — talented people with big ideas rolling up their sleeves and trying lots of things out. This period of experimentation and growth still influences how we approach learning today, but there are some stark differences.

Early on we hadn’t perfected the balance of top-down initiatives vs individual led ideas. At times we veered too much into the former — where back to base days were organisation wide, not taking into account the ebbs and flows of different teams and at times, lacking the ability to provide value for all team members. Conversely, we would also see many fantastic individual-driven initiatives such as meet ups, hackathons and certification drives. While this was great, we at times struggled to keep the momentum going when things got busy, and inevitably our great ideas would fizzle out.

In the early days we didn’t have a central learning budget — instead it was distributed for different regions, functions and teams to spend how they saw fit. While there were benefits to this autonomy, ultimately, we would often see duplicate programs run, an inability for people to leverage the available resources and a mad scramble at the end of financial year to try and spend the neglected learning budget! We consistently underspent the budget — which is not good for anyone.

Being able to reflect on these early days and see the opportunities for improvement have enabled us to evolve the way we approach learning and craft.

Craft now — year round enablement &, collaboration, codifying Craft

Since those early days, our craft offering has significantly evolved. What started as excellent ad hoc ideas — hackathons, meet ups, back to base days — has matured into a more defined program that still gives room to adapt to changing needs, trends, gaps and ideas.

Each year we will run 3–4 craft seasons. These are business-wide learning and enablement events, usually held over 1–4 months that encourage all Versentonians to get involved in a way that best suits them. Craft seasons aim to create the opportunity to build and apply skills in a friendly and fun environment. We adapt these seasons based on where the business is heading, what is evolving in the industry and the capabilities and skills our people want to develop.

This year, our Craft seasons include DevJam, Contentarama and Megacertapalooza

DevJam — bringing together bright minds to creatively solve business, customer or community problems and experience new technologies

Contentarama — building our people’s abilities to share their expertise with others, whether through blogging, presenting or both!

Megacertapalooza — helping our team members achieve their certification goals through study sessions, group learning and bootcamps.

How our people participate in these events can differ — some will go all in and participate to the fullest extent, whereas others will pick and choose the enablement sessions that are most relevant to them. We aim to balance providing a structured and immersive learning experience that can also be customised to an individual’s learning objectives.

The Craft seasons are supported by Versent Academy — our learning experience platform that ensures we have access to learning paths, online training as well as instructor led sessions. Investments in the adoption of SFIA have helped us to understand our skill base and learning needs. Coupling this with Perform and Grow, our talent management cycle, we are positioned to ensure that our learning programmes are anchored with contemporary processes and thinking.

Craft is no longer just about technical training and knowledge — we look more holistically at the broader people and leadership skills that our people need to harness their expertise, share it with others and contribute to the way we work collectively at Versent.

We’ve brought together a central team — the Craft committee — that enable the broader business to run initiatives in a way that remains connected to the Craft|180 initiative, while not solely relying on the committee to deliver. Our focus has shifted to incorporate both large scale, business wide events with simple things like contributing knowledge and expertise to a repository, playbook or learning resource. We firmly believe that everyone at Versent has their own expertise to offer, and by having the programs, systems and an environment that makes it easy to participate in and contribute to, we can harness our collective expertise to do great things.

The future — our people are the custodians of craft

So what’s next for Craft and our learning culture at Versent?

Our aim is to further integrate craft into the ways we work. We don’t want to see learning and craft as separate to work, rather a symbiotic relationship that has the ability to transform how we operate as an organisation, for the better. We want Craft to continue to evolve beyond technical skills — and deliver holistic development that leaves our people with technical expertise, best in breed ways of working and as well rounded, value adding consultants.

We’d also like to embed craft more into how we approach workforce planning — giving people the opportunity to customise the work they do based on their capabilities, development objectives and interests.

Lastly, we’d like to have a stronger connection with the industry through OpenSource, Industry conferences and events, as well as similar organisations that are striving to develop and provide a continued learning ecosystem for a diverse set of people.

Conclusion

A winning learning and craft culture takes time, investment and advocacy to build, and we’ve learned some significant lessons along the way. For anyone looking to take the first steps in making learning and craft the cornerstone of your employee experience, here are some final tips:

1. Make learning part of your culture. Consider how you can recognise, celebrate and legitimise continuous learning as a key part of your culture.
2. Build a team of influential learning advocates. This should include people outside learning and development teams. Think of people with expertise that they are willing to share with others.
3. Create a compelling reason for people to step up and lead the charge on craft-based initiatives. What is in it for them?
4. Recognise people! This doesn’t have to be through $ either. Shout outs, awards and digital badges are a great way to put the spotlight on those who are contributing to your learning culture.
5. Help people find time to learn. In a consulting environment it is difficult to dedicate large blocks of time to learning when there are client deliverables on the line. Give guidelines, processes and advice that make it easy for individuals and people leaders to participate in learning.
6. Make it fun! We love a good theme or a quirky name for a Craft initiative. Have fun with it and create something that will catch people’s attention, and create momentum. They will remember for years to come.

For us the investment in craft and learning has been and continues to be well worth it. We’re committed to sustaining an environment that enables top talent to become masters of their craft.