Training | Personal budget and training initiatives
Certifications (EMP1, EMP2, EMP3, CON1)
IT certifications are a great way to demonstrate our excellence in a specific field, so employees are encouraged to do them as much as possible. If you follow the process described in the Certifications section, Agile Lab will cover all the costs.
Time training budget (EMP1, EMP2, EMP3)
Each Agile Lab EMP1, EMP2 and EMP3 employee has a time training budget that can spend along the year. In the case of full-time employees, the time training budget is a maximum of 12 hours/month. In case of part-time EMP1 employee this monthly training budget is proportionally reduced. This training budget can't be used after resigning and during the notice period.
In order to allow the management to correctly forecast budget and people allocation, while at the same time motivating and allowing employees not to waste their time budget if they are full on their projects for a few weeks/months, we have the following time budget accumulation policy: time budget can be accumulated up until a 3 months span (with monthly budget being fully unlocked at the beginning of the month), the time not spent learning in the previous months is unfortunately wasted. Moreover, regardless of the accumulated ammount, the time budget always expires at the end of the year (for accounting reasons).
For example, if you don't take any time to learn something new for the first 4 full months of the year (4 12 = 48 hours), on May 1st you'd "only" have left the previous 2 months window worth of time budget (March, April) which adds-up with May's budget making it a total of 3 12 = 36h spendable in May. Please, remember that even in this case it would mean being off projects for almost 1 whole week, which would complicate things with customers probably, so use your own sensitivity to understand what makes sense or not.
A tool to facilitate personal training time and budget tracking is available in company's sharepoint://BigData/Documents/Self Management/TrainingBudgetTemplate.xlsx
All the guidelines to be followed for time tracking on Elapseit are available in Project Time Tracking (focus on the Training section).
Cash training budget (EMP1, EMP2, EMP3)
Each Agile Lab EMP1, EMP2 and EMP3 employee from every circle has a cash training budget that can spend along the year. In the case of full-time employees, the cash training budget is a maximum of 1000 €/year. In case of part-time EMP1 employee this monthly training budget is proportionally reduced. This training budget can't be used after resigning and during the notice period.
This budget can be spent in one or multiple installments.
In the second half of the year (H2, meaning from July to December), no more than half of this budget can be used due to financial planning reasons. Exceptions can be made for big expenses that cannot be planned six months in advance (e.g. conference happening late in Q4 and still no way to buy tickets or cannot commit yet, course released later in the year, ...) by coordinating with the Training circle Lead Link and the Purchasing Officer. Within each calendar year, you can't spend more than your yearly maximum allowance with your cash training budget.
Any unused budget is forfeited at the end of the year and does not accumulate into subsequent years.
The training budget is available also for new hires with the same rules: if hired during H1, the new employee will have 1000 € for the year (with 500 € expiring after June 30th). If hired during H2, the new employee will have 500 €.
Training budget allocation
Both the cash and time training budgets can be utilized in various ways. It cannot be used to buy tools or subscriptions ofor personal productivity. Below is a list of allowed usages:
Conferences
Conferences are a great resource to feed the technical growth and to stimulate the desire to try new technologies or to implement new solutions. The comparison with what others do is always positive.
You can attend one or more international conferences per year. Each conference must be inherent to the spectrum of technologies and interests of Agile Lab. Agile Lab will pay for:
- Trasportations
- Accomodation (max 3 nights)
- Conference Ticket
- Food (max 2 days)
All of them must be less than "Cash Budget" + 500 € (for travel expenses)
The extra budget for travelling and accomodation of 500 € is to be intended as an extra bonus which doesn't add up to the standard budget. This means that, for example, if you spend 100 € in travel expenses you DON'T have 400 € as extra personal training budget. Another example: let's say the conference ticket costs 1000 € and as travel expenses you spend 100 €: in this case you don't have any other training budget left, since the 1000 € for the conference ticket consumed all of it. There's no "automatic conversion" of travel expenses budget to regular training budget, since this would be unfair wrt colleagues who don't attend a conference (thus having "only" 1000 € budget).
The days spent at the conference are subtracted by the time training budget.
Check Conferences to see how to attend a conference.
Training material
With the "Cash Budget", you can buy courses, books and other materials useful for certifications or your professional path.
In the case of subscriptions, People Operations will make sure that the automatic renewal of the purchased service is not activated.
Learning
The time training budget is also useful to attend internal workshops or online courses on our internal LMS. It is also allowed to spend your time training budget to read books, follow bought courses, etc.
Extra time to study for certifications
You can decide to use the time training budget to gain extra time to study in preparation for a certification
See Certifications for details about certification benefit.
Outsourced Technical Trainings
Another alternative are outsourced trainings, they are good compromises for those who are looking for a more effective (learn-by-doing) approach, but with tool boxes mostly full of I-shaped contents.
Such training must be inherent to the spectrum of technologies and interests of Agile Lab or related on foundational technical approaches at least.
Limitations are the same applied for conferences. Outsource Trainings for details.
For guidelines about how to make/request purchases or reimbursements, please consult Spending Company Money.
Brag file
It is also allowed to spend the time training budget can also be used to write the brag file. The brag file, in fact, is an active part of individual growth, and taking the right amount of time to work on it allows for a better understanding of one's strengths and weaknesses, aiming to trigger a process of continuous improvement.
Open Source Contributing
In Agile Lab we want to let people express their potential contributing to world class open source projects. Please check how it works.