Welcome to the Learning & Development (L&D) page at GitLab! L&D is an essential part of any organization's growth, success and overall business strategy. We want to support the growth of our GitLab team-members' competencies, skills and knowledge by providing them with the tools they need and also the opportunities to progress their own personal and professional development.
Slack: #learninganddevelopment
Email Us: learning@gitlab.com
Our mission is to provide resources to enable our team members to enhance success in their current roles as well as develop new skills to further their professional and personal development. We provide adaptive and blended learning and growth opportunities, including skills building, career development, and technical training that aligns with our strategic priorities as an organization. At GitLab, we are cultivating a culture of curiosity and continuous learning.
All material in the handbook is considered training. The Learning & Development team pulls content from the handbook to build handbook first learning content. One of L&D's primary responsibilities is to ensure that content lives in the appropriate section in the handbook. In the below video, Sid, explains how the content of courses is not seperated from the handbook to the L&D team.
Meaningful and relevant content. We deliver learning solutions that drive the development and growth of team members throughout their life cycle at GitLab.
Values aligned. Our learning solutions reinforce GitLab’s values, and foster continuous learning and curiosity.
Diverse approaches to learning. We apply a blended learning model for learning solutions, and adapt to various learning needs.
Community. We make our L&D offerings available to the public, aligned to our mission that everyone can contribute.
We are a small team but we've got a big role to play at GitLab!
Live Learning sessions will be conducted on a monthly basis. There will be a Zoom video conference set up for each session. Official dates and topics will be added to the schedule below as confirmed. If you were unable to attend a live learning session but still want to learn, check out our past live learning sessions below. At GitLab we give agency, but if you are attending Live Learning sessions you will be asked to be engaged and participate with your full attention.
Action Learning sessions are designed to give team members a place to practice coaching skills by helping others work through specific challenges.
All of GitLab's Learning and Development programs use the GitLab tool to facilitate learning. One way we do that is with the use of daily challenges. Daily challenges are a proven strategy for implementing new habits for our team members. Daily challenges can cover a range of topics and they are intended to introduce behavior changes that will stick. In September of 2020, we launched a Four Week Manager Challenge program that consisted of daily challenges and live learning events to strengthen foundational management skills.
Sample structure of a challenge:
The L&D team host and organize multiple learning initiatives to engage the GitLab team in opportunities to learn. The team is consistantly iterating on and adding to these resources!
We provide our team members with certifications to demonstrate their knowledge on specific topics. We have outlined our current certifications as well as planned and upcoming certifications for the year.
Everyone's career development is different, but we have outlined what it can look like at GitLab. Career development also includes our GitLab coaching framework to support managers with holding coaching discussions with their team.
Whether you are a People Manager or an Individual Contributor, being skilled in "emotional intelligence" (also referred to as EQ) is a key attribute to interpersonal effectiveness. We have outlined the definition of emotional intelligence, how to understand your own EQ, how to develop your EQ in a remote setting, and building an inclusive environment with EQ.
Another strategy to improve emotional intelligence is to apply the Social Styles framework within your team to increase interpersonal interactions and team dynamics.
If you have any language courses you would like to recommend or links to websites please add them to this section.
There is also a way to practice foreign languages and ask for advice in several Slack channels, each dedicated to a specific language. You can find all these channels by searching for channels starting with #lang. If you're missing a channel for your target language, feel free to create one and mention it in #whats-happening-at-gitlab so that fellow GitLab team-members can join too!
GitLab has a growing resource to enable all team members transitioning to a manager role. It contains a link to a checklist, readings, and a form to help learning and development customize your development as a manager.
We piloted the Manager Challenge program during the month of September to over 30 people leaders at GitLab. The Manager Challenge is to first step to building out a comprehensive manager enablement curriculum for People Leaders. We used daily challenges and the GitLab tool to facilitate async learning in a remote environment. This was the first program of its kind at GitLab and we look forward to rolling out more manager enablement initiatives in the future.
We are always working to create more learning content for our team members. If you have a learning request that you would like the Learning & Development team to develop in partnership with your team, please fill out a learning-and-development-request issue template in our issue tracker. Our team will review and set the priority for your request based on the scale and impact across the organization. Learning items that will be applied and used across the company will take priority.
If you have developed the learning content and would like the Learning & Development team to review, fill out a learning-and-development-review issue template in our issue tracker.
Our team will review and set the priority for your content request or review based on the scale and impact across the organization. Learning items that will be applied and used across the company will take priority.
The L&D team uses GitLab issue boards to track priorities, organize collaboration, and set due dates based on quartley sprints.
open list is a queue for issues that need to be addressed, but have not yet been assigned to a sprint.L&D Ongoing list is meant for long term projects the team is working on that cannot be accomplished in one sprint, but are a priority.L&D Sprint # (Date Range)open list to the correct sprint when they are ready to be assigned/addressed.L&D Requests column should be used to organize requests for L&D support or courses coming from other teams.Additional planning and notes around the sprint board can be found in this issue.
If you are devleoping content to meet your learning needs or partnering with the L&D team, here are five key principles to consider when formulating a learning session:
Know Your Audience - Analyze and assess the course audience. Ensure that all audience needs are accounted for at every level in the organization you are delivering the training too.
Define Learning Objectives - Highlight what you want the learner to walk away from the session with. Consider developing two to three broad overall statements of what the audience will acheive.
Break Down Complex Information - Consider breaking down complex information into easy to digest visuals or text. Reference the handbook but do not be afraid to create a visual representation or use storytelling for the audience.
Engage the Learner - Adults learn through practice and involvement. Consider using tools to engage learners in a virtual setting like Mentimeter or Kahoot to stimulate interactivity. Ask the L&D team for more insight on learning engagement tools. There are a lot you can leverage!
Implement Blended Learning Course Content - Give the audience some pre-course work to read and review before the learning session. Use off-the-shelf resources and ensure the content is applicable to what will be covered in the session. Follow up with the audience following the session to gauge how they've applied what they've learned on the job through surveys and questionmaires.
Adults learn differently in the workplace than they would in traditional learning environments or how they learned growing up. If you are developing training, consider applying principles related to Adult Learning Theories, those include:
Transformative learning: The learning experience should aim to change the individual through transformative learning approaches. Start with learning experiences that appeal to your specific audience, and then move to activities that challenge assumptions and points of view.
Self-directed learning: Most of the learning that adults do is outside the context of formal training, so there should be an emphasis on augmenting those informal learning experiences. Infuse applications of pre-reads and post-course follow up. Have the participants bring up examples of self-directed learning that they have taken that is related to the training course.
Experiential learning: Adults learn through experiences and by doing. When designing a learning experience, apply activities to stimulate learning by doing through role-playing, simulations, virtual labs, case studies, etc.
Andragogy: Recognize that adults learn differently than children. Design learning experiences with the assumption that your participants will come to the table with their own set of life experiences and motivations. Adults tend to direct their own learning, tend to learn better by doing, and will want to apply their learning to concrete situations as soon as possible.
If you are developing training, add learning objectives to the beginning of the content to state a clear outcome of the training. A clear learning objective states what the learner will be able to do upon completion of a learning/training activity. Good learning objectives are what you want team members to learn or achieve.
Steps to creating learning objectives:
Sample learning objectives:
The L&D team uses a formula to describe the optimal sources of learning at GitLab. It shows that team members obtain 70 percent of the knowledge from job-related experiences, 20 percent from interactions with others, and 10 percent from formal learning events. The model is intended to show that hands-on experience (70 percent) can be one of the most beneficial for team members because it enables them to discover and refine their job-related skills. Team members learn from others (20 percent) through a variety of activities we offer every week. Lastly, the formula holds that only 10 percent of professional development comes from traditional live learning and eLearning events.
The Learning & Development, Field Enablement, and Professional Services team hosted an Instructional Design 101 session on 2020-10-28 to better understand concepts of adult learning theory and instructional design. Check out the video to learn how to apply instructional design to learning content.
We are currently in the process of implementing the EdCast Learning Experience Platform (LXP). This system is more than just a Learning Management System, it is a platform to help deliver engaging learning tailored to you and your role. It can direct to handbook pages, make recommendations for learning based on previous consumption, and serve interactive learning content.
We are also in the process of evaluating several content libraries to accompany the LXP to provide curated and off-the-shelf courses for our team members. The content will be supplemental to GitLab customized content and apply a Handbook-first approach to interactive learning
GitLab has a number of compliance courses and resources. Explore the drop downs below to learn more.
If you have any questions or need further help please ping people ops in the #peopleops channel in slack.
When tagged in an offboarding issue, follow these steps to check completion/license status of appropriate anti-harassment courses in the WILL Learning platform.
It is important this step is completed for each offboarding issue, as GitLab pays per license in WILL Learning. This compliance check insures that GitLab is aware of, and making use of, all paid licenses.
2019 Anti-Harassment Training for Supervisors course. Click the MANAGE button to enter the course.Check for Completion: The following steps should be taken to determine the current status of the individual's WILL Learning license - either Finished, In Progress, or Not Started. Please note - if the user does not appear in the first WILL Learning course you check, attempt to look for the user in other approriate courses. Note that at this time, there is no function in the WILL Learning platform to search all courses at once.
Finished status, check the de-provisioned box on the offboarding issue and comment on the issue WILL Learning course finished, no license to revokeIn Progress status, check the de-provisioned box on the offboarding issue and comment on the issue WILL Learning in progress, cannot revoke license. Email our WILL Learning account reresentative to request a refund of the license.Not Started status, check the de-provisioned box on the offboarding issue and comment on the issue WILL Learning in progress, cannot revoke license. Email our WILL Learning account reresentative to request a refund of the license.Revoke License: The following steps should be taken if you cannot find record of the course status for the offboarding team member.
Invite ParticipantsPending Invitations section, click View AllPending Invitations section, click the revoke link to remove their access to the licenseWILL Learning course not started, license revokedWhen new team members join the GitLab team as managers of people, the L&D team reminds them to take the assigned WILL Learning anti-harassment course.
Checking Compliance for Offboarded Team Members section to determine if the new manager has completed the courseWhen current team members transition to roles and become managers of people, the L&D team assigns a new anti-harassment course in WILL Learning for the team member to complete.
Invite Participants and copy the sharable linkHello [NAME]! Please follow this link [COURSE LINK] to complete the [COURSE NAME] in WILL Learning. Thanks!Checking Compliance for Offboarded Team Members section to determine if this team member has completed the individual anti-harassment course in their previous role. If they did not complete the course, follow steps to revoke their license.Questions related to growth and development on the semi-annual Engagement Survey have a favorable score. The exact target is to be determined.
Total number of promotions in a rolling six month period/total number of employees. The target for this is to be determined.
This is calculated the same as 12 month voluntary team member turnover KPI but is using the number of team members actively choosing to leave GitLab to growth and development related reasons only. The target is to be determined.
Questions related to Learning & Development opportunities at GitLab through Exit Survey Data
