Building a Learning-Centered Organization

“As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others.” — Bill Gates.

This is a statement that could be used to summarize Signal’s vision about the development of our team members. Similar to engaged professionals the world over, Signalers are motivated by continuous learning & development, are eager to max out their skillset (if there is such a thing as ever maxing out…), and aspire to develop themselves to bring more and more impact at work. In fact, that’s how we can quickly tell when a candidate will be successful at Signal. At Signal we believe that a fertile ground offering the right opportunities is needed for an individual to accomplish their aspirations. And that’s why we have carefully crafted a continuous learning & development journey which starts from the very first day when someone joins Signal.

Onboarding

We are most definitely not fans of the “sink or swim” approach when it comes to welcoming people onboard. Therefore, we built an in-house onboarding plan tailored to each role. With us, a new starter will get 2 to 4 weeks of induction training where they will get to meet 15–30 trainers/leaders, depending on their role. The onboarding program consists of two separate training modules:

• Tanker Chartering Academy — during this 2-week program, a newcomer has the opportunity to immerse themselves into the world of tanker chartering. Understanding the business, the roles people play and the challenges they face is of paramount importance to be successful in any Signal role. Participants take this unique opportunity at the beginning of their tenure with us to get exposed to all key aspects of commercial ship management with a big focus on Chartering. They also get vital, first impressions from the world of shipping and begin understanding the cross-team interactions that define a commercial operation, by training with other teams like Operations, Bunkering, Freight & Disbursements Accounts. By leveraging this training module and our technology solutions, we find that we have effectively sliced the time required to train a commercial ship management professional in half!
• Product Teams Rotation — this program also lasts 2 weeks, during which participants rotate and spend time with all our Product teams. Newcomers have the opportunity to dive into the tech world of Signal. Our AI-based software has grown to be very complex: millions of diverse, streaming data points are continuously processed by tens of algorithms to synthesize actionable market insights and deliver them to our clients over intuitive web and mobile interfaces. All in all, there are more than 100 microservices, organized in a state-of-the-art, scalable and resilient SaaS architecture. The induction content is focused on the solutions we provide to the underlying business needs and aims to provide a holistic overview of our tech ecosystem for data and engineering professionals. This training is a great chance for a newcomer to get a better understanding of our high tech product, the Signal Ocean Platform, but also get an insight of the interaction between our several tech teams before joining one of them.

In order to measure the impact of our onboarding program, we collect and analyze feedback coming both from the program participants & team managers/trainers. The results have shown that this program is indispensable for a newcomer and ensures a smooth transition into their respective role. The concentrated & structured knowledge they receive would otherwise require months to be gained by asking and searching on their own, potentially slowing down the time it takes for them to be independent and bring impact.

Performance & Development

Once a newcomer has completed their onboarding at Signal, our next goal is to ensure that they have the chance to grow professionally and have the opportunity to achieve more impact in the workplace. With that in mind, we established our Performance & Development program, which is tailored to the individual needs of every Signaler. It is based on three pillars: setting goals coupled with a development plan, giving feedback and having a continuous dialogue via regular check-in meetings. There are three 4-month-long cycles every year, during which each Signaler partners with their manager to perform and develop. The periods culminate in a self-assessment and a formalized discussion, the Review, where the goals for the next period are the focus. That discussion covers the following areas:

• achievements of the past wave (waves are the business quarter-equivalent intervals during which we split our annual and take the time to plan, execute, and evaluate); how one did against the performance objectives they set in the last wave
• performance objectives for the next wave; which areas they will own and contribute to in order to help their team achieve its goals
• alignment to Signal’s culture; how frequently we exhibit alignment with Signal’s Values and desired Behaviors
• development goals for the next wave; a summary of performance and culture feedback organized as clear measurable goals and action steps to achieve them

This structured approach helps each Signaler (whether extrovert or introvert) to understand where they stand, get feedback about their progress and also work towards their career development goals.

Career Progression

The Performance & Development plan is directly linked with the career progression of our team members. We have built our career progression framework taking into account the job duties, the work complexity and the impact each role has on the company goals, our customers and our fellow team members’ work.

We look at it as a growth journey with different and diverse paths forward; career options. Some Signalers may choose to grow their impact faster and others to take time to refine their craft before growing. And some people who are rock solid in their current craft, may not necessarily be always looking to shift their focus, for example to move from doing work themselves into managing others. We respect that. All teams need stability as well as growth to function properly and in Signal there’s more than one way to develop professionally:

1. the purely technical path (individual contributor), for those who want to increase their impact by being technical experts and focused on technical projects
2. the path that mainly revolves around managing other team members and making sure they are successful; the people management path
3. the path that has impact by coordinating and supporting the work of others without managing them directly (administration path)

A tangible outcome of this program is that the majority of our leaders & senior team members are Signalers who started in junior and mid-level positions and then grew to become people leaders and/or cross-functional experts.

Learning & Development

Building a concrete induction program combined with a continuous performance and development plan are crucial for a learning organization, but our efforts for an environment that consistently offers development opportunities do not stop here. We want to ensure that our team members can reach the top of their game and we are willing to support them in any way to help them stay there. To achieve that, we provide Signalers with the opportunity to broaden their work experience and business or technical knowledge and offer a certain amount as tuition/funding for training purposes every year. This budget varies depending on seniority, but the range lies within 750–2000 EUR per person annually. We also saw many benefits in having unlimited free access to e-learning platforms, and we pursued that by choosing both Udemy & Pluralsight as our learning content providers. While Udemy offers engaging content on a wide variety of topics — from data and development to marketing and strategy, Pluralsight offers technology courses with a deep technical focus. A combination of the two seemed to be the best option!

Afterthoughts

A carefully crafted, structured approach (not incidental) is vital for an organization that wants its people to flourish and be successful. However, building the fundamental infrastructure should not be the end of these efforts. New opportunities for empowering our team members are always around the corner and our goal is to identify and take advantage of them. After all, learning is not a separate function, but a cultural mindset, a continuous need to get better, and the effort to learn more & discover new knowledge.