There may be many different reasons why skills development activities are important to an organisation. Here at DotModus, a data analytics and software development company based in South Africa and the UK, we view skill development activities as an opportunity to let our teams see what they do as more than just a job. By showing the bigger picture, they can hopefully see that their efforts, no matter how small, make a big impact. In this post, we'll give an overview of how we deliver content to our teams confidently and reliably.
Remote-first woes
Since 2018, we’ve grown from a small team of 8 to a team of over 120. This alone would surface issues relating to company culture and creating and retaining well-rounded software engineers for any company.
However, 2020 and the move towards becoming a remote-first organisation have increased the need to address these issues now. Speaking to some of our teammates, it was obvious that they were interested in developing their skills but also in learning more about their colleagues and being part of the larger community.
After talking with employees old and new, Daniel Lee, DotModus’ CTO, made the decision to revive the DotModus academy.
“The academy is our way to introduce every employee to the way we work and show them the bigger picture. We want to emphasise that no matter how small you may think your role is, everyone is contributing to the bigger picture.” - Daniel Lee, DotModus CTO
Bringing the vision to life
Since one of the main goals of the academy was to introduce the team to our way of work, it was clear to Daniel that he and his team were the ones who needed to create the content themselves. This was no small task - he still had his role as the CTO (and new dad) to fulfil.
The skills development team find using traditional presentation tools pretty time-consuming. This led us on the hunt for an app that empowered us to create slide decks that look good and get the message across without any added effort. As luck would have it, we came across Dropdeck and immediately took to it.
Dropdeck lets us collaborate in real-time to create branded content in minutes. This allows us to remain agile in the fast-moving tech industry as well as deliver quality content to the team. Unlike most tools, rearranging content and adding images, screenshots or stock photos is a breeze.
“It takes us a quarter of the time and effort to make presentations that look twice as good as before. I also like how seamless sharing and real-time collaboration feels and that you can track who has opened the deck.” - Caelon Voogt, Head of Solution Services DotModus
Cloud certifications
In addition to live (and on-demand) academy sessions, we encourage our teammates to attempt cloud certifications. From the feedback we got, it was clear that choosing which certification to go for and finding the relevant resources is not so simple.
As a result, using Dropdeck, we created easy-to-navigate role-based learning paths with links to all the relevant resources as well as answers to common questions we get about the certification and our generous incentive policy.
We share this deck as a link but also as a handy QR code on our printed welcome guides. This provides the team with a single source of truth that can be updated with new info as needed.
Final Thoughts
Without our team, we are nothing. We strive to support everyone’s career and professional development goals and one of the ways we do this is with the academy. We have a lot to brag about but there is nothing we like bragging about more than our team.
However, having an app like Dropdeck that does most of the hard work for us to achieve our goals has proven invaluable to us. Not only can we remain agile when it comes to skill development activities but Dropdeck allows us to create content without significantly interfering with our normal work. We’re all looking for tools to streamline work and save us time, and DotModus found that in Dropdeck.
Keen to join us? Check out our current vacancies by clicking here.
