Enhanced Skills & Knowledge — continual learning ensures you’re performing effectively and efficiently, bringing innovative practices to the organization, showing upper management your dedication to better yourself and stay current with recent developments. It also allows you to naturally improve on your resume and break certain barriers you might currently have towards promotions.

Investing in team development has become increasingly crucial for forward-thinking companies, who understand that their greatest assets are their people. From implementing innovative training programs and wellness initiatives to cultivating a supportive work environment, these strategic investments play a vital role in enhancing employee satisfaction and retention. As the business landscape evolves, mastering effective methods to support and retain employees is pivotal for achieving long-term success. I had the pleasure of interviewing Lee Rubin.

Lee Rubin is a visionary culture leader with over a decade of experience in B2B sales. She first came up with the idea to help companies plan better corporate events back in 2014 when tasked with planning an event for her team. Lee is a leading pioneer of the virtual events space, pivoting Confetti from in-person to virtual team building following the 2020 pandemic. Her deep expertise and passion lies in helping companies scale and improve company culture.

Thank you for joining us. To start, could you share a little about yourself, and how you got started?

I’m Lee Rubin, the Founder and Chief Executive Officer at Confetti. I’m one of the world’s experts in employee culture and event planning. Especially virtual team building. My company, Confetti, has over 8,000 customers — and we’ve worked with companies like Google & Facebook in improving their company culture.

I first came up with the idea for Confetti when I was working for ZocDoc in 2014 and was tasked with putting together events for my team. At first, I was only interested in creating a platform that made it super simple to plan events. But shortly after starting the business, I realized that if I could make sure the events were good, I could really help improve the dynamics between team members and make work a more fun place to be.

What was your biggest challenge in those early days?

In the very early days I had a few big challenges:

• Finding a technical co-founder
• Understanding where to prioritize my time
• Navigating conflicting opinions from people I admired

Was there anything specific that inspired you to prioritize CPD initiatives in your company?

I think everyone is looking to grow and develop their skills. In startups there is a lot of opportunity to promote from within, but occasionally certain employees reach ceilings and need professional development in order to help them progress to the next level.

Can you explain why this is important for the success of a business?

1. Enhancing your team members skills should provide a positive ROI in productivity and efficiency.
2. It enhances loyalty and retention as employees are more likely to stay in an organization that they view is investing in their well-being and professional development.
3. Investing in CPD will provide better customer service and innovation due to their enhanced skills and knowledge. It encourages employees to be more adaptable as their industry changes with new technologies and trends.

Can you please share with us, and briefly explain the first major initiative you started that directly benefited your employees?

CPD doesn’t have to break the bank, and there are many ways you can invest in it without opening the wallet.

1. One of the first initiatives we did was investing in knowledge sharing. We are heavy documenters here are Confetti and we want new people who join to be able to quickly pick things up by reading their way through trainings.
2. Besides knowledge sharing, the biggest thing an employee joining a small startup can do is self-directed learning. Being autodidactic and gaining knowledge through reading articles, watching educational videos, networking, etc.
3. We didn’t do it in the early days, but once we gained some footing on what and how things should be done, we invested a lot more in training. Till today, we use an internal blog post (called Blogin) to educate employees about various subjects, spanning different departments.
4. Many times we’ve always paid for online courses, certifications and webinars to help a certain employee enhance their skills & knowledge.
5. Throughout Confetti, we’ve always been very big on feedback. Regular sessions and transparent communications to discuss progress, challenges, learning experiences, etc. When tackling a new project, we do ‘retros’ to go over what went well vs. what didn’t.

Do you have an example of a situation where you didn’t get the result you were looking for, and tell us what happened as a result?

As a company we have approved and paid for other’s online courses only for them to not go through with actually doing it and wasting time and resources.

What has been the most impactful CPD initiative you’ve seen other companies offer, and how did it inspire or influence your own approach?

I wish we had more resources to provide a lot more extensive CPD and know some companies offer to help pay for tuition or more extensive learning opportunities. There are also companies who invest more in mentoring with programs such as BetterUp.

What challenges might companies face when implementing these initiatives, and how can they overcome them?

The biggest challenge will be limited time and resources. The trick is to really figure out how to integrate it with a regular workflow. Scheduling short, consistent learning sessions and utilizing asynchronous training that employees can access at their convenience.

Can you share a story of an employee who significantly benefited, and how it affected their performance or career trajectory?

One employee who was originally responsible for catalog management expressed her interest in learning more about SEO as it overlapped with her current responsibilities. Through working with a freelancer, taking online courses, and achieving SEO certification, she was able to greatly expand her knowledge and skill set. The employee was more engaged and open to continued learning opportunities outside of her realm. Today, she is responsible for SEO, content, and blog strategy, and has taken on additional management responsibilities, contributing to the professional development of others.

Could you please list the “Top Five Benefits of Offering Continuous Professional Development (CPD) Initiatives For Employees”? Can you explain what you mean?

1. Enhanced Skills & Knowledge — continual learning ensures you’re performing effectively and efficiently, bringing innovative practices to the organization, showing upper management your dedication to better yourself and stay current with recent developments. It also allows you to naturally improve on your resume and break certain barriers you might currently have towards promotions.
2. Increased Engagement & Retention — employees appreciate it when their management invests in their career development. They are less likely to leave if they see opportunities for advancement and learning.
3. Improved Productivity & Performance — Once you’ve learned more effective techniques for whatever it is you’re working to improve on, you should see yourself making more organized and structured decisions.
4. Innovation — CPD fosters a mindset of continuous improvement and creativity, and therefore is a breeding ground for new ideas.
5. Compliance & Risk Management — Laws or different regulatory requirements might change over the course of your work tenure. By constantly staying up to date with potential associated legal issues, your employees can remain compliant with best practices and industry standards.

How do you measure the success and ROI of these CPD initiatives?

1. Employee performance metrics
2. Employee engagement and satisfaction
3. Retention & turnover rates
4. Skills & competency development
5. Business performance indicators

Looking forward, how do you see the role of CPD evolving in the next 5–10 years?

Businesses are sometimes limited by resources (primarily money) to truly help employees. I see AI being an important role to reduce the costs of CPD and help grow employees by providing feedback, advice and training.

What advice would you give to business leaders who are hesitating to make these changes?

Change should be something that any good business leader is comfortable with. But in order to get comfortable with something that might seem risky, it’s important to understand the necessity of the change and potential impact. Then map out the success metrics that are needed to track progress. Once you have that settled, it’s best to start small, test, iterate and scale gradually.

Can you share any upcoming initiatives or plans you have for further investing in your employees?

In preparation for my maternity leave, many of my direct managers sourced advisory relationships to help them develop their weaknesses.

How can our readers follow your work?

https://www.linkedin.com/in/rubinl/

This was great. Thank you so much for the time you spent sharing with us.