Inside Grafana Labs: how we foster a culture of continuous learning

“What did you learn today?”

It’s a question many of us heard as a child. Maybe a parent asked you on the way home from school, or a sibling around the dinner table, or even a curious aunt or uncle at a family gathering. But when was the last time someone asked you, as an adult, what you actually learned at the end of a day?

The truth is, as we grow older, the expectation to be constantly learning diminishes. It seems we’re simply too tired, or too busy with other responsibilities, to be learning all the time. As a member of the Learning and Development team here at Grafana Labs, I strive to reset that expectation.

Since our early days as a company, we’ve fostered a culture of continuous learning. We start during an employee’s first few days as a Grafanista, beginning with our virtual onboarding sessions (Grafana Labs is a remote-first company) and then through our week-long, in-person onboarding events, which are a great way to connect with other new employees and members of the Grafana Labs leadership team.

Our goal is to inspire our employees to learn and grow right from the start by investing heavily in their initial onboarding experience. But we also encourage employees to continue learning throughout their careers at Grafana Labs.

In this post, we share exactly how we do that. Read on to learn more about our learning management systems, professional development budgets, and other ways we ensure Grafanistas learn something each and every day.

Learning on demand

All Grafana Labs employees are respectfully empowered to work in the way that is best for them. Flexibility and autonomy are cornerstones of our work, so it makes sense that those values also extend to our learning culture. Therefore, we provide a variety of on-demand resources for Grafanistas to learn what they want to learn, when and how they want to learn it.

Docebo, our learning management system (LMS), provides access to a variety of custom courses. These courses — created by Grafanistas, for Grafanistas — provide relevant content that accounts for our unique circumstances.

For example, our Level-Up Toolkits contain curated resources to help people managers dive deeper into critical topics like delegation, change management, and feedback. These toolkits are part of a learning path that Grafana Labs employees are free to opt in or out of, based on their interests and availability.

Additionally, our partnership with LinkedIn Learning allows our team members to browse thousands of additional courses directly from our LMS.

We’re also working on a new Learning & Development Hub that will serve as a one-stop shop for employees to access process documentation, public speaking resources, new hire onboarding documentation, and other on-demand learning materials.

Learning live (and with your team)

As a remote-first company, we want to help Grafanistas build connections with their peers, even when they live on different continents. One way we achieve this — while also encouraging continuous learning — is through our Concierge Services, a program that offers live learning opportunities in a group setting.

Concierge Services brings learning directly to Grafana Labs employees. They simply choose from a menu of courses, let us know their preferred date and time, and that’s it! Our L&D team handles the coordination, preparation, and delivery of the training — either in person or virtually — by an experienced facilitator. Sessions can be run for as few or as many people as desired and span a variety of topics, including time management, career progression, and public speaking. If one of the existing sessions doesn’t quite hit the mark, Grafanistas can request custom sessions designed specifically for their unique interests.

Professional development budget

When Grafanistas want to branch out a bit further — maybe to obtain a professional certification, learn another language, or attend an industry conference — we offer our professional development budget.

Each Grafana Labs employee is allocated $1500 USD per calendar year to invest in their professional development. Few limits exist on the program; everybody has the freedom to use their budget in a way that works for them.

This year, I used my professional development budget to attend the Afrotech Conference in Houston, Texas. It was so exciting to build out connections, network with other professionals, and learn valuable insights to bring back to Grafana Labs at the end of my trip!

Other common ways to use the budget include spending on:

• Books: “Dare to Lead” by Brene Brown is a popular one.
• Industry certifications: For our engineers, Kubernetes and CompTIA certifications are especially common.
• Subscriptions: SHRM memberships, as one example, are something our People Team recommends.
• Conferences: In the past, Grafanistas have attended the GS1 Connect Summit, Latinas in Tech, and, of course, major events in the open source software space, such as KubeCon.
• Other technical or professional development courses, including those offered by Boot.dev and Udemy.

Learn more about working at Grafana Labs

At Grafana Labs, you never age out of discovering new things. By taking advantage of our on-demand and live learning opportunities, each Grafanista has the opportunity to expand their knowledge and lean into our value of helping ourselves, and others, thrive.

If you’re interested in learning more about working at Grafana Labs — including some of our open positions right now — please refer to our careers page. We’d love to hear from you!