Accelerating personal & career growth: TRA Academy
Delivering powerful, influential and insightful work for clients is a learned skill. One that requires regular and comprehensive training.
That’s why we've developed TRA Academy, TRA's new learning and development programme.
Our entire team is committing two hours, every week, to focused learning on their craft. Whether that’s global best practice for quantitative or qualitative analysis or data analytics, cultural foresight, behavioural science, strategic thinking, marketing models or influencing with impact. We’re calling this the TRA 120.
Why have we taken this step?
Experience alone is an inconsistent way to learn. It's like a wave pattern, there are periods when you are lifted up rapidly followed by times when you are wallowing in the troughs and you can’t control the pattern of the waves.
Instead we want to accelerate growth by putting people on the face of the wave, in control and with forward momentum. Living on the face of the wave requires technical skills, agility and fitness, and a broader understanding of the environmental forces.
With TRA Academy, we're replacing experience as the only way to grow with a model of enabling people to achieve peak fitness through accelerated, committed learning – to achieve their version of peak fitness.
What does it look like?
We're dividing the skills taught in the TRA Academy into three categories, which we're calling Advance, Enrich, and Stretch
Advance skills are the tools of the trade, ranging from the basics to specialist skills, whether that's best practice for qualitative or data analysis. Enrich training is about developing transferrable skills in leadership, collaboration, coaching, communication and business acumen. And Stretch training looks to the wider horizon, such as ways of thinking, strategy and marketing.
TRA's leaders have developed a curriculum of over 80 courses that our team can choose from, based on their personal development goals. Courses run every Wednesday, across Australia and New Zealand, and the entire business has this time committed to diaries.
The academy training directly feeds into TRA's Matery Pathway - our and into personal development plans through learning interests and types of work. Staff have agency over the courses they take and the direction they want to move into, with a commitment from TRA of time, resource and learning assets to help make it happen.
It's about enabling our people to grow, by developing their craft and following their passion.