Our vision to make professional development more accessible

A lot of companies want to offer great learning and development opportunities for their teams. They put a professional development benefit in place, roll out some courses, and hope their team takes advantage of it. 

But too often, that doesn’t happen. The funds don’t get used. The programs are too confusing or irrelevant. The promise of growth gets lost in the shuffle.

At Compt, we’re on a mission to fix that. 

Our latest professional development module, Professional Development Pro™ by Compt, isn’t just for employees. First and foremost, we built this with HR, finance, and managers in mind — the ones who deal with the headaches of approvals, tracking, and keeping things compliant.

We want to make professional development simple, clear, and easy to manage. No confusion, no frustration, just a streamlined way for teams to grow and for leaders to track it.

We built it off of our core product principles — and learned a ton along the way. Here’s a look at what truly went into building our new module. 

Unpacking the professional development frustrations we set out to solve 

One of the most important questions that any product leader should ask themselves on a recurring basis is, “Am I talking to enough customers?” 

For me, the answer is yes, thanks to our incredible customer success team who keep me connected to our customers so I can get a steady stream of what’s happening in the world of people ops and HR.

I learned about everything from low employee awareness to lost requests to unclear budgets and a tedious approval process. 

Low employee awareness of professional development benefits

For starters, a lot of employees don’t even know that learning and development funds are available to them. They might miss the memo during onboarding, or the program details just get lost in the noise of day-to-day work.

Even if companies roll out a solid professional development account within their learning and development (L&D) strategy, employees often end up stuck on the most basic question: “Wait, I have a budget for this?”

Without knowing what’s available or being reminded it exists, they’re unlikely to take action. And that means a big missed opportunity for both the employee and the company.

Lack of guidance on how to spend funds

Even when employees know they have some kind of professional development funds, this doesn’t mean they can actually use them. Many are stuck with a budget but no direction, or, worse, pigeonholed with a one-size-fits-all approach to professional development. 

Should they take a course? Buy a book? Get coaching? How much time are they ‘allowed’ to spend on professional development?

Others grapple with feelings that their employers aren’t invested in their professional development and aren’t given the time to learn new things at work. On top of that, they don’t know what to learn, often turning to their managers or HR for new professional development opportunities.

But the reality is that it’s unrealistic for managers and HR to know the latest and greatest professional development resources for every skill set within the company or what makes sense in an individual contributor role.

Without guidance or time, the status quo takes over, and these funds just sit there, untouched. 

The professional development approval process: Confusing at best, ignored at worst

Another problem is the actual approval process is fragmented, manual, and frustrating for everyone involved. Employees have to ask, “Can I buy this?” and then, once they do, submit receipts and wait for reimbursement. Managers and HR are left to chase approvals, process paperwork, and deal with constant follow-ups.

In fact, it is not uncommon to hear HR managers that I talk to say they are stuck with lengthy 7-10-step approval processes, and many are stuck in long email threads and Google Forms. 

The whole thing is clunky, inefficient, and full of headaches for all involved. No one knows where they stand, and that leads to delays, confusion, and a lot of unnecessary frustration. 

Not to mention, it is the antithesis of employee-focused benefits. Putting hurdles in front of your employees, who want to learn and improve, can inadvertently signal that you say you want to invest in it, but you actually don’t care about their professional development. 

Here’s what reviewing requests looks like with Professional Development Pro by Compt:

Friction between employees and HR

Another problem with having an inefficient approval process is that it forces HR into the role of ‘the bad cop.’ This usually happens when employees buy something they thought was covered, only for HR to deny the reimbursement later. It creates unnecessary tension and leaves the employee paying for something out of pocket.

This leaves HR tired of being the enforcer in a system they didn’t design and have to go along with, and employees frustrated at being told “no” after the fact. It is a lose-lose situation that makes professional development perks more stressful than rewarding.

5 product principles paramount to our professional development module (and everything we do at Compt!) 

I started off as an engineer, but quickly decided it wasn’t for me. I like building, but I kept questioning the ‘why’ and the ‘who.’ Why are we building this? Who actually needs it? 

That’s when product management clicked, and I haven’t looked back. 

It’s not about building the perfect thing. It’s about building the RIGHT thing, which is exactly what we strive to do at Compt.

Here are our core product principles that were critical to building our professional development module, and that we stick to each time we decide ‘what next’ for our customers. 

Build a solid foundation first 

We learned early on that to make a professional development module that actually works, you need to start with first principles. While this holds true for all of our products here at Compt, it was especially important for professional development, which could (and does) quickly become complex without meaning to. 

In this case, establishing a clear and efficient workflow had to come before adding all the fancy features. 

Before designing our minimum viable product (MVP), we started off with a series of flowcharts to show to L&D and HR leaders to see if what we were designing would fit their needs. There were (a lot) of presentations of these flowcharts, potential design screenshots and then from there, interactive and clickable prototypes before we settled on an early-access MVP. 

Along the way, we gathered early customer feedback and took an iterative approach to our build.

It’s easy to assume we know what users want, but nothing beats actually hearing it straight from them.

We made it a priority to involve customers from the start — talking to them, showing them what we were building, and asking for their honest input, with Compt customers and dozens of other teams who are trying to find a better way to deliver professional development.

The more we involved our customers in the process, the better our product became. Their insights kept us grounded and ensured we were solving real problems that made sense for our customers. 

By focusing on getting the core functionality right and iterating based on direct feedback, we avoided building a solution that didn’t solve the pain points our customers had. Instead, we kept it simple, collected feedback, and made sure our foundation was solid before layering on more complexity.

Visibility is key for high levels of utilization

Even the best benefits programs fall flat if employees don’t know they exist. That sounds obvious, but it is easy to overlook.

We knew that making professional development funds and opportunities visible was crucial to getting people to use them. We made it a point to embed professional development where employees were already spending their time.

This means putting it front and center in the same platform they use to access other benefits (since Compt customers are also using a combination of our stipend programs, reward and recognition, or expense management). 

The result we’re hoping to see? No more hidden budgets or forgotten perks.

User experience was also a huge part of our approach. We want employees to not just see their professional development options but to actually feel excited to use them. 

Every employee’s needs and learning styles are different, and what’s valuable to one person might be irrelevant to another. We made it possible for employees to choose the learning resources that worked for them, whether it was a specific course, a local workshop, or something else entirely. 

This flexibility isn’t just a nice-to-have. It meant much higher engagement and utilization rates because it made the professional development options truly useful to each individual.

Reduce manual work for HR and managers through centralization

One of the biggest hurdles we (and so many others) faced was the disjointed approval process. What we found was that everything was scattered across email threads, Slack, Teams, Google Forms, fillable PDFs, etc.

This meant HR was often stuck playing detective to understand what had been approved or needed to be approved. We knew we needed to fix that by centralizing the entire approval workflow into one place.

By putting everything in one system, we cut down on manual follow-ups and eliminated the chaos. For HR, this meant fewer manual tasks and reduced pressure to be the gatekeeper. No more being the “bad guy” telling employees what they can or can’t spend on. 

Managers benefited, too. They now have a clear view of pending approvals without having to chase down colleagues. 

Employees also have a transparent workflow that lets them know exactly where their requests stand, which reduces frustration and confusion. 

Ultimately, centralizing the process makes professional development more approachable for everyone. No more scattered communication or endless back-and-forths. Just a clear, simple way to keep things moving.

Reduce the barrier to entry for new products 

Getting early adopters on board quickly is critical when launching something new and gathering feedback. That’s why we double down on making onboarding as smooth and simple as possible. This also means giving customers a white-glove experience from the start.

From a sales perspective, this could look like the team getting creative with contracts and pricing to remove any friction, but from a product perspective, it’s all about getting as many people using your product at once so that you can iterate as quickly as possible.

The goal is to keep the feedback loop tight and make sure customers feel like true partners as you refine and improve the product together.

Align product features with company culture

The final piece in the puzzle might be the most important but the toughest to crack. Too often, companies treat learning and development as a one-size-fits-all solution—a set course library, standard training library, and a hope that employees will just pick something.

However, we know that real impact comes from offering choices that are meaningful to each individual.

Our approach is different and built to reflect the core values that guide everything we do at Compt. That’s personalization and inclusivity. When I think about building new features, I try to tie everything back to our mission, our values, what’s best for our users, and (of course) our company goals.

I care a lot about making sure this shows up in within all of our products at Compt.

Whether it’s lifestyle benefits that are flexible for varying demographics, reward and recognition options outside of boring gift cards or trinkets collecting dust, or professional development options that empower employees to choose their own learning adventure, we want to make sure they can.

This level of personalization is core to how we designed the entire experience. We want employees to feel like their unique needs are understood and supported.

So, it is no surprise that this same approach carries over to the organizations that see the most success with L&D, which are the ones that adapt in real time, meeting employees where they are today. 

By embedding personalization and inclusivity into our professional development module, we’re confident we’ve aligned our product features with what truly drives growth and well-being. 

Making professional development the norm for companies 

Building this module taught us a lot about what employees and companies truly need to make professional development work. The key is clarity, visibility, personalization, and making the whole process as simple as possible.

After speaking with countless customers and learning what really holds people back, one thing became clear. When companies invest in their employees’ growth, it changes everything.

I want to inspire more HR teams to focus less on the process and compliance and more on the people it’s really for.

My vision is simple: a future where professional development feels natural, accessible, and meaningful, where every employee knows their company is rooting for them. 

Put professional development accessibility front and center with Professional Development Pro by Compt

Offer the ultimate way to support direct reports with professional development with Compt. Professional Development Pro by Compt streamlines requests, approvals, and budget tracking, creating simple workflows in a single location where employees can grow and develop.

With dedicated professional development support through Compt, you can:

• Track budgets and spending with real-time reports
  
• Create employer-approved programs that include a wide variety of courses and platforms
  
• Allow employees to submit and track approval requests through a self-serve portal
  
• See and manage approval requests from a central dashboard
  
• Create custom pre-approval and reimbursement workflows

Schedule a demo to connect with the team at Compt and learn more.