Creating a culture for Learning & Development at Lyft (for Data and Science)
Tags: Corporate Culture, Learning And Development, Learning, Organizational Culture, Data Science

By Alexis Weill and Martin Yamane

The What and Why of L&D

Learning and Development (“L&D”) is a broad term that encompasses any initiative aimed at improving employees skills and knowledge so that they may be more effective in the workplace. To help facilitate opportunities for Lyft employees to grow and succeed, Lyft has created an L&D council for the Data and Science organization with the goal of helping employees to acquire the skills to be most effective in their roles.

There are a few reasons Lyft is investing in developing Learning and Development opportunities:

It helps recruit the types of employees that are interested in self-development, It develops employees’ skill sets which increases company productivity, It increases employee retention as our team members want to keep growing professionally.

It is a win-win situation for the company and its employees.

L&D at Lyft Data and Science

Why we started it

In 2019, we realized there was an opportunity to bring together disparate elements of Learning and Development within the Data and Science organization under one umbrella. This offered two main advantages:

Elevate the visibility of existing programs so more team members could benefit from them. Allow us to take a more holistic approach to Learning and Development and identify existing gaps to develop programs to address those.

Our general approach has been to leverage the wealth of knowledge that our team members already have across the organization to benefit everyone. Having seen similar efforts decay over time, we spent some to time to develop the right structure to ensure that this effort would be self-sustaining.

The council structure

We structured the council as follows, inspired by our Diversity & Inclusion program:

An executive sponsor

Two co-chairs that are responsible for setting the vision, selecting workstream leads, running the council day-to-day, and representing the council

Four workstreams, with two to three leads for each workstream

Volunteers organized in initiatives within each workstream

The current L&D council structure for Lyft Data and Science as of November 2020

All positions entail six to twelve month commitments — this ensures that we have continuity in the short to medium term but also that we provide opportunities for more voices to be involved.

We created four workstreams to focus on the following areas of opportunity:

Technical training

The mission of this workstream is to uplevel team members’ technical skills.

Our current offerings are multi-week courses, single-session training, and bi-weekly talks on specific projects. They are developed and delivered by team members. The courses cover a wide range of subjects such as experimentation and data visualization, primarily relying on online resources for general learnings and team members for Lyft-specific teachings. The training sessions are focused on specific skills on internal know-how on a specific topic or tool.

Non-technical training

The mission of this workstream is to uplevel team members soft and business skills.

The workstream puts together monthly, employee-led panel discussions to go over topics such as “managing up”, “providing feedback” or “thinking like a product manager”. Volunteers are also piloting a Toastmasters club for individuals to practice presentation & public speaking skills.

Experiential programs

This workstream covers opportunities that are hands-on or individualized, with more opportunities for one-on-one interactions. We currently offer 3 programs:

The mentorship program pairs employees with a peer or manager to provide them with mentorship/coaching to help them think through their careers, provide advice, etc.

pairs employees with a peer or manager to provide them with mentorship/coaching to help them think through their careers, provide advice, etc. The shadow program provides an opportunity for employees to learn more about different roles on different teams or at different levels. For example, a Data Scientist may decide to shadow a ML Engineer or a Science Manager, or simply learn more about the challenges faced by other Data Scientists.

provides an opportunity for employees to learn more about different roles on different teams or at different levels. For example, a Data Scientist may decide to shadow a ML Engineer or a Science Manager, or simply learn more about the challenges faced by other Data Scientists. Lastly, the leadership lunch series provides an opportunity for team members to interact with leadership in a casual, small-group setting.

Championing career development

This workstream improves processes and policies around career development for the team. The work ranges from developing a set of “shared agreements” between team members and their managers on how to best work together to providing documentation on career development (e.g., clarifying Lyft’s career pathways, providing career growth principles, and sharing a sample promotion packet).

How to create a culture of L&D

1. Find L&D opportunities that people want AND need (they may be different)

The first step to kick-starting Learning and Development at your company is to understand how team members want to develop, as well as what leadership considers the most important skills to cultivate among employees (we noticed that they often differ). This helps demonstrate value quickly by focusing on content that addresses the most sought-after areas of development.

This can be as simple as sending out a survey: when we were first getting started, our workstream leads sent out surveys asking Lyft employees to rank different ideas for programs and courses as well as suggest new ones.

2. Enlist passionate team members

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.” (attributed to Antoine de Saint-Exupéry)

Putting together a team that shares the council’s vision is key to have motivated members that deliver great impact. Team members are often passionate about a specific aspect of the council, so it helps to match them with their top area of interest.

One challenge is that you will be asking volunteers and workstream leads to commit to additional work on top of their regular obligations. Executive sponsorship and buy-in from the top helps — if contributions to the wider team are valued, it aligns incentives for everyone. One approach is to add those activities in team members’ career pathways: the volunteers get credit for helping out and the whole team benefits.

3. Prioritize ruthlessly

Like any other initiative, prioritization is key. After determining the areas team members want to develop in, you should create a roadmap of the L&D program you plan to launch. For each initiative, you will need to think through the idea end-to-end to ensure its feasibility within a reasonable timeframe. Ask yourself:

How much effort needs to be put into developing the materials for this offering?

Will this cost money? If so, how do we get the budget?

Can we leverage existing materials or past efforts to avoid duplicative efforts?

How much more effective will the participants be in their role after completing this program?

After you have answered these questions, you can determine which ideas are worthwhile and which ideas to scrap.

4. Make the content easily accessible

Content is only as good as the impact it has on the team: it is important to communicate early and often to make sure that team members are aware of the various opportunities available to them. You can expand the reach of any piece of content by recording it, as this allows you and the team to focus on creating new content instead of spending time reproducing existing content. We also found it helpful to make all the content available in one central place. One side benefit of having compiled all this great content is that it is great for new hire onboarding too!

5. Measure success and adjust accordingly

Just like any new feature launch or program change, you will want to track how your new L&D initiatives are performing. It is the best way to determine the value of the new content. Tracking metrics such as attendance rates, program completion, and net promoter score (NPS) for your initiatives is key to ensure that you are on the right track. If programs are getting low attendance or NPS, you should question whether the offering should be continued or modified.

6. Build lasting systems

Setting up the right systems ensures that your L&D efforts lasts well past your tenure. There needs to be a formalized process for recruiting new team members and for transitioning work. Additionally, as we discussed earlier, incentives should be aligned so that employees feel like their time spent creating valuable content is valued by their manager and the company.

Moving forward

Building a Learning & Development council has been an extremely rewarding experience that has benefited many at Lyft, both from working on the council and learning from our programs. A year in, we are happy to say that we are seeing high attendance for our efforts and have continued adjusting our programming based on ongoing feedback.

In 2021, new team members will lead the council and continue to build upon the culture of Learning and Development for Lyft. While we created this council to meet Lyft’s L&D needs, the same strategies can apply for any company looking to increase their team’s skill set. We hope this guide has motivated you and given you the necessary action plan to start your own Learning and Development initiative!

Thanks to the following people for their helpful comments (in alphabetical order): Akshat Jain, Alya Abbott, Sarah Morse, Simran Mirchandani

Thank you to the L&D council leads as well (in alphabetical order): Ken Chew, Lei Tang, Mehrnaz Abdollahian, Noriko Kakihara, Or Cohen, Rahul Kadian, Ricky Chachra, Yunjie Zhao

Lyft is hiring. Check out our open roles.