Professional Dev - on your time or company time?

[Anonymous]

It’s Sunday afternoon and I’ve spent the last 3 hours reading a work-related book. This is “required reading” in so much as my boss encouraged me to read it.

Curious if others in my situation would be doing this during work hours or, like me, on their own time. Are you provided time/resources for professional development as part of your work day?

I really can’t imagine taking hours during my work day to curl up in a chair with a book - but I’m also somewhat bitter that this is how I’m spending my weekend.

[Anonymous]

Lots of professions build reading into the work day: academia, law, etc...

Why not yours?

[Anonymous]

If I do it on the weekend, and it's required, I would claim the overtime.

[Anonymous]

This is same crap that drives me nuts my lazy stupid staff.

[Anonymous]

I think it's fine to do this reading during the work day if you have the time, but weird to claim overtime for having done it on the weekend. It looks petty and I wouldn't claim it. Especially because it's not really required, just a boss's suggestion.

It's similar to a networking lunch - it's not actually fun but you do it because it's good for your career, and part of the game is that you pretend you enjoyed it.

[Anonymous]

I do a lot of professional networking and skill development on my own time, but I'm making choices about what's useful. Your boss should have clarified whether this was a work task or a suggestion, if that wasn't obvious from context.

[Anonymous]

It would depend on how relevant the reading/development is to my actual job. Some books are general background info in my field, other books directly inform how I do my job. The former I wouldn’t read during work time (and likely wouldn’t read during my personal time either). The latter I would read at work or maybe during work travel. If it’s necessary enough to my work for me to read during my work hours, I’d be willing to put comp hours on my timesheet.

[Anonymous]

Professional development is a shared responsibility between YOU and your employer.

They should make good suggestions, give you options for learning, give you time to attend conferences, attain certifications, and pay for associated travel and expenses.

YOU should ask for things that align to your interests and how you want to grow your career, engage actively in learning opportunities, and give some of your own time to keep your skills current and be a strong professional in your space.

If you are expecting to do this learning/developing ONLY on company time, that's a pretty short-sighted way to look at the process. If your aspirations are for c-suite roles, you will cap out long before you get there.

[Anonymous]

I do professional development on company time. Our company provides $500 to spend on books, classes, conferences, etc, with approval from your supervisor. Anything I buy from that I assume it's fine to do on company time. In generally, I spend a half an hour a week on PD/networking outreach per week. I have it blocked on my calendar. So usually, I'd just read the book, and it would take me six weeks. If I needed to read it more urgently, I'd condense into a week, and block out like an hour 3x to read.

I wouldn't do three hours straight of something like that on company time. But I FOR SURE wouldn't read for three hours on a weekend when the request came from by boss!

[Anonymous]

I admittedly don't do as much of this kind of stuff as I should, but I would be inclined to get the audiobook and listen during my commute or when doing mundane work like spreadsheets or filing email or something else where I could multitask.

[Anonymous]

what is the book?