Pleo, one of Europe’s leading business spending solutions, has teamed up with strategic coaching company Skiller Whale to upskill its engineering staff, with a programme centring on developing best-in-class API integrations. Through a focus on continuous learning that can be immediately applied and experimented with, Skiller Whale coaches will be working with Pleo’s own engineering team to accelerate expertise and specialist knowledge. 

By investing in existing teams rather than bolting on skill gaps through new employees, Pleo is making an impact through smarter growth and enabled teams. Upskilling teams also has the opportunity to motivate and challenge existing employees, helping to grow and retain them, which Pleo believes will set up the business for long-term success. This chimes with findings from Pleo’s recent ‘State of Spending 2023’ report, where 48% of UK businesses were found to be swapping surface level employee niceties —things like work perks, gifts, socials—and giving employees what they really want—for instance, better pay, training or travel expenses.

Meri Williams, CTO at Pleo, agrees; “We really gelled with the Skiller Whale mentality that learning shouldn’t be a bolt on, or a perk. It’s a key part of our long-term technology strategy and will help us continue pushing our innovation and strengthening our overall product offering. It’s a bit of a no-brainer really - we want to help our engineering teams build their careers with Pleo and this is a fantastic way to personalise and super-charge that learning and development.”  

Hywel Carver, Co-Founder and CEO of Skiller Whale comments, “The idea for Skiller Whale grew out of a frustration with not being able to execute on ambitious tech strategies due to team skill gaps. Live team coaching was designed to enable tech leaders to quickly change the shape of their team’s capabilities. Pleo’s bold tech strategy of being “best in class in the API ecosystem is exactly the type of scenario we built the company for.”

Dave Millican, Co-Founder and CTO at Skiller Whale added,  “I think we particularly appealed to Pleo for this project because unlike typical training organisations, we offer a live coach who is a domain expert engineer - not a full-time coach. They are there to challenge and support learning and provide industry context because they work with the technology every day.”