From individual coaches to flexible learning and development practices, here’s what businesses can learn from Canva’s approach to nurturing growth, leadership and connection with its workforce.

At Canva, over the past decade, we’ve built a culture focused on learning, collaboration and leadership, encouraging our team to embrace challenges that drive their growth and help reach our goals.

This approach supports continuous development and meaningful contribution to our Two-Step Plan: 

• Step One: becoming one of the world’s most valuable companies.
• Step Two: doing the most good we can. 

Below, I share some of our learnings and initiatives around building an inclusive people experience. I hope that by sharing some of the work we’re doing, we can provide ideas for other teams earlier in their journey.

Implementing a skills matrix 

At the heart of our people experience is our skills framework, which maps out the skills we consider critical for achieving our goals across four core pillars: craft, strategy, communication and leadership. We’ve embedded 12 key skills throughout our entire people experience – from talent attraction to learning and development.

To empower our team to grow in these skills, we offer several learning and development opportunities, including self-paced learning sessions, a dedicated design school to keep visual communication at the core of our work, and professional coaching. 

We foster a feedback culture where clear, kind and actionable feedback is part of everyday interactions and not just reserved for performance reviews.

Everyone at Canva also has a coach. We call our managers “coaches” to reflect the supportive role they play for their direct reports. Coaches are responsible for things like 1:1 coaching, shaping projects, providing feedback, setting career goals, conducting performance reviews and day-to-day management. 

We also encourage our team to speak up about new opportunities and goals they’re interested in, even if it means shifting roles, teams or specialties to make a bigger impact. To support this, we have an internal jobs board, called Pathways, that helps our team explore new challenges and roles to grow their skills. So far, we’ve facilitated more than 200 internal moves.

“When people are truly empowered to build work around their lives, rather than the other way around, they’re more likely to do their best work.”

Take my journey as an example. I began in the recruitment team at Canva, but my true passion has always been creating experiences and environments where people thrive. With this purpose in mind, I pitched a new role aligned with my strengths, and, after weeks of insightful chats with leadership, I transitioned into a people experience role – one of the most rewarding of my career. 

Key takeaways: 

• Identify the skills needed to reach your mission and goals, then create learning opportunities to help your team grow in those areas. 
• Offer a variety of learning and development opportunities – from self-paced learning to group coaching – to cater to different learning styles. 
• Try building a feedback-driven culture where regular feedback and recognition are part of everyday interactions. Equip your team to share and receive clear, constructive feedback, with leaders actively modelling these behaviours.

Inclusive hiring processes

Bringing together diverse backgrounds, experiences and perspectives has always been embedded in how we build our teams, products and community.

Rolling out inclusive hiring processes is essential for attracting talent and building diverse teams. We use a structured, skills- and values-based hiring approach, and have removed any unnecessary requirements from our roles – such as university degrees – to attract candidates with diverse backgrounds and skill sets.

All of our hiring managers undergo inclusive recruitment training that covers supporting candidates with interview adjustments and minimising bias. This includes offering extra time for assessments, providing alternative formats and using structured interview questions. We also assemble diverse hiring panels to ensure a fair, inclusive experience for every candidate.

As a result, our hiring process has become more inclusive and accessible, with our latest survey showing that 97 per cent of candidates found our application process easy to navigate. 

I’m also proud of the strides we’ve made in increasing representation. For instance, we’ve maintained a steady 46 per cent of women across our team and have seen growth in women in senior leadership. 

Since last year, the percentage of women in senior leadership roles increased from 29.7 per cent to 35 per cent. 

Key takeaways: 

• Ensure each candidate has a fair, inclusive experience by training hiring managers to provide necessary adjustments or accommodations. 
• Embed creativity and inclusion across every part of the hiring process to attract candidates from diverse backgrounds. Go beyond just interviews by incorporating a skills-based take-home challenge to help see candidates’ strengths and abilities in action.
• Adding personal touchpoints across the hiring process can go a long way, such as opportunities for candidates to meet the people they’d work with if hired.

Empowering leadership

For the past decade, our team has focused on building a goal-driven company, and this philosophy shapes how we organise our teams. We’re intentional about structuring only when it serves a purpose, prioritising cross-functional collaboration to drive our goals forward rather than creating a structure for its own sake.

We support leadership growth through two pathways: our coaching track for leaders, and our building track for skilled specialists. Both are designed to ensure everyone can advance their careers in line with their professional goals and our mission. 

The coaching track provides targeted programs for leaders at all stages, starting with foundational training called Coaching Essentials for new coaches, focusing on accountability, motivation and building core skills like feedback, context sharing and goal-setting. 

We also run peer-to-peer coaching circles, where leaders can work through complex challenges, learn from each other and strengthen cross-team relationships. 

Meanwhile, the building track empowers individual contributors to pursue personal leadership by taking ownership of their growth and craft skills. This allows specialists, such as software engineers, to deepen their skills in areas like AI, enabling them to grow their careers while staying focused on what they do best.

Read HRM’s article about embedding learning and development across your culture.

Key learnings and takeaways:

• Encourage everyone – not just team leads – to develop leadership skills, to help foster a sense of ownership and accountability across an entire team.  
• Create two-way coaching and mentoring programs that pair senior team members or specialists with those aiming to strengthen their craft skills, fostering mutual growth and skill-sharing across the team.
• Introduce group learning circles, where people can come together to exchange lived experiences and learnings, promoting collaboration and reducing the need for costly training programs.

Engaged hybrid teams

We’re evolving our culture around flexibility and connection, allowing our team to choose the type of work environment that works best for them and their team – whether on campus, at home, or a mix of both. 

As a global company with a team spanning time zones all around the world, we’ve been very intentional about ensuring our practices are globally inclusive by ensuring events, programs and benefits are adaptable for all kinds of environments. 

For example, we host a monthly all-hands called Canva TV which has an in-person studio audience but is also streamed and recorded to be watched either remotely or in office watch parties across the globe. We also have a dedicated team member and team of allies around the world who help roll out initiatives for our fully remote team, from online events to social clubs, aimed at fostering meaningful connections. 

Offsetting the reduction of ‘learning by osmosis’ is something we’ve been conscious of even before the shift to hybrid work. We’ve designed our learning and performance frameworks to support a remote environment, starting with a week of virtual onboarding sessions for all new starters, and then ongoing opportunities to participate in online learning sessions. We’ve also equipped our leaders with knowledge around preventing things like unconscious and proximity bias. 

We know without a doubt our hybrid model has increased our output and productivity, attracted top talent from diverse backgrounds and improved our team’s work-life balance. 

When people are truly empowered to build work around their lives, rather than the other way around, they’re more likely to do their best work. 

Key learnings and takeaways

• Create regular opportunities for your team to connect and celebrate achievements together. Design these moments intentionally, catering to both in-person and virtual attendees, so remote workers feel a sense of belonging. 
• Use creative tools to make hybrid interactions engaging and efficient – collaborative documents, videos and presentations allow for idea-sharing and quick, asynchronous decisions. 
• Most importantly, listen to your team to understand what they need to perform at their best and achieve their goals.

Overall, I truly believe that in today’s rapidly changing work environment, building a strong team and positive people experience requires intentional strategies focused on purpose-driven goals, skill development, inclusivity, leadership growth and engagement. 

Together, these elements create resilient, adaptable and empowered teams ready to make a meaningful and lasting impact.

Need help evolving your culture for a hybrid world? AHRI’s short course on managing a hybrid workforce is designed to equip you with the skills to create collaborative and future-ready teams.