Global Learning Simplified: The One Platform Solution

Terri James: Welcome everybody to Global Learning Simplified, the one platform solution with Continu and The Opus Group. Today, I'm really looking forward to getting into our webinar. We've got some really exciting topics to walk through today.

One of the first ones is managing complex learning needs across multiple regions from a centralized platform, and I'm sure that is something that you're all either struggling with or managing every day. So we're really excited to go through that at the top of this webinar.

We'll be talking about the importance of live sessions, that instructor-led training, and automating content delivery. We'll also be looking at streamlining onboarding processes during organizational growth and acquisitions - a big part of what you're probably doing today as well. So it'll be really interesting to hear it from Marissa's perspective.

We will also be looking at a clear and simple user interface and experience because, of course, we do want to delight our learners. And then, of course, we'll be rounding it out with some chat around empowering our content creators and achieving that 4x content production increase that the team at The Opus Group have been achieving over these last few years with us.

And then, of course, we'll be talking through the future of learning initiatives and strategic implementation.

So before we get into it, I'd love to give you a little bit of an introduction from myself. My name is Terri James. I'm the VP of Product here at Continu. I've worked with the team for over 13 years and 25 years in learning and development. So as I like to always say, I obviously enjoy learning and development. So looking forward to sharing a little bit more about Continu as we work through it.

And of course, we will be talking to Marissa, and I'll give Marissa a chance to introduce herself as well.

Marissa Long: Great, thanks Terri. Really excited to be here. So I am the Director of Talent Development at The Opus Group, which is a network of experiential marketing brands. So we provide experiences - everything from conferences to conventions to festivals and executive events. Yeah, so all experiences.

So I founded the L&D department in 2020 for my company. I've actually been with Opus Group for 13 years and started on the business side. And as we grew both organically and through acquisitions, it really became apparent that we needed to be doing more internally to build and support our team. So about 5 years ago, I moved over to run L&D.

At our team, we do a wealth of things - everything from leadership development, new hire orientation, wellness and DEI initiatives as well. And then I also oversee our employee engagement.

Terri: Tell me a little bit more about The Opus Group.

Marissa: Yeah, so we are a global company that has three distinct brands that operate separately. So we have Opus Agency that does our events to a large scale - they do everything end to end. We have Moss, which is more of a bespoke agency, so they do everything from B2B events to B2C events. And we have Verve Live Events, which is actually based in Dublin, and so they're a leading Irish agency that also has a presence in the UK, and they do B2B, B2C, and B2O events over there across the pond.

So together we're The Opus Group, and my role here is really about supporting all three brands in the learning and development needs that everyone needs, regardless of which brand or which part of the company that they work in.

Terri: Fantastic, Marissa. I'm really excited to dive into how you're actually managing that - three agencies across the globe. And I'm sure, like, you know, top of our call is really looking at those complex learning needs. How does The Opus Group approach global training with just two people in your team?

Marissa: Well, that's the million-dollar question. In theory, we are just two people that are really dedicated to learning and development initiatives across those brands. But we're supported by a ton of department levels in each of those brands, in each of those departments.

So my team that sits within HR at The Opus Group - we're really here to support all of the initiatives that aren't necessarily role-specific or brand-specific. We really support the initiatives that apply to all of us regardless of where you work in the company. So leadership development, wellness, belonging and inclusion, technology - you know, all of the topics where we can kind of be agnostic of brands is what Amy and I primarily focus on.

And then we support each of those brands as they want to develop trainings that are very specific either to their brand or a specific team or department. We'll support them in creating their content and getting it available in the LMS. So we're a little more of a behind-the-scenes coach because we can't - we could never possibly be the expert in everything. But we have a really talented team across the whole org that help us with developing that content.

Terri: That's fantastic, and I'm sure it helps support those efforts having those - to be able to support that. But of course, managing that every day just with two team members, it must be quite an undertaking. So looking forward to even going deeper into that.

I guess I would love to know - like, prior to Continu, what pain points or challenges were you facing with global training initiatives?

Marissa: Well, that's a really interesting question because prior to Continu, we had only had a learning and development department for about two, two and a half years. And we started founding it in 2020 - it was a busy year for all.

And part of our biggest struggle was making the content that we were creating accessible to all, or starting to vet content from other sources that we could get into our LMS. You know, the first time we had a learning management platform, we chose one because we already had access to it through other tools that the company had invested in. So we hadn't necessarily gone through - because we didn't have an L&D department at that time - we hadn't really gone through and sourced one that was very specific to our needs.

So when we moved to Continu, that was part of the excitement - was that we had this other platform that had the ability to be an LMS, and that didn't necessarily mean that it was the most user-friendly LMS. So we had one content creator and myself that - you know, one that sat outside of HR because it was pretty complex to get content up into the system, and it took a while to really train others on how to use it.

And then I'm not sure we were really getting the adoption we had hoped for because the system was a little clunky and harder to use for our learners. And so a big - like, probably our biggest struggle during that time was just getting to the content the people who needed it or wanted it or were looking for those extra resources for their own development plans. So yeah, adoption, usability.

And you know, unfortunately at that time, we were a department of one, not a department of two. And if you wanted to host content in our former LMS, you almost had to go through me because most of our team training the departments - they didn't have time to spend six hours training with me on how to use the system, right? So it was kind of a bit of a bottleneck process for us.

Terri: Yeah, and I think it's interesting. It's something that we hear quite a lot at Continu, Marissa. And you know, the first thing that you - you know, there's two things that you're always trying to achieve: one, engagement - you know, getting people in the door to even access the content. And if the platform isn't engaging for the learner, it's very hard to get not only get them in the door but actually get them to stay. And I think that is the biggest challenge that, you know, I'm sure in learning development, we hear a lot of.

The second piece is the administration side of things. You know, it shouldn't have to take you 6 hours to learn a system to create a piece of content. We like to say it should take you 3 minutes or nothing more than that - just to get a piece of content into the system. And it should also feel just as delightful for the admin as it does for the learner. And I think that's that also bridges that gap.

And the beauty of that is that if you give them a great platform, they want to stay and they want to engage in the great content that you're creating, and you give that place to them to really showcase that training. And you'll get to see later in this webinar about some of the great training that Marissa and the team have been developing and obviously their engagement numbers as well, which are very impressive.

So, you know, I will say, Marissa, you know, you've been with Continu for a few years, but you haven't - you're not going through the pain that, you know, that you've had before. And we have seen this time and time again - just having people log into a system, you would - it's not surprising that people were struggling to do it. So yeah, that is a great point, and I'm glad to hear that you've been able to overcome that because it allows your training to shine as well.

Marissa: And I think we're just allowed to - like, we're able to produce more offerings to our learners than we could before because we were spending so much time manually sending out invites or, you know, training people on how to use the system. Where now, you know, some of that is cut out. And when I look at what we were doing back then as an offering and now what we can do because there's less of that, you know, check-the-box admin work, we're able to offer a lot more for a larger audience within our company.

Terri: Yeah, and that makes sense. You know, a system needs to work for you, not against you, so that you can do your best work, which is developing the content and the training that your learners actually need and being able to spend that time. And of course, you know, not doing all of those manual processes because I'm sure that that does take up most of everyone's day anyway. So definitely something that we hear a lot of.

But yeah, it's amazing to hear some of that progress that you've had over the years and probably less time in the LMS, which for me as the head of product, it's surprising for me to say that. But I do understand that learning and development is - and an LMS is actually a very small part of your day. So of course, want to make that as easy as possible.

You know, a big piece of managing that global learning is some of the areas of the platform that we're going to dive into a little bit more - features like profiles, smart segmentation, and assignments. You know, managing that global team, having in-depth user roles, being able to create those permissions. As you mentioned, you've got subject matter experts that you're giving access to, but you as one of the admins in the system, I'm sure having a few guardrails in there and having some best practices built in is really important.

That smart segmentation, which is Continu's smart segmentation, allowing you to deliver content to the right audiences at the right time. And I'm sure managing those global teams that you have is a big piece of that. And then, of course, you know, the last thing we all want to do is manual processing, so any opportunity to automate is something that we also try to drive from every aspect to Continu.

So those are the three areas that I know we wanted to highlight today. And of course, Marissa, feel free to add anything further here, but those are the key areas that I think the team has always mentioned that it's resonated with them.

Marissa: Yeah, we're especially - we're using all three pretty much daily. But I would say the smart segmentation and the automation has been a real admin lift for us where it cleared a lot of our plate.

While we're three companies, we're in enough countries that I might have seven new hire onboarding checklists - you know, not only customizing to the brand that you sit in but also customizing to where you sit in the world. You might have different compliance training, different things that you need to do.

And so knowing that the system is working in the background based on how we've programmed it to customize that experience for each of those learners has really made the onboarding process a lot faster and simpler and less confusing.

You know, we have three companies, but they are all in the experience space, and so a lot of their trainings might have similar titles or similar names, but they might be targeted just to a process for one of the specific brands. And so allowing our content creators to say, "Hey, this is actually who needs to see it, and this is who doesn't need to see it" has really alleviated a lot of confusion too.

Terri: Yeah, and I think having those flexible audiences, especially because you are not only just serving global teams but very specific brands and having those identities as well, and letting them come in and feel like it's their own brand content - you know, they're all in one platform together, but they can feel like it's localized and personalized for themselves. And that goes a long way of making sure that people keep coming back to the platform because they know that they're going to see exactly what they need to see, they're going to be able to access it, and then, of course, on your side behind the scenes, being able to automate those assignments and that shared content just to keep that process flowing throughout the year. I think is really important. It's how you can remove some of those complexities that you've probably been dealing with over the years.

So wanted to dive into a little bit around, you know, the importance of your live sessions. And one of the big things that I know that The Opus Group is doing is running a lot of instructor-led training. And I know running that globally and even, you know, in person, you know, through virtual sessions, the amount of time it probably takes. So I would love to dive into that a little bit more with you, Marissa, and hear a little bit around those instructor-led trainings that you're running at The Opus Group.

Marissa: Yeah, absolutely. So we are using instructor-led trainings not only for our new hire orientation program, which you see here, which is broken into three different sessions over three different days, but we are also using it for wellness workshops, thought leadership sessions, any sort of longer certification - you know, how to have difficult conversations or - so we have a lot of single sessions where we just cover the topic in the hour. But we also have a lot of multi-day sessions like new hire orientation or, you know, some of our leadership development series. So we're using both features.

And you know, at the end of the day, there is a lot of value in the on-demand experience and being able to have, you know, training accessible to you whenever you actually have time for it. But my audience produces experiences for a living. They are the experts in experiences. And so, you know, just who we are and the type of work that we're dedicated to, our team really values that live experience. They want to be able to ask questions.

And, you know, I can record a ton of content and put it up on our LMS, and you're going to get my perspective. But when we're able to bring people together for those live experiences, I get the wealth of their experience in the room, and we're able to have a much more thoughtful discussion and a lot more examples and things from all the leaders in the room. You know, so it's a pretty big part of our culture to, you know, have these live events.

And then, in addition to the topics that we want to cover, we're really striving more and more to, you know, offer multiple experiences to really suit the time zones that we're working in. You know, we started as a US-based company. We've grown a lot through acquisitions. So, you know, we practically have employees working around the sun now. So, you know, making sure that there is something for everyone that still feels like an engaging experience is really, really important to our team.

Terri: Yeah, and it brings that collaboration together. And being able to be in a live session - like, having that online experience is always great, but you're learning on your own. Being in a live session, you're learning together. And I'm sure that's - it sounds like it's quite critical for your learning strategy.

So, you know, just to hear that and see how you actually - and how do you manage it knowing that you've got these multiple time zones and scheduling, and I'm sure, you know, scheduling doesn't always happen the way we need it to be? Someone's going to cancel a session and you're going to have to move everybody around. I would love to dig into like, what are the areas that you're leveraging to make this a little bit more effortless or a bit more streamlined for the day-to-day?

Marissa: So with my role being designed to support all of our brands, a lot of times I'm inviting all of those brands to come also learn from each other where they can. And so we try and offer multiple sessions in the time zone. And so this is an example of our registration page for our new hire orientation that you see on the screen. And so if this was live, you'd be able to see that there's a dropdown and you could pick, you know, a different cohort if something happened and you needed to move to a different session. So our team utilizes that pretty heavily.

We use registration pages when seating might be limited, right? So we'll put up a registration page for any live event. But we really also want to reduce the barriers to entry for our team. They are busy, they are traveling, they are, you know, working the events on site, they're, you know, juggling, you know, multiple priorities at once to make sure that the show goes on.

And so oftentimes our team might sign up for session one, their week changes, it looks a little different than they thought it would, and they have the ability to come in here and go, "Oops, actually move me to session two." And they can do that to themselves. It sends them the updated calendar invite to their calendar, and that is really helpful.

To your point, sometimes things go wrong, right? A guest speaker calls in sick, or, you know, something else happens in the company and we have to move a session. And it's really easy for us to, you know, in the backend just change the date and time, and everyone who's registered gets notified.

But, you know, going back to that part about trying to reduce the barriers to entry, if I have unlimited seats on something, we just automatically register the teams that that content is appropriate to, and it's pushed out to their calendar. And we share with them - you know, we'll let you know if something's mandatory, but we want to make sure that if you have time, you know, it's happening, it's on your calendar, if it's something you're interested in, rather than really relying on the team, you know, in the midst of all the other things that they're managing in a day to, you know, carve out time to go find those things.

There are times where we're like, "Yeah, this is meant to be a small group session, you'll need to sign up." But the bulk of our instructor-led training, we usually just push out to the team, and then if they need to make changes, they can.

Terri: Yeah, and I'm curious - I love that approach because I think it keeps it very collaborative and open-ended. How do you find that for your attendance? Like, what is your attendance rate on those sorts of sessions where you're pre-registering them and they get to choose to attend?

Marissa: Yeah, I would say any time that we pre-register them, our attendance is much stronger - probably three to four times what I would get if I just wait for them to sign up. You know, and we do a lot of promotional efforts. We have a monthly newsletter we call the Learning Letter that goes out to let everyone know what's coming down the pipeline for the next two months. You know, we have a Slack channel where we push learning updates too and, you know, reminders. And, you know, we promote sessions at any company all-hands meetings. And so we're doing a lot of internal marketing to get people there.

But ultimately, our highest attendance is always when we can reduce the items on someone's to-do list, or they can keep it, you know, they can keep it on their calendar in case they have time and, you know, make that game day decision.

Terri: That's amazing, and what that really signals to me, and I'm sure to probably everyone who's listening, is that you've got active learners who want to be at live sessions, which is phenomenal. And I know that the team at The Opus Group is using a combination of the Continu calendar integration and the Zoom integration as well. So I'm sure that's - I mean, we like to say with the workshops is that, you know, with our integrations and the way it's built, that the only thing you need to do is run the session. Everything else should just run for you in the background and should manage it. And hopefully, if you're not actually the facilitator, all you do is set up the workshop and you forget about it, and you can just enjoy attending one of those sessions.

So I'm glad to hear that you've got such an excited group of team members that want to join sessions and you've got such high attendance because that really speaks to the work that you're all doing in these facilitator sessions at The Opus Group. So really great, impressive numbers there, Marissa, to have such high attendance.

Marissa: Thank you. Yeah, and we have a really thoughtful team. You know, the beauty of creating live experiences is that everything you did last year is not necessarily new and exciting this year, right? So they're always wanting to learn new things, innovate, learn from each other, get exposure to, you know, things that will spark a creative idea or help them be a little more innovative.

So usually we find that we offer the recorded session later or the on-demand to, you know, fight that sense of FOMO if someone just couldn't make it to something they were really excited about. But we do, you know, primarily try to make sure that we're having that live experience so it's more of a discussion than watching a recording.

Terri: Yeah, and how many - I mean, I don't want to put you on the spot, but how many workshops do you think you're running year after year?

Marissa: Well, year after year it's gotten bigger every year. So, you know, we add a new initiative or, you know, there's a technology initiative that maybe we need to, you know, provide additional support for the teams. I don't have this year's numbers on me, but in 2024, we provided about 45 hours of unique live content that was available to all of our employees. That didn't include hire orientation or anything that was only targeted to a small group. But yeah, we had about 45 hours in addition to the on-demand additional resources, you know, kind of some of the off-the-shelf training that we provide.

Terri: That's fantastic, and just being able to do that at scale and across multiple time zones is phenomenal. So yeah, very amazing work there, Marissa.

Of course, but yeah, I mean, workshops is a big part of your day and a big part of your learners' days as well. I know another piece that has been pretty a big part of your lives at The Opus Group is that onboarding. You mentioned it a few times, and I know that's - onboarding processes and especially for a team of yours that is like across the globe, and you're acquiring different brands and different organizations. That must be something that, you know, takes up a lot of the time.

So I'd love to know, like, what are the challenges of integrating these different company cultures and processes? Because I'm sure different organizations, different countries - what does that look like and what are those challenges?

Marissa: Yeah, so we work off of a shared services model, so we kind of see our admin teams as the engine behind the brands, right, that are going out there and creating those fantastic events and experiences for our team. So we've really tried to streamline those processes to make them less painful, right, for everyone.

And from a learning and development standpoint, once we had the integration from our HRIS system set up with Continu, there is a lot less work on the L&D side for onboarding. So once something's created in our HRIS, you know, by the very next day, everything is imported over to Continu. Their username is there. We also are using a single sign-on platform. So for our learners, that first day when they come ready to go and get started with things, they have the Continu tile on their dashboard. They don't need a password, they don't need, you know, a username. It's all been preset up for them, and their Continu profile has been pre-populated by our system of record, right, our HRIS.

And so logistically, there's been a lot less for us to do from that standpoint, which has meant my team can focus on the things that feel more important now because all of this is seamlessly happening. But probably wouldn't be more important if it wasn't already, you know, being set up through, you know, SFTPs and integrations.

And so we can really focus on the part of the onboarding that the employee experiences. So we're focused heavily on, you know, what's their experience in new hire orientation in that live session, and then what happens after orientation is over.

You know, some of the most frustrating things when you onboard to a new company is you feel a little lost. People flooded you with information, but you don't necessarily know where to go find that. Or I heard about a template, or I swear they told me there was a process. I have no idea what they told me in week one, right?

So we spend a lot of time cultivating very customized learning paths and customized - we call it our checklist, but it's basically a learning track that goes out to the right target audience to be like, "Okay, cool, you graduated new hire orientation. Congratulations. Now here's your next steps."

And so we kind of start to piece out content to them. And, you know, we do have a responsibility for continuing to make sure that content is active and updated and, you know, still relevant. But we aren't sitting there manually emailing these checklists anymore to people. We were back in the day, but we aren't emailing checklists, you know, we aren't emailing reminders to people to finish them. You know, all of that is happening through Continu.

You know, if someone misses a deadline, their, you know, their manager, their trainer kind of gets that gentle tap on the shoulder of like, "Hey, can you check in on this new hire? Let's make sure they have everything they need to succeed." And all of that is automated.

So from my team's perspective, you know, we can pull reporting monthly, quarterly, and check on the progress of things kind of holistically and look to see if anyone's falling through the cracks and maybe not getting what they need to succeed. But it's just not this huge manual lift anymore, right? We could look at the whole picture all at once and kind of assess where the team is.

Terri: That's amazing, and it so - really, you know, as somebody - and it's so true, like when you're joining a new organization, you know, there's so much to learn. You're trying to navigate everything, and you're trying to figure out the machine that you need to use and how do you, you know, what's the protocols for communication.

So being able to have that training not only just delivered to them as soon as they onboard but even after they complete it, that next step. So even before they question and they ask, "What is my next step here?" it's already in their inbox and it's already on their dashboard. So that must have - do you find that the ramp time has actually reduced as well? That people are ramping up quicker because of that, or is it just been a little bit smoother, a bit more streamlined overall?

Marissa: I think it's been mostly smoother and streamlined from an admin point of view, right? There is still a ton for them to learn when they get into their brand or they get into their department, and there's still a lot of - like, that is the bulk of the really important training, right? Our goal in onboarding is to make sure that you don't feel like you were dropped into like a pond with no life jacket, and you know who you've joined, and you understand, you know, a little bit more about The Opus Group, and you understand where your resources are and your training, and, you know, you kind of have a roadmap for your journey joining us. And that's really what we are focusing primarily on onboarding - that all those tools are at your fingertips, and, you know, we're fighting overwhelm that's really natural when you start a new job.

I think what's really been cool to see is kind of after that onboarding experience, we have some of our departments now starting to build their own customized like, "Okay, now what's the next level for the brand, and now what's the next level for our department?" And so what it's really allowed us to do is be more strategic in that learner's like journey, right, as they're onboarding, as opposed to, you know, flooding them with a ton of information from a lot of different sources.

You know, the department trainers can also see what's going on, and they know what to expect when we're done and where to pick up the baton and where their content starts to, you know, roll out. And so I think it's just - I don't know that the new hire would, you know, know the difference between back in the day when we were doing things more manually and now, but it's just given us kind of a framework to strategically work off of each other from the different departments and the different sources.

Terri: That makes sense. Yeah, it really allows you to drive that focused learning from day one, which is a hard thing to do because it always makes - you know, when you're going through an onboarding, you're like, "Okay, it does feel like a bit of a checklist. Here's all the things we need day 1, day 10," and then after that, you - it kind of drops off a lot.

A lot of - from what we hear a lot of the time is once somebody's onboarded, maybe it's that first 15 days, maybe it's the first 30 days, maybe some teams have longer processes, it's the first 90 days, but at that point after that, you're on your own.

So it really sounds like The Opus Group has been able to not only eliminate the manual side of it, streamline it, but it's allowed you to open up other opportunities for that training and for that ongoing development and for that whole lifecycle journey from that learner. So that's amazing, Marissa.

And I'm sure, you know, of course, the new hires probably don't know all the work that goes behind the scenes, but they probably feel a lot more equipped than they probably were years ago when you had a different process. So it does speak volumes, and I'm sure it's probably reducing a lot of that administration time, which is really what that big part of onboarding is.

But yeah, I'm curious, you know, like, what have you been able to achieve now with Continu that were difficult to achieve before?

Marissa: Yeah, I think, I mean, part of it is the speed up of onboarding, right? We - it's not so much that our onboarding process takes less time, but we get through the administrative or the administrative, you know, first steps much quicker, and then they get into a little less - they're pulled into less directions, right? They, like you said, they have a little focused journey during that ramp-up period.

You know, something we're really proud of is that our L&D team isn't the bottleneck to using the LMS or hosting content in the LMS anymore, right? I think I mentioned when we were in our first initial system, we had one content contributor outside of HR. We now have 30. And so that's really important to me.

You know, our stats look really impressive, and I would love to be able to take credit for it, but the reality is there are 30 individuals in there with myself and my counterpart, you know, updating content, creating something new, realizing there's a resource needed on their team, and maybe they were already going to do a department training on it anyway in a team meeting, but now they're going to record it and make sure it's there for the next new hire or someone who missed that meeting.

And so, you know, again, I don't have this year's numbers in front of me, but last year we were two years into our Continu journey, and we had about 8,250 pieces of unique content in Continu. And we are a learning department of two, right? And my counterpart also supports talent acquisition. I promise you, we did not create those 8,000-plus pieces of content by ourselves, right? That was definitely a team effort.

And I attribute that a lot to the system being so easy to use or so easy to edit. You know, a SME moves to a different department and a new SME takes over, it's very easy for them to go into their work product and make the updates that might need to happen over time or upload a new recording to an already, you know, built workshop. So that has really helped us, I would say, a lot.

Try and think of other things. I mean, last year we realized that we had over 35,000 views in the platform, and I was really surprised by that. I think I asked my CSM, I'm like, "Are you sure? Like, are you sure?" Worked it out, and, you know, our learners were going in there on average about 60 times a year.

And for an L&D team that only started 5 years ago, we were really, really glad to see that the input that not only we are making in HR but our SMEs across the org is building content seemed to have that return. Like, people are going to it, they're looking for stuff in Continu, whether it's something to help in their own growth and development here at the company, or maybe they were just looking for that resource or template they know they got trained on. But where was that job aid again, you know?

So I think the system being so easy to use, we're starting to see just it to be a natural reaction to like go in there and look first, and that's really encouraging for us to see.

Terri: I will say though, 8,000 pieces of content in 2 years is phenomenal work. And not only you creating content, it is actually landing, which is the big piece of it all. And it just speaks to, of course, the wealth of knowledge that you're providing, but that your learners are heavily engaged and wanting that training. So hopefully they're not going to expect another 8,000 pieces of content in the next 2 years, but I'm sure your team will rise to the occasion.

You mentioned it a few times, Marissa, that, you know, it's clear and it's simple user experience for that speed of effectiveness. Like, I'm curious, like, you know, branding - you know, you serve many brands, and branding is very important to the team at The Opus Group. I would love to hear, you know, how has the UX been a strategic advantage for you and the team?

Marissa: Yeah, so part of what kind of drew us to the platform was the simple organization along the top. So this is a snapshot of ours, and each of those categories, you know, with the exception of Featured and Workshops that come with the platform, we chose what that category was going to be across the top. And we even have more categories than you can see in this view because they've been so helpful for the team.

So if we are looking for leadership content, or we have a section that's just dedicated to our new hires, or, you know, wellness, and that's been really, really helpful because these are the topics that probably apply to the largest audience.

The Workshop tab is like super helpful because you can see everything that myself and my counterpart have planned out and have already got on the books for the year. So even if we haven't started to promote it, the team can go in and look and see what's coming down the pipeline. You know, we have some stuff in there that's already booked for November. I'm not going to start asking people to sign up yet or, you know, blast it to their calendars, but if it's something really important to someone, they can start kind of planning in advance.

And the search feature is really accurate, you know. We have the ability to tag all of our pieces of content with all sorts of tags, you know, very custom to the best practice or the brand or whatever that we're working with. And so it's just - it's not a lift to train the team. In fact, usually by the time we cover it in new hire orientation, they've already been in there, and it's a little bit of a redundant topic where they're like, "Oh yeah, I was in there. I started my new hire checklist already," you know, because it's just so easy to use. They're not waiting for a training for us.

You know, we do a little bit more training for our content contributors, but not - I mean, honestly, the platform when you're building content is still pretty intuitive. The training that we tend to do from an L&D standpoint on that is best practices for making the platform user-friendly for everyone, you know? So they tend to be internal best practices - remembering to segment your content so you're not confusing, you know, learners in another department, or, you know, just knowing how we can help them from an admin standpoint in setting up workflows if this is something they're going to continually push out, or reporting, or, you know, any of the extra bells and whistles that they may not have.

So we don't - you know, usually we can sit down with someone for, you know, 10, 15 minutes and run them through the details they need, and we're, you know, ready to fly on letting them get in there and start to build.

Terri: Oh, that's fantastic. And it, you know, Explore is that really that ultimate hub for that learning and being able to, you know, not only have Explore and having them go in and find content that's relevant to them, but also having that smart segmentation so that, you know, it is also still localized for them so they still feel that they can engage. But then you as an admin can make sure you're targeting it what they're engaging with as well.

So it sounds like that's really working well for The Opus Group. And, and of course, having those AI-powered learnings just amplifies what you're putting out there. So you don't have to promote it. It's going to continually recommend them content and be a little bit more targeted. So I'm sure that probably helps as they're getting in there and they're liking content and sharing and collaborating with each other.

So I'm glad that that Explore experience has been so well-received, and it's nice to know when people are onboarding that they know the system that they're getting into and you don't have to train them on it. Makes your life a little bit easier as well.

Marissa: Well, and I think, you know, we got to that 8,000 pieces of content partially because we were able to take other resources that maybe weren't traditional training - maybe it was the job aid, maybe it was the best practice that went with that training, or a template around that subject. And even though those things probably live in our work files, we've been able to link to the original source. So as our teams update their work files, update that template, update that best practice, we're not doing a ton of rework in Continu because Continu is always tapping into the source of that file.

And so, you know, there are a lot of things - you know, it's not necessarily 8,000 trainings that we're sitting and doing, right? It might be a training that comes with a job aid, and we're also going to link to the best practice or the template. So that from the learner point of view, "Oh my gosh, I forgot to where to find that." A lot of times I can search it and Continu, even if that's going to push me out to, you know, a Google Drive or a team site or, you know, whatever the team needs to use or wherever the source file lives - you know, Box, Microsoft, Google, whatever they're trying to get to - we can, you know, try and match them where they are and hopefully reduce some time in just searching for things that you need to do your job.

Terri: Yeah, and you're meeting your learners where they're at, which is a big piece of that - not having to have them search and hunt for things and to tap you on the shoulder, even, you know, the virtual shoulder, and say, "Hey Marissa, where is this? I can't find X, Y, or Z." So being able to meet your learners where you're at really does speak to having a, you know, having that good user experience does actually translate to better learning outcomes. I think that is what you're seeing - you know, not only making it easier for you to create that content, but what does it actually do for that engagement and that adoption over time.

And that is the big piece and where I think you've seen some of your best numbers because you have such high adoption across the full platform, which, you know, being able to have - I think, you know, your numbers are up on the screen right now, which are pretty impressive. You know, you've got 96% user adoption rate, which is extremely high. 99% learner engagement - I don't know you can get to 100%, Marissa. I mean, probably don't set a KPI of 150%, but you're definitely - if you've set a KPI of anything around this number, you're over - you're making it over, you know, 10 times over. And then having the same, you know, high customer satisfaction as well.

But speaks to the volume of the work that you're doing, but also that you're creating these engaging programs and that people are revisiting. They're not just coming in once a year, once a month, and then never going back into the platform because you are giving them - you know, you're meeting them where they're at. That content is always, you know, very engaging, and it's sort of evergreen, it sounds like. You know, being able to go in and update your content, make those changes, make it really easy to use. So these are really impressive numbers. I think we should all, you know, be really just impressed with this because it is huge. I don't think you can get better than that, really.

Marissa: Well, I'm not going to lie - we had a little bit of a secret strategy here. You know, we spent a lot of time when we were moving from one LMS to Continu really talking about, you know, "How's it going to go? What rolls out first? What do we do?" And one of the first things that we rolled out, while not particularly exciting, was some of our compliance training because we truly felt that especially after having a not user-friendly LMS, we really felt like the adoption would happen if we had a reason to get everyone in.

And so, you know, we have a lot of things that apply to everyone but maybe aren't going to meet you where you're at in that moment, right? I can run a wellness workshop, and you might be like, "For my wellness, I actually need that hour back," right? And that might be okay. That might be where you are for that moment. But we all have to finish our compliance training.

And so we made sure when we launched, we had a lot of fun, like, interesting, innovative, you know, workshops and things for people to participate in. But we really tried to get everyone into the new system within that first four to six weeks to finish their compliance training in order for them to see how easy it was. Because, you know, I can tell you it's easy, but if you actually get to experience it, you're probably more likely to be like, "Oh, that wasn't a big thing." You know, that was right at my fingertips.

So, you know, that I think that really helped us with this adoption. And, you know, we continue to do that with our new hires is, you know, they get all their new hire onboarding materials. There's stuff they need to do immediately. Eventually, their compliance training hits within that first 30 days. But they have to be in it. And then, you know, after that, it's up to their own desire and motivation of, you know, how many times they come in and revisit something or decide to participate.

Terri: Yeah, but that is still amazing. I mean, compliance training is that level of requirement, but, you know, from your numbers alone, yes, they have to - they do feel that requirement that they have to come in and do that yearly compliance that everybody has to do and nobody wants to do it. But once they get in there, they can see that there's a lot more in the platform for them that really helps support them.

And, you know, what these numbers show is that the informal is actually driving the formal learning and vice versa. So you're giving them a lot of opportunity, and having that good user experience - you know, you don't get to 99% just from compliance training alone. It is a lot of the hard work that you're all doing. So, again, massive efforts. And I don't know what your KPIs are for 2025, but either way, you're going to make those numbers this year.

Marissa: Thank you.

Terri: Well, we'd love to - you know, one of the things you mentioned, Marissa, and I think it's really exciting about how many content creators you actually have, how many subject matter experts are in the platform. So how are you empowering those content creators? You know, you've got, you know, 4x content production increases. Like, how did you get that kind of level of scale? Was it - what was that sort of secret source behind getting in, you know, so many, you know, subject matter experts?

Marissa: Yeah, well, we didn't start at 30. So when we first launched Continu, our first like initiative was just to get everyone in the platform as a user. And then, as soon as we felt like that was really settled - you know, old training records were imported in, our content was there, people were excited and using it - we really switched gears, and we ran a lot of train-the-trainer sessions to show them how easy Continu was. And we, you know, we built our own job aids that really had more to do with our best practice of how we wanted to use it.

And so in the beginning, we probably tapped somewhere between 12 and 15 SMEs that we knew were department trainers, right? We knew they were already doing this work, and so we wanted to help elevate their work and maybe make it a little easier.

You know, sometimes there isn't a better experience than having that one-on-one training, right, where someone is totally customized to you. But what we often find is, you know, after you've had that one-on-one training, you've asked a few questions, you've reached out a couple times, and then if your trainer is not available for that next set of questions, it can be really discouraging.

And so we really tried to motivate our subject matter experts to say, "Hey, you're a wealth of knowledge. You're already doing this training. You've built this great program. Put it in Continu for when you're just too busy to have that one-on-one conversation." And what we found was a lot of people that had been to the live training, they also wanted to go back and revisit that thing, you know?

And we started asking our team to record their training differently. So instead of having an hour-long session where I lecture to you, we started breaking it up into smaller chunks, especially when you get to that job-related training, so you could have that microlearning moment. So if someone had already been through the training a couple of times and they were like, "I just forgot how to do a pivot table," right, they could go back to the five minutes on a pivot table or something, you know, that was just a nuance of that process.

And then it really empowered the learners to like go find it on their own a little bit because they knew they wouldn't have to, you know, sort through an hour worth of content to get through things.

So we started with a lot of train-the-trainer workshops. As we have, you know, we're almost coming up on our third year in the platform. As we've kind of evolved our program, we actually find that we're doing a lot less tapping trainers on the shoulder and, you know, asking them to partner with us and volunteering to help them get started. We're actually having a lot more of those subject matter experts come to us, and they're like, "Hey, we have an idea for a training, or we see a need for this for our department. Can you help me figure out how to become a content contributor?"

And so, you know, our team is doing a lot more like those 20-minute like crash courses that really is more about, you know, sharing our best practices and, you know, tips and tricks and things that we know that work well. We still have a whole path in Continu that's called Train the Trainer for content contributors, and people can still go through and rewatch those trainings that we gave them. They can go find the job aids and the specifics. But primarily, we're just doing these quick microlearning moments and really empowering them to start getting in there and playing with the tools because from an admin perspective, I don't feel a need to gatekeep, right?

The profiles are already set up the way I need them to use the platform. So, you know, I might go browse through new content here and there, but I don't really need to be the bottleneck in the process. They can publish on their own. And quite honestly, you know, I came from the event side of the business, but I am not as up on our event processes for each of the brands the way I was when I sat in those departments, right? I sit in HR now. I'm not your subject matter expert for a lot of the things that we do.

And so, you know, from an admin perspective, I also don't feel like I have any business like policing their content because they're really the experts at what they do, and they're the ones that we need training the new hires or training, you know, people to add some skills to their resume.

Terri: Yeah, that's amazing. I think, and being able to empower them to do their best work is just amazing. And I think that's where you have some of the best - you know, we've talked about some of the great adoption you've had and some of the content that you've been able to produce over the last couple of years, which is just phenomenal. And being able to scale it.

And I think that really leads us to like, how has Continu, you know, have been able to further develop that scaling of your content creation? You know, you mentioned giving them that power. What else have you seen that's allowed you to scale?

Marissa: I think a lot of it, and we talked about this a little bit earlier, is also that ability to tag to the source in other platforms. And, you know, previously I was doing a lot of version control work - "Oops, that recording is out of date. Well, I need to archive that whole thing and bring another one in, and I got to rebuild 99% of the same thing but swap out a video," right?

And for the way we operate now, once the framework is there in the system, I can make those little micro changes in a matter of minutes, and I'm not having to redo a whole lot of work. So that has helped a lot.

You know, having those 30 other passionate, incredibly talented individuals that help us build content has really been huge. But also just - and again, I'm a little bit of a broken record here - but being able to segment the content, you know, our teams might need access to slightly different processes or slightly different information depending on what client they support, what department they sit in, what brand they're in, what country they live in.

And making sure that all of our content creators have that ability to tell us exactly who this content is for before they even hit publish has really taken off a ton of the admin work. So they can focus more on creating the content that's really important to their department and is going to make that impact. And from an HR perspective, we can focus more on coaching and mentoring people through it the first few times if they want the extra help and less on, you know, checking the boxes, so to speak.

Terri: Yeah, that's phenomenal. I think, you know, just being able to scale those efforts and make those updates and having so much content in the system, it can feel overwhelming how do you manage it. But having, you know, hearing from you about it takes, you know, minutes to update something and see those changes means that it's always evergreen. So yeah, amazing efforts for you and your for the team.

What would you say to fellow learning leaders seeking a solution for training and are considering adopting Continu? What makes it an ideal solution?

Marissa: That's a really good question. So I mean, obviously, we all as learning leaders, we're always like assessing for the functionality we need right now. I think the thing I have learned the most and what has kept this a positive relationship is that the platform itself is not stagnant either. You know, your team is always developing new features and pushing things out, and we get newsletters, and, you know, my CSM Matt, who's amazing, is always walking us through like, "Hey, here's what's coming down the pipeline," so that we can also strategize like, "Oh, maybe I'm working on something too, but maybe I want to do it a slightly different way when I know that functionality is coming."

So having a platform that also feels like it's growing with us - you know, I couldn't have predicted five years ago exactly what I needed in an LMS today because we aren't the same company that we were. You know, if we were having this conversation right at the start of our relationship with Continu, I'd be telling you I have a handful of people in London, and, you know, I'm primarily, you know, working with a US audience. And that's just not the company we are anymore. We've been really fortunate to grow, and, you know, now our internal team is a global audience, and that, you know, adds a complexity to what we need.

And so as we've grown and as things have changed here, I've always had a partner on the other side. You know, I've been a customer before where I feel like there's an allocated number of minutes, and you've spent those minutes. Like, you know, maybe they don't have as much time for you. They've moved on to the next customer.

But, you know, every time we've bumped into something that we're like, "Ooh, we need to do this just a little bit differently now," or "Oh, this really worked well, and now something's changed internally and we want to change how we do it," you know, Matt, our CSM, has been a great partner in trying to help us figure out a workaround. Or, you know, we're jumping on, you know, a call with, you know, JB and support, or, you know, there's always someone there to kind of help us figure out, "Huh, maybe we're not using this the way other people are. Maybe there's a different way we need to do it. And what's the functionality and what we could do?"

So my biggest advice for anyone trying to look for a new LMS would be, you know, looking for the company that's also going to grow with you and it's not just this like off-the-shelf piece, you know, product that's, you know, been the exact same for the last 10 years. Because I think, you know, our workforce is always changing, our needs are always changing. And so we look for partners that are also changing and growing and developing, you know, with us.

And, you know, we may not always get everything on our wish list, but we're always able to have a conversation and figure out like, even if we can't get the tool to work exactly how we want, there's always usually a solution of how we can achieve the results we want, even if it's not the way I originally envisioned at the very beginning of the conversation, you know?

And so I've really, really appreciated that as we've gone through and, you know, gone through many phases - transferring everything over from our old LMS, getting everything set up, you know, launching the content creators. You know, there's been a very open dialogue back and forth, which has really been beneficial for us.

Terri: Yeah, yeah, and we do like to think of ourselves as that extension of your team, especially our customer success team, because you work so closely with them. And, you know, being able to scale with you is a big piece of it. You know, learning evolves, and so should the platform. And that's why you are seeing so many updates, and you are seeing, you know, that the feedback that you share with us makes it into our roadmap. I think that is something that we really have prided ourselves on for, you know, since the life of Continu. And I know that's never going to change.

So we really appreciate that feedback, and of course, we're excited about, you know, the next three years together or as many years as we get to work together. So we're excited about that future with you.

So want to just say a very big thank you to Marissa for sharing her insights, sharing the wins that The Opus Group has had over the last two and a half years of working with us at Continu, and just, you know, some of those amazing metrics that she's been able to share from the great work that they're all doing. So thank you so much for joining us today. We really appreciate it.