For over 25 years, GT’s Living Foods (responsible for that Synergy Kombucha you know and love) has revolutionized how we integrate fermented foods into our lives, spreading the message that food can be medicine. As a company centered around growth with purpose, GT’s recently applied these same values to learning internally. Through the work of a small but mighty Talent Management team, they set out to improve their learning and development output, and Go1 was ready to help with a new partnership. 

Ever since, the results have been outstanding. From a 3x increase in active learners to boosting engagement, developing leaders, and staying compliant, we’ll share every step of GT’s L&D transformation.  

Building a thriving L&D program from scratch  

Before 2019, formal L&D didn’t exist at GT’s Living Foods. They realized it was time for a change and hired a VP of HR. By 2022, that had evolved into a one-person L&D team, consisting of powerhouse Sindy Ruiz, Talent Management Business Partner.  

However, this small team doesn’t stop Sindy from having a massive impact. The same year Sindy joined, GT’s partnered with their first content aggregator, OpenSesame. Within that year, their expectations weren’t being met, and they switched to Go1. 

“The reason why we went with Go1 instead was because of that multiple-course functionality,” Sindy explains.  

“Having employees be able to search their own courses (from a large library) was a huge selling point since we were so accustomed to having to curate content ourselves.”   

Whereas with OpenSesame, Sindy could select just 25 courses to cover the whole business, with Go1, she has access to the entire content library of 85,000+ courses.  

“85,000 courses is hard to beat. That's a lot of content,” Sindy enthused.  

This switch allowed GT’s to kick their L&D efforts into overdrive, delivering more personalized, targeted training. Of course, during the switch, proving value to senior leaders proved tricky—a familiar obstacle for many L&D teams, but patience and partnership led to success.  

“Getting everyone accustomed to a new platform is always difficult, plus making sure that the leadership team saw the value in it,” Sindy said. 

“Luckily, the second year showed much improvement, and our learners now feel comfortable using the platform.”  

Ever since, the results speak for themselves. Demand for learning has increased steadily, with active learners increasing by 3x—from just a handful initially to over 300 active learners today. 

“Since last year, we've become kind of hyper-focused on training and development, learning, and closing skill gaps,” Sindy added. 

Instituting a culture of learning through GT's University 

With their L&D team established, a partnership with Go1 in place, and more demand for learning than ever, it was time for GT’s to take the next step. So, they established GT’s University.  

 “[Employees] already know, whatever I'm looking for, GT’s University is the place to go,” Sindy explained.  

This structure has transformed GT’s approach to leadership training. Sindy explains that previously, they had issues with leaders being promoted without the proper training or skills. New leaders didn’t have the time or resources to proactively train employees or anticipate skill gaps. Now, Sindy ensures that “managers are learning to be managers [sometimes] working backward and also implementing training ahead of time.” 

The need for proper training and anticipating skill gaps is crucial for all employees and applies to individual contributors too. GT’s data showed that one of the main reasons people quit was a lack of career advancement opportunities—employees felt like they were stagnating. So, they set about fixing this. 

“We wanted to make sure that for the people that don't necessarily want to be promoted [but] want to know how to do their job better or grow within their actual current job, we also wanted to target them," Sindy recalls.  

Additionally, this proactivity has helped the company stay on top of its compliance requirements.  

“It also allows us to get ahead before we fall out of compliance, which is really nice, because before we were always playing catch up,” Sindy notes.  

Along with compliance and industry-specific training, Sindy says their most popular searches are for communication, leadership training, conflict management, and teamwork. These types of courses are where she has noticed the greatest behavioral change, as employees are now willing to complete non-mandatory training to close skill gaps or prepare for career moves. 

She attributes this change in learner attitudes to Go1’s ease-of-use, sharing that “every time you update the platform and make it more user-friendly it makes it easier for us to push that message too, because now [employees] don't have to figure out a complicated tool.” 

As interest in learning has grown, GT’s learning goals have become increasingly ambitious. Currently, that involves gamifying learning and rolling out Individual Development Plans (IDPs) to learners on their admin side.  

So far, most of their L&D efforts have centered on the production side of the business, which houses approximately 800 of GT’s 1,000 employees. However, Sindy is now turning her attention to the remaining 200 employees on the admin side. 

“We're going to be focusing heavily this year on individual development plans, and Go1 is going to be the top hitter to help us with that, because part of the individual development plan is to go and develop or learn something on your own,” Sindy says.  

On top of rolling out these IDPs, GT’s have also focused on gamifying learning to make it more engaging. So far, they have been announcing top Learners of the Month, and recently launched a monthly raffle with gift card prizes for employees who complete the designated monthly courses.  

Advice from GT’s Living Foods for L&D teams 

Building a successful L&D program from scratch is never easy—as Sindy has learned firsthand. So, what advice would she offer? 

“Make it a more fun experience to learn,” she says. “When employees see we are willing to invest in their growth, they want to stay with us until they are no longer growing.”  

On top of this, she adds that the breadth of content Go1 provides has made her life as an L&D professional much easier.  

“Go use [Go1]! There is so much available, we have yet to find a gap with learning content for both English and Spanish for our entire team…the platform and integration with WorkRamp has made it extremely easy for our team to learn how to use and digest content in a self-enrolled way,” she said.  

“Use it and abuse it. There is so much content to take advantage of, help it help you gain the skillset you either lack or would like to improve on.”   

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From a 3x increase in active learners to boosting engagement, developing leaders, and staying compliant, we’ll share every step of GT’s L&D transformation.

From seed to success: How GT’s Living Foods built a thriving L&D team from scratch

From a 3x increase in active learners to boosting engagement, developing leaders, and staying compliant, we’ll share every step of GT’s L&D transformation. 

From seed to success: How GT’s Living Foods built a thriving L&D team from scratch 

As a global leader in licensed sports merchandise, Fanatics aims to be number one – not just for their customers but also for their employees. However, Dawn Stopha, Director of Global Programs, was faced with numerous requests for employee development opportunities. She knew that to be number one, her team had to make some changes to Fanatics’ learning and development offering. Enter, Go1.  

Fanatics’ workforce is comprised of 10,000 employees across the globe, from salaried corporate workers to hourly distribution center workers. With such a vast and varied employee base, the company needed to find diverse learning content that could meet a plethora of unique needs. 

Providing employees with learning content wasn’t a new endeavor for Fanatics, but they knew their content offerings needed significant improvement. Before they started their vendor search, Fanatics primarily used off-the-shelf content and push training. “We would develop things quickly using PowerPoint and just push out content, not really getting to know who our audience was,” Dawn reflected. “Nothing was translated; nothing was done from a high-level safety or compliance standpoint.” 

To ensure they got exactly what they needed from their new content provider, Dawn and her team created a checklist of priorities they used to evaluate different vendors. While the list featured many diverse needs, their main priorities were top-notch compliance training, learning content in a variety of languages, and an easy-to-use content library. 

Thirteen vendor interviews later, Dawn and her team had settled on their top two contenders. When they presented these options to the entire learning and development team, Go1 stood out as the crowd favorite. Next, they presented their options to the chief people officer – and her response solidified their decision. “When we reviewed it with her, we [presented] Go1 first,” Dawn recounted. “She pretty much said, ‘I don't need to see anything else.’” 

So, why did Dawn’s team ultimately decide to partner with Go1? Dawn says many distinct factors made Go1 the obvious choice. 

First, it was important to Dawn that her team would be able to establish a strong relationship with whichever vendor they selected. “You can enter into a contract with any vendor, and if the relationship with them is not there, then it just doesn't work,” Dawn said. “You're in it for the long haul over the life of the contract, and you really need to have great relationships with everyone that you're going to be talking to.” 

Dawn was pleased to find that Go1 exceeded her expectations for the relationship between the two companies. “There's not been any situation where Go1 has not helped us find something,” she said. “It has been the easiest vendor relationship that we've had." 

Go1 also fulfilled Fanatics’ need for high-quality compliance content. When choosing compliance training, Dawn had to consider many different state laws and regulations. “I think about states like California, New York, Connecticut, Illinois, where their laws for employees are so strict. We needed to be able to say, let's take this training, we're going to review it, and then we're going to be able to provide it to our employees so that they're covered,” Dawn said. “We found a couple different [Go1] courses. Anytime we went back to our legal team, all of them were top-notch.” 

In recent years, Fanatics has undergone a generational change and, consequently, a shift in their company culture. Fanatics employees currently span six generations, with 82% of the workforce made up of millennials and Gen Z. Dawn loves that Go1’s wide range of content means there’s something for all learning styles, including the younger generations. 

“What we had to do was really shift to meet the changing culture of the employees that were coming into Fanatics,” Dawn said. “The Go1 content is everything from podcasts to short, quick microbursts of learning, to now, they're moving into virtual reality. It really, really entertains the generations that we have now in our culture.” 

What’s more, Go1’s content has allowed Fanatics to provide learning in various languages, catering to the company's global workforce. “Two months ago, we had gotten a call from someone in our Japanese office that said that they were looking for content,” Dawn said. “So, we worked with our contact at Go1, and we were able to provide them with 435 courses in Japanese. That was like a slam dunk home run because we've never provided learning to the countries that we support.” 

In addition to self-serve learning, Fanatics has incorporated Go1 content into other areas, like new hire training. Their new hire orientation supports employees through their first 90 days at the company, providing them with learning content on topics like business etiquette and business writing. 

Go1 has also enabled Fanatics to launch its first leadership development program. “We have 38 global leaders that are going through this program. All of the content is from Go1,” Dawn said. “We started the pilot two weeks ago and we've gotten rave reviews. The impact that this is having and will have down the line is going to be exponential.” 

Dawn and her team have seen incredible outcomes since partnering with Go1. Over the past year, employee engagement has risen significantly. “We increased employee engagement by 7%,” Dawn said. “And we can attribute it to the Go1 content because of the fact that we could see it in the comments. There were probably close to 9,000 comments that said, ‘Thank you,’ ‘You heard us,’ or ‘Our career growth and development has increased and here's why.” 

Dawn says the biggest impact Go1 has had on Fanatics is providing their workforce with diverse content. “What I would tell someone considering using Go1 is that I've been so pleasantly surprised with not only the foundation course topic information that's available but also the diversity,” she said. “The content is engaging. It's not boring. It's content that will keep you energized.” 

For more insights, subscribe to the Go1 newsletter to stay on top of all the latest L&D trends. Or, you can book a demo today to find out how Go1 can help with your team’s learning needs. 

Find out how Go1’s diverse content library has helped Go1 customer Fanatics meet their goals.

Customer story: A slam dunk for Fanatics learners

KPrime Technologies is a contract sales and service organization that provides authorized sales and strategic service support across North America. They’re known for their security expertise, and they provide a complete security solution that includes security cameras, access controls, and advanced screening systems. 

Isabela de la Rosa, Training Program Manager, oversees the company’s learning management system (LMS) and the creation and delivery of training programs focused on soft skills in areas like leadership, sales, and customer service. 

We'll share how KPrime Technologies enhanced their training approach with Go1, improving their efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and leadership training.

Safety and soft skills training significantly improved employee performance and engagement. 

KPrime Technologies enhanced their training approach with Go1, improving efficiency and cost-effectiveness. 

Go1's accessibility and extensive content library made it a valuable learning tool. 

KPrime plans to continue leveraging Go1 for future training initiatives and expanding virtual training offerings. 

Before implementing Go1, Isabela and her team relied on manual training methods for onboarding new hires both in-person and virtually. They lacked a structured L&D system and the in-house expertise to curate and assign appropriate training content to teams, which posed significant challenges, particularly when dealing with a large influx of new employees. 

When Isabela was suddenly faced with the urgent need to onboard and train 120 new employees, she turned to Go1 to help her address this challenge.  

KPrime selected Go1 as their learning and development partner based on several key factors, including Go1’s partnership with UL Solutions, which KPrime used for most of their safety trainings; the broad range of safety training content available on different topics; and the seamless integration with their existing LMS. Plus, Go1 had content available in both French and English. 

“Go1 has been instrumental in simplifying the process of delivering training in both French and English, enabling KPrime to provide comprehensive training to all employees without the need for in-house subject matter expertise,” Isabela said. “The platform's accessibility and extensive content library were particularly appealing.” 

KPrime also leveraged Go1 beyond safety training, incorporating content from the Go1 library into a 21-day leadership course that helped prepare leaders for in-person sessions. 

“The impact of Go1 on KPrime's business has been significant,” said Isabela. “Safety training has enabled technicians to perform their work more effectively, while soft skills training has boosted employee confidence and engagement. We have achieved cost savings by utilizing Go1 for leadership training, with 53 leaders completing the program at a fraction of the previous cost.” 

Isabela’s ability to review and select courses that had the best ratings, the right length, and the most well-known content providers helped her choose courses that would increase engagement. And engagement has risen, with employees showing increased motivation to complete courses.  

In summary, Isabela noted, “Go1's learning ecosystem is an excellent way to broaden horizons, consolidate diverse expertise, and expand knowledge. It encourages creativity in course creation and promotes continuous learning beyond current job roles.” 

KPrime plans to continue rolling out leadership courses and expand its annual L&D calendar for employees. Isabela aims to incorporate team-building activities using Go1 content and expand its virtual live training sessions. 

KPrime Technologies paves the way for leaders with Go1

Want to skip the line? You can also download your own free copy of this case study right now. 

“[Employees] already know, whatever I'm looking for, GT’s University is the place to go,” Sindy explained.  

Joe Gregore Duffield is the learning and development specialist at the San Diego County Regional Airport Authority (SAN), an independent agency that manages the day-to-day operations of San Diego International Airport and addresses the region’s long-term air transportation needs. 

Joe’s responsibilities include creating, coordinating, and facilitating training programs for SAN’s workforce. In doing so, he helps leaders become more effective and helps employees develop their skills. 

The San Diego County Regional Airport Authority (SAN) needed to build a more robust content offering for their employees. 

SAN chose Go1 due to its easy integration with their LMS, the competitive price, and the exceptional service from Go1 employees. 

Since using Go1, the company has seen a 40% increase in both engagement and course completion rates. 

Prior to working with Go1, SAN’s learning management system (LMS) didn’t have the necessary capabilities to integrate content from other providers. This meant Joe was limited in his ability to expand the content library and provide new training for employees. 

One of Joe’s top priorities was to continue innovating by keeping up with learning trends and providing up-to-date courses. He decided that in order to do this, he’d need a more robust learning solution that offered a wider variety of course options for employees. 

Go1 stood out to Joe because it provided just what he was looking for—easy integration with the company’s LMS. However, he was also pleasantly surprised by the excellent service he received. Joe was impressed by how helpful his initial contact at Go1, Aaron Rosenberg, was, noting that “his care, patience, and understanding really helped make every conversation comfortable during the sales process.” 

Joe has also had a positive experience working with his customer success manager, Tyler Smith, who has offered support throughout Joe’s time using Go1. “Tyler has been wonderful in responding to questions that I have on content or issues we might be having,” Joe said. “He has been very approachable.” 

Since implementing Go1, it has become much easier for SAN employees to access content that helps them develop general business skills, and Joe has seen a significant increase in self-enrollment. “In the past, [learning] was sort of a challenge or just something they had to do because of compliance,” Joe recounted. “Now there’s many more options for them to take [on] their own time, at home, at their leisure, whenever they want. It’s always available to them to upskill or learn a new skill." 

While Joe has taken advantage of Go1’s general business skills content, he has also put Go1’s DE&I offerings to good use by building out a DE&I curriculum for employees. In the monthly L&D newsletter he sends to employees, he recommends featured courses as well as DE&I courses that align with current events. “I’m excited to continue to learn about the variety of options I can offer to our employees,” he said. 

Additionally, Joe just launched the “Intro to Leadership and Management 101” training, which is made up of Go1 courses. He hopes to continue creating learning programs based on business needs. 

The increased availability of courses provided by Go1 has resulted in a 40% increase in both engagement and course completions compared to previous years and their previous LMS provider. “That’s something that I’m really proud of,” Joe said. 

Now that Joe has been using Go1 for more than a year, he’s excited to see how SAN and Go1 can continue to collaborate in the future. “We love Go1,” he said. “So, we want to go further and take it to the next five years!” 

The San Diego County Regional Airport Authority has increased engagement and made learning accessible company-wide with help from Go1.

San Diego County Regional Airport Authority and Go1: Encouraging upskilling company-wide

The parent company of 15 manufacturing brands across the globe, Duravant designs, creates, and maintains highly engineered processing equipment. They develop innovative solutions and build long-term, productive relationships with their customers. 

Prior to using Go1, Duravant had no unified L&D program. Each of their operating companies (OCs) was left to address learning individually, either onsite or manually, with no way to track course progress and completions.  

With feedback flooding in from employees asking for training, it was clear to Jess Guidici, Director of Talent Management at Duravant, that they needed a centralized learning system capable of providing insights and data on the entire company’s learning progress. 

Backed by Duravant’s leadership, who highly value the benefits of ongoing education, Jess set out to thoroughly evaluate a wide array of content providers in search of the best fit for the business. Now that she’s selected Go1 as Duravant’s vendor of choice, Jess is excitedly watching as employee engagement in the learning program continues to grow. 

Duravant needed to create one unified learning program for their 15 disparate operating companies and meet the needs of a diverse workforce, from senior-level leaders to frontline service technicians. 

Since partnering with Go1, Duravant has seen 4,900 courses completed across topics like business, DE&I, digital skills, and compliance. 

Duravant is enthusiastic about their decision to use Go1, not just for the depth and breadth of content offered, but also because of the strong partnership they’ve formed together. 

When Jess first started working at Duravant three years ago, L&D was an assortment of solutions handled independently by each separate operating company. 

"That obviously presents a lot of challenges, even just from a safety and compliance standpoint, when you can’t centrally track and report and monitor those things,” Jess said.  

Additionally, employees were asking for training and development opportunities, and Duravant didn’t have a centralized learning system that they could direct employees to. 

“It was a big goal to have an LMS built and content on demand for employees,” Jess said. “They wanted more training, and we wanted to be able to provide it to them.” 

Duravant’s workforce is diverse, with roles ranging “from senior-level leaders to professionals who sit on computers all day to trade people who are out on the production floor, not accessing computers, and then service technicians who travel 90% of the time and are never at a computer,” Jess said. 

With such a wide range of roles to consider, Jess knew they’d need a solution with many different types of content, so in her search for a provider, she prioritized micro-learning and a mix of fun and formal content. It was also important to her that their new content could easily integrate with their existing human resources information system (HRIS). 

“We didn’t want to bring in another platform because the more platforms you add, the less likely people are going to go to all of them,” Jess said. “So I wanted something that could meet them where they already were.” 

Jess worked with the company’s CHRO, as well as a group of HR leaders, to research and evaluate content providers across the industry. “I probably [researched] every content provider out there!” Jess laughed. 

Jess and her team narrowed their search down to 10–15 providers who they booked demos with. Ultimately, Go1 was the standout candidate. 

“That variety of content was big,” Jess recounted. “The amount of content available, the types, just everything that the content provided really met those challenges.” 

It wasn’t just the content that solidified Jess’ decision, though—it was the support she received throughout the decision process and the partnership she could already see forming. 

“You could tell through the demo and the selection process that it was going to be very hands-on,” Jess said. “The ability to have a content aggregator and somebody that I could reach out to and help identify content was big. You could just tell that the type of people that worked there were people that we wanted to work with.” 

Once Jess and her team chose Go1, getting buy-in from leadership was simple. 

“The buying piece was easier than other projects I’ve been a part of because there really was a sense of, ‘This is what we need to do to move the organization forward,’” Jess said. “The case was pretty clear. We needed to train our employees. This was the solution to do it. And it fits within our budget.” 

Next, Jess prepared to launch Duravant’s Learning Academy, which included their online library of Go1 content. In the months leading up to the launch, they set up auto-enroll for new hires and made a plan for existing employees to enroll. They also created a digital brochure to provide employees with information about the program. 

Promotion of the Learning Academy didn’t stop there. A few weeks after the launch, Jess and her team released a series of videos sharing more about the program. Now, they continue to spotlight new courses that are added each month. 

“We just try to be really consistent with new content and communication to keep the attention and focus on it,” Jess said. 

Jess has integrated nearly 300 Go1 courses into Duravant’s HRIS, and the process has been both simple and supportive. 

“I think the biggest surprise was how easy it was to pull content,” Jess said. “I thought the course creation process was going to be a lot harder than it is. The fact that it's just a quick download and it's in my email in two seconds is not what I was expecting at all.” 

Still, if Jess does find herself unsure of what content might be the best fit for a certain need, she knows she can still contact her Customer Support Manager, Tyler, for help. 

“If I'm just struggling or if it's kind of a niche thing, I'll email Tyler and not even spend the time trying to figure it out,” Jess said. "Within 24 hours he's emailing me back exactly what I need.” 

Go1 has enabled Duravant to easily deliver content to various teams—and Go1’s centralized reporting means they can measure the impact. 

“We now have training requests delivered from our team in order to provide access to trainings that people are asking for quickly and easily,” said Jess. "Centralized reporting was a huge impact to our team and allows us to see the progress individuals are making to expand their skill sets.” 

Duravant’s partnership with Go1 has been a major success, with engagement numbers rising each month. Since the launch of Duravant’s Learning Academy, Jess has been pulling usage data every month—and she's excited about the numbers she’s seeing. 

"We’ve had 4,900 courses completed, which is incredible,” Jess said. “Safety is our biggest, with over 2,000, but we also had 824 DE&I courses completed. We had over 250 leadership courses completed, which is awesome. We had 100 Microsoft Office courses completed. To see this level of engagement is so cool.” 

By creating learning paths in topics like safety, DE&I, and leadership, Duravant is creating a safer work environment and empowering a new wave of leaders who put diversity at the forefront of their teams. Plus, they’re providing employees with courses that expand their skill sets and carve a career path for them at Duravant and beyond. 

Jess said that anyone considering Go1 should go for it—and for many good reasons. 

“I would strongly encourage it,” Jess said. “There's no way that the content won't check the box or solve the challenge. You're getting everything you need with content, but you're getting so much more because you get such strong partnerships.” 

For Jess, her partnership with Go1 is what makes it all worthwhile. 

“You get people who make an effort to understand your business, your unique challenges,” she said. “It doesn't feel like anybody there has the mentality that all their customers are the same. And I think that's what's made us so successful is we've been able to build this library of great content and development for our employees, but we've only been able to do that through that guidance in those partnerships.” 

Duravant’s partnership with Go1 has resulted in continually growing engagement and a strong sense of collaboration between the two companies.

Duravant and Go1: Expanding learning opportunities together

A global company of 2,200 employees, Park Place Technologies is a data center and networking optimization firm that provides customers with data center services and software and helps them manage their IT infrastructure. 

Danielle Lansberry, Director of L&D, and Josette Lanese, Learning Technology Manager, work together at Park Place, where their vision, according to Danielle, is “that every Park Place employee has a clearly defined career path through strategic learning to enhance skills and knowledge that will fuel their personal growth and professional development.” 

At the start of the COVID pandemic, Danielle and Josette saw a significant surge in employee interest in virtual learning. However, while employees were requesting more training content from the company’s L&D team, Danielle and Josette found themselves having to say “No” over and over again. They simply didn’t have the content people needed—or the resources to create all of it themselves. 

With training requests pouring in, Danielle and Josette decided it was time to look for a content solution that wouldn’t only save the company money but also better enable employees to increase their knowledge and skills—and allow their team to say “Yes” more often.  

Park Place Technologies had a great sales training program, but they needed learning and development content to offer employees non-sales employees. 

Because L&D couldn’t provide employees with the training they needed, teams began purchasing one-off courses, which were a significant cost for the business. 

Since partnering with Go1, the L&D team has saved the company money and increased learning engagement. 

Park Place wasn’t starting from scratch in their search for content. In fact, they already had a robust sales training program involving skill-building, mentorship, and role-playing that they had been using for years. But when it came to the rest of the company, they didn’t have much to offer. 

A few years ago, the L&D team decided to purchase an LMS so they could deliver training to departments other than sales. Once they had their LMS established, they began to partner with subject matter experts across the business to build learning content in-house. While employees enjoyed the content that Danielle and Josette’s team created, they were still submitting requests for training in soft skills, language learning, and other areas where the L&D team lacked the time, budget, and expertise necessary to meet those requests. 

“We were having to say, ‘We’ll have to find room in the budget to purchase something,’ or ‘We’ll have to create it in-house,’” Danielle recounted. “And that’s just not scalable or sustainable.” 

Soon, individuals and teams began buying one-off courses for training that the L&D team couldn’t provide. Danielle and Josette even found out their team would need to purchase content for certain company requests. 

“We just didn't have the courses and that was gonna cost us another several thousand or tens of thousands of dollars,” Danielle said. “So when you add up what we were already spending, plus what we would need to spend to fulfill these immediate needs that we had, it was kind of a wash.” 

The good news was, creating a business case for a new content solution was simple. “When you added up what we were already spending, plus what we were going to need to spend, the business case just made a ton of sense,” Danielle said. 

In their search for a content provider, it was important to Danielle and Josette that their new vendor would be able to provide a wide array of high-quality, vetted content to meet the diverse needs of their workforce. 

“Our vision is to be able to give every individual what they need in order to progress in their career, whether that's just becoming better in the role that they're in, being the best person in that role, or becoming a leader of that role or a leader of a department, or even the CEO,” Danielle said. “We want to make sure that each individual has the right learning for that. We wanted to make sure that we weren’t going to leave any stones unturned.” 

The team also wanted to find a vendor who was a good culture fit. “Our culture is very professional,” Josette said. People have certain expectations. And we wanted it to be a company that fit our culture. That’s when we found Go1.” 

Danielle and Josette looked at a handful of different vendors that they could integrate into their LMS. This integration was a key priority, as they didn’t want to send people to multiple systems for learning. They then realized that many of the vendors they were considering already had content available through Go1. 

“When we realized that all those other vendors we could pretty much get in Go1 – it was almost a no-brainer,” Josette said. 

The seamlessness of Go1’s integration with Park Place’s LMS resulted in a smooth transition for employees. “It's so seamless they don't even know that we're pulling from different vendors within Go1,” Josette said. “It all looks the same to them, and they have the ease of use that doesn't change.” 

Go1’s content has been a win for employees, but it has also made Danielle and Josette’s jobs easier. “The Go1 sales team was promising us it would be seamless, and we'd be easily able to convert the courses, and the reporting would be easily done through Uptown Academy's [LMS],” Josette said. “They hit every mark. There has not been anything that we've had difficulty with once we've instituted Go1 into our LMS.” 

Reporting is an important piece of the puzzle for the L&D team as they need to be able to keep track of what content is being used, and by whom. With Go1, they’re able to track everything all in one place. 

“If we have all these different platforms and people sharing licenses for things and all that kind of stuff, you don't really have a good way of tracking who's done what,” Danielle said. “Now that it's all in one place through our LMS... we have that visibility and reportability now that we didn't have before.”  

A recent company-wide engagement survey has shown Danielle and Josette that the new Go1 content has been well-received. Danielle noted that since Park Place implemented Go1, they’ve seen survey responses like “There's more options available,” “I feel like learning has improved,” “I feel like I have the ability to learn what I want to learn,” and “I feel like the company is investing in me.’” 

Now, when employees come to Danielle and Josette with content requests, they no longer have to turn people away empty-handed. “We are now able to provide content quickly upon request,” Josette said. “The large number of options for each topic allows us to tailor the content to our needs and culture.” 

Danielle added, “It’s amazing to be able to say ‘yes’ when people reach out to ask if we have courses.” 

Park Place Technologies has partnered with Go1 to decrease training spend and provide all employees with more development opportunities. 

Park Place Technologies and Go1: Enabling learning across the business

ABC Companies (not to be confused with the American or Australian ABC TV channels) is a business that sells, leases, and services motor coach buses and also distributes parts. The company serves enterprise customers of all sizes, including small businesses, transportation companies, and those like Disney and Google which maintain their own fleets. 

We spoke to Karla Rainer, ABC Companies’ Director of HR, to get the inside scoop on their learning transformation since partnering with Go1, including higher levels of learner engagement, improved course completion rates, and a shift from transactional to transformational training. 

Since joining the company in July of 2018, Karla has striven to improve the employee culture at ABC. After starting life as a small, family-owned business, ABC companies grew quickly, and it wasn’t immune to the challenges that often plague organizations in early growth phases. “Now, we're really trying to focus on culture and employee engagement,” she said.

Karla was hired when ABC moved their payroll and HR from Minnesota to Florida during a period of restructuring. Until then, the company had one designated Training Manager, whose entire job was dedicated to working with the learning management system (LMS). When Karla and the rest of the team signed on, that responsibility was transferred to them.

The system they inherited was outdated and severely lacking, but nevertheless it was used for everything from annual compliance training to technician-specific mechanical learning paths. 

Reporting was sub-par as well—HR would have to pull a manual report to let managers know which employees needed reminders—and there was no manager self-service to speak of. With 730 employees already at the organization, this was quickly becoming impossible to handle manually. 

On top of these logistical challenges, the system simply failed to meet ABC’s learning and development (L&D) needs, both in terms of technical training and compliance training.

So, they began searching for a platform that could replace the current, outdated system. The decision-making team consisted of Karla and then-director Sandy Jones, and final approval sat with the CFO. The pair looked into a few different companies, though Karla was entrusted with identifying the system that would be most usable for ABC’s employees.

The top priority was finding a provider that could offer a user-friendly platform. Karla notes that while a significant portion of ABC’s workforce might be mechanically inclined, the population isn’t necessarily tech-savvy. Ultimately, this process led to them partnering with Go1, with fantastic results. 

After choosing to partner with Go1, Karla said Go1’s collaboration was critical during the onboarding and implementation process. “The files that were extracted from the previous system were just atrocious. It was very, very tough administrative-wise,” she said, adding that she “can’t thank enough the customer service rep we had when we first started.”

ABC now has its new-hire orientation, compliance training, and a number of other training programs hosted in Go1, though the company continues to use a separate, dedicated platform for safety training. They have achieved the long-sought consistency in messaging, using Go1 to ensure that employees in all locations receive the same information from ABC, instead of relying on individual local HR reps to convey messages as accurately as possible (a whisper-down-the-lane approach, which introduces room for human error no matter how meticulously participants attempt to repeat information).

Go1 offers self-service reporting as well: managers can log in and see which employees have completed training and which still need to.

Though it falls outside her purview, Karla notes that ABC is also using Go1 for customer training, which supports clients’ technicians in servicing and maintaining their ABC products. This usage falls under a customer-facing training manager, but Karla knows it’s been successful there, too. “Not only has this been a great resource to get our employees engaged, it’s been a great resource to get our customers engaged as well,” she said. 

Ultimately, Go1’s dedication to customer service has allowed ABC to realize both internal and external business impacts with minimal hassle. “Even to this day, we have this designated customer service rep that we can always reach out to, and we don’t have that with a lot of our other platforms. It’s definitely a big deal for our side of things,” Karla added. 

To anyone considering Go1, Karla says her advice would be “that they should do it right away.” She has no complaints: “My experience from day one has been great.”

Karla also shared some of the metrics she and her team use to prove the ongoing value of the solution. Not surprisingly, engagement is number one. “Our engagement is higher now than it's ever been,” she says. Data shows that some 83% of training modules are completed, and Karla reports that “it was nothing even close to that before.”

Now that Go1 has lifted the administrative burden the old system placed on Karla and her team, they have more time and energy available for higher-level and more strategic work. “We’ve gone through a lot of restructuring and changes within our department since we’ve started. So it was tough, and then throw COVID in there, it made everything else even more tough.”

What’s more, Go1 has effectively eliminated the “help desk” style calls to Karla and her team—they used to field five to 10 a day, or more during training seasons, but that number has been reduced to zero. Calls, emails, and, at the Florida location, walk-ins with simple, avoidable technical questions were a daily occurrence. “Between Go1, the benefits portal, and the payroll portal, I barely have any visitors now. Before that I had a line out the door of somebody needing something.” Though none of these individual requests for technical assistance were particularly time-consuming, they certainly added up, and it’s reasonable to assume that they would only have grown to take more time as the company employs more people.

Though they have plenty to be pleased with already with their Go1 implementation, ABC expects to continue evolving with the vendor’s support. “There's still so much more I want to do with Go1 and so many more ideas—it’s just finding the time to get everything you want done,” Karla enthused. 

High on the list of priorities for next steps are plans to compile a new manager training program, a business need Karla and her team were able to identify thanks to their capacity to focus on the bigger picture. ABC likes to promote from within, but while “a lot of these managers might be great at the specific job they’re doing that got them noticed for a promotion, being a manager or having people report to you is a whole other ballgame.”

Karla wants to provide tools to help these new managers succeed. “We need to make sure that they can keep their promotion; we don’t want to just throw them to the wolves with no tools of what to do next.” Training and skill-building on topics such as difficult conversations, harassment or discrimination issues, and even email etiquette will help equip these new managers for the demands of leadership. “We want to be sure that at least we’re giving them the basic tools to succeed in their next role. So that is my next project.”

The partnership between Go1 and ABC has already brought substantial value, not only by boosting employee engagement but also by reducing the administrative burden on Karla and her team. Eliminating the onus of running a “help desk” elevated HR to a position as a strategic contributor to the organization, one that now has the ability and capacity to explore ways to get even more value out of the investment. 

We'll share how Go1 helped ABC Technologies evolve from transactional to transformational learning, by increasing engagement and course completions.

Go1 and ABC Technologies: Moving from transactional to transformational learning

Case Study (ABC Companies).pdf

We'll share how Go1 helped ABC Technologies evolve from transactional to transformational learning, by increasing engagement and course completions. 

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