Yvonne has been with Udemy since 2015 and has seen Udemy Dublin’s employee base grow over 1,900%! Yvonne also helps lead onboarding, which you can only imagine how hard she works with Udemy’s continuous scale. Onboarding and scaling culture has been top of mind, especially as many folks turned to online learning the past 2 years. Read on to learn how Yvonne and her global teams tackled streamlining employee programs and culture!

What were some challenges that the Udemy’s Workplace team faced with the recent hyper-scale?

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Udemy was putting on a lot of events and using only one central calendar for all workplace events.

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Udemy’s Workplace team had to control the company-wide calendar, and there was no edit function for other teams to take ownership over their employee programs. For example, ERGs (employee resource groups) had to often wait for the Workplace team to help them schedule, broadcast and edit their events. This caused unnecessary back and forth, as well as blockers.

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Everyone’s calendars were already getting busy, but the question was: how do we help employees discover what’s available to avoid FOMO?

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With the incredible array of programs across DEI, learning & development, workshops, social programs, and community events, Udemy employees were eager to get involved. However, it was proving to be a challenge to make this easily accessible and discoverable.

What did Udemy want to solve for their global events?

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With hundreds of events, it became an apparent opportunity for Udemy to enhance how employees discover company events.

The Udemy team ultimately wanted to solve for 2 things:

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• Give easy access to employees to find and discover relevant events and programs
• Empower internal event organizers to have a streamlined, easy-to-use system to schedule, announce, communicate, and track analytics for their programs
  

How was Udemy previously balancing their internal events calendar?

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Udemy was primarily using a single company-wide shared Google Calendar. This calendar was getting cluttered, not many employees knew to access it, and it often became overwhelming for those who had it to switch it on.

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What were some solutions Udemy exploring before finding Epoch?

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‍Udemy’s hyper-growth is primarily attributed to their ability to stay nimble and sharp, like a startup. So when they embarked on their search for a solution, they went back to the basics.

Epoch resonated with Udemy. Udemy’s teams needed a solution that could give power back to the event and program organizers to easily create, streamline, and measure their initiatives.

Transforming Udemy’s employee events and experience

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Epoch solved everything – from meeting employees in their flow of work via Slack, Calendar and G-Suite integrations to easing event organizer’s workflows via Zoom integrations and internal comms automation.

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Yvonne’s favorite feature is the Slack integration to Epoch. It makes it easy for her team to pre-schedule communications and target their audience.

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Epoch’s web app is also visually easy to use and displayed in your timezone. That was important for Udemy’s global scale.

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Things often get lost in the calendar. The calendar is also now a prized real estate for employees, especially in a high-growth culture where everyone is protective of their time.

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Now at Udemy, employees can browse events, see what’s targeted for them and confirm into those that are interesting to them. This gives the power of choice and discoverability back to employees.

Customer experience is at the forefront of Epoch’s offerings

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Epoch’s customer experience team really stands out to Yvonne and her team members. With a direct line of communication via a shared Slack channel, Udemy’s Epoch admins and users can get answers clarified and best practices from Epoch’s team whenever they need.

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“When we have any questions about an event or general inquiries, Epoch’s team responds almost instantaneously," says Yvonne.

Implementing Epoch at Udemy

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Yvonne and her teams loved the weekly check-ins with the Epoch team leading up to launch. From having customized launch communications prepared to having all the admin users trained up and ready for launch was a huge value-add to Udemy.

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Epoch also provided the Udemy team best practices in preparation for launch with targeted resources, regular office hours, and goal benchmarks.

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Results so far?

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Epoch’s value-add has far exceeded Udemy’s expectations. The instant engagement and excitement from Udemy’s entire employee population demonstrated how much they needed a solution.

What has been Udemy’s most successful and exciting program?

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24 Hours of Learning! Udemy hosted learning events across the global locations of Udemy that spanned over their global presence. There were multiple events at every hour for an entire day of 24 hours. Folks at Udemy have an innate culture of learning and content, and saw huge engagement across their teams.

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Epoch supported all these learning events, where it spanned across timezones and allowed employees to easily see what was available and get involved.

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The Udemy Benefits team also finds Epoch immensely valuable to bring awareness to events that their vendors provide.

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The onboarding team has started using Epoch too. They are excited to continue streamlining all the touchpoints needed to ensure a new employee at Udemy feels supported and gains access to all the necessary events, information, and programs.