Wasserman operates at the epicenter of sports, music, entertainment and culture, serving talent, brands and properties on a global scale. Headquartered in Los Angeles, Wasserman’s presence spans 27 countries and more than 66 cities, including New York, London, Abu Dhabi, Amsterdam, Hong Kong, Madrid, Mexico City, Toronto, Paris and Sydney.
Challenge
With a corporate culture rooted in curiosity, pushing boundaries, and the pursuit of knowledge, Wasserman placed enormous value on continuous learning and upskilling. But their enterprise learning platform was not measuring up. LinkedIn Learning’s one-size-fits-all approach to course-based content didn’t meet the needs of a diverse, global workforce.
Wasserman found themselves locked into a fixed rate of spending for every employee on LinkedIn Learning, without the results to show for it. Overall utilization was low, and they didn’t have good visibility into what the few employees who were engaging on the platform were actually learning.
Vice President of Recruiting and Learning & Development Mary Reiling Spencer wanted to find an upskilling solution with a greater variety of learning formats that would support more targeted, individualized learning for her diverse team. Given the high cost of LinkedIn Learning, she hoped to find a platform that would deliver clearer ROI, and would therefore be easier to pitch to her executive team in year one – as well as in years to come as they grew the organization.
Key challenges:
- High costs and low utilization of previous learning platform (LinkedIn Learning)
- One-size-fits-all platform could not meet the needs of a diverse, global workforce
- Sought greater transparency and visibility into upskilling activities
- Small L&D team will have to scale their support for a rapidly growing organization
Solution
OneRange’s open upskilling marketplace of courses, books, publications, and conferences offered the variety of content Mary was looking for. Plus, employees could easily add any resource they found outside the OneRange platform that might be relevant to their specialized work in sports, music, entertainment and culture, once approved by a manager.
Mary also appreciated OneRange’s AI-powered recommendations and tagging of resources with keywords and skills for several key reasons. First, it enabled the Learning & Development team to map specific content against core competencies and skill sets defined in their employee performance management process. Working with the OneRange team’s group of subject matter experts, Mary crafted hundreds of learning pathways, or bundles of content resources, for key skills such as creative problem-solving, leadership, people management, data analysis, business development, emotional regulation, sports & entertainment management, team work, project management, and many more.
These company-, team-, and individual-specific content recommendations dramatically increased the likelihood that Wasserman employees would find exactly the right resource for their needs – from new hires seeking to build foundational knowledge in the industry, to seasoned veterans looking for their next promotion.
Finally, the OneRange payment model offered the ROI that Mary needed to make the case to her executive team. Rather than paying an annual, per-person subscription for each employee at the company – regardless of whether or not they actually did any learning – Wasserman would only pay once an employee requested a resource and got it approved. This pay-per-use model aligned company and employee incentives for the first time, which gave Mary peace of mind and made it easier to measure the true value of upskilling.
“The OneRange business model aligns with how we want to spend our learning budget. There are no sunk costs or annual fees; we only pay when employees choose to learn. That makes it much easier to pitch – and continue to justify – to our executive team,” said Mary.
Results
Within just one month of launching OneRange, Mary and the Wasserman team were already seeing a major improvement in their results over LinkedIn Learning. After six months, employees were highly engaged, and utilization was at a record-high 96%. More than 50% of employees had requested at least one learning resource, and the average rate of request was more than two upskilling resources per person.
Perhaps even more important than the numbers, Mary was receiving lots of positive feedback from employees. They appreciated the variety of upskilling resources and the flexibility that enabled them to learn when and how they wanted, in line with their unique learning styles. They also benefited from the expertise and personalized customer service of the OneRange team.
Later that year, Wasserman would nearly triple the size of its workforce to 3,000+ employees. Mary felt satisfied with her decision to onboard the OneRange platform, and confident that it would enable her small L&D team to effectively meet the upskilling needs of her team for years to come as the organization grew, commenting:
“The OneRange product truly fits the needs of all our employees. It is very targeted professional development with no sunk costs. The positive feedback has been wonderful to see – this has not been typical of my experience with other learning platforms.
We’re now using OneRange to support our employees at every step of their journey, from recruitment to promotion. We get lots of great feedback from candidates when they learn about our robust L&D program during the interview process. And our long-time employees have come to expect only the highest quality upskilling – and they really appreciate it!”
Wasserman results by the numbers
96%
employee
utilization rate
$103.41
average upskilling spend per employee
50%
of employees requested at least 1 upskilling resource
2+
average resources delivered per employee
