Optare Solutions Gains Multilingual Online Learning at Scale — Driving Business Growth and Career Development

Optare Solutions tried OpenWebinars — a Spanish language L&D platform — but struggled with the platform’s lack of multilingual support, something that would have significantly restricted growth. That’s why the company chose Udemy Business: for its wide catalog of multilingual courses, custom integrations, and Learning Path capabilities.

“We chose Udemy Business for its breadth of tech content, Learning Paths, and custom courses,” says Gonzalo. “Besides its scale, Udemy Business is extremely adaptable — this was an amazing surprise.”

The company’s unique selling point is its deep knowledge of telecoms, including standards, processes, customer architectures, and technology. And as the Optare Solutions operates globally, it’s vitally important to account for regional nuances, such as country-specific legislation. The company now has access to a huge catalog of skills courses to keep its workforce at the leading edge of industry developments and standards.

“We sell telecoms knowledge and leadership, but with the speed of technological change, we need help keeping pace with the latest developments,” says Gonzalo. “Udemy Business helps us quickly adapt to new technology. It means we’re more agile, and the platform has helped us gain greater company visibility.”

Learning Paths and Slack integration making L&D personal

Learning Paths in the Udemy Business platform are now a critical tool for Optare Solutions as it seeks to develop a more nuanced L&D program. Each tech lead is responsible for a Learning Path which they map to the most important technology they use — working with other departments to build new requirements. It means that L&D is more collaborative, with the company’s tech leads defining their needs, helping promote a learning culture that’s built into everyone’s routine.

Udemy’s Slack integration is another essential feature that helps encourage continuous learning at Optare Solutions. It allows employees to easily share courses and learning paths to their Slack channels and to colleagues. “It’s very useful, we use to recommend the five most popular courses in the company each week, helping people discover new courses and upskill in areas most in demand,” says Gonzalo.

Platform adoption driving learner outcomes

Key to Optare Solutions’ success with the platform has been its commitment to driving learner uptake. For example, the company set up a Slack channel for its tech leads to drive conversations around learning and share recommended courses. They also post short TikTok style videos to promote certain topics — a firm favorite of employees across the company.

Moreover, each employee now has a quarterly learning objective to give everyone a reason to learn beyond their individual career ambitions. And as Gonzalo explains, Optare Solutions ensures its learning culture is engrained in employees from their first day on the job: “The first touchpoint our people have with Udemy Business is when they go through onboarding. We also keep a skills dashboard to track our capabilities across the company.”

By using Udemy Business to structure its employees’ career plans, Optare Solutions has also increased its desirability as a company where people want to work — both for existing employees and prospects. “We tell prospects about Udemy Business at the recruitment stage, and many are attracted to working for us because of the career development benefits the platform offers,” says Gonzalo. “We think Udemy Business reduces the cost of recruitment and helps prevent attrition — it also cuts onboarding times significantly.”

Indeed, the results speak for themselves. In just one year, Optare Solutions has reduced employee attrition by 20%. What’s more, the company has reduced the time to train senior consultants by 5%, a saving of up to €48K annually, which when multiplied, can make all the difference to the company’s bottom line.