Udemy for Business: On the road and on the web

It’s been an eventful and exciting couple of weeks for the Udemy for Business team. They attended an important conference, picked up a sweet award, and launched a new website. And they’re not slowing down. In fact, stay tuned for a recap of tomorrow’s HR Innovators event, which we’ll be sharing in days to come!

HR Tech conference
First, the team hit Las Vegas for the HR Technology Conference & Exhibition, known to insiders as the “Super Bowl” of HR events. It was a great opportunity for networking, brand building, and learning about trends and challenges in the HR department. For example, did you know that HR technology alone is a $12 billion industry? And it’s growing — fast.

One of our favorite sessions was led by Josh Bersin of Deloitte, a top influencer in the corporate learning & development community and a Udemy instructor. He talked about how learning in the workplace has changed, with constant interruptions and distractions competing for attention, and how this has affected the way employees want to learn. Essentially, today’s employees want more autonomy over how, when, and where they receive training — and their employers are scrambling to respond.

Other key learnings from HR Tech 2015:

• HR is ready for a revolution. There was lots of discussion around the notion that traditional HR may be “dead,” but it is being reborn as a more strategic business function. Get familiar with the term HCM — human capital management.
• Just as big data has emerged as a powerful force in other segments, advanced analytics is also a hot topic in HR tech circles — lots of exhibits and presentations on trending topics like predictive analytics, machine learning, and mobile technology. As in other parts of the business, consumer tech is driving HR tech.
• Technology for HR practitioners is expanding from just providing value to HR teams to empowering employees and managers to “upskill” so they can perform their jobs more effectively.
• HR as a discipline is moving from serving organizations to serving team leaders, who want performance management, LMS, engagement, etc., all rolled into a single solution. The future of HR IT lies with comprehensive dashboards where managers can easily access a wealth of data.
• HR doesn’t just need more data; it needs real-time, reliable data. Too much HR data today is of the “garbage in, garbage out” variety.

Brand Velocity award
InfluenceHR was a one-day event held in Vegas in conjunction with the HR Tech conference, where the InfluenceHR Marketing Awards were given out to the best HCM brands. Udemy for Business snagged the Brand Velocity award in the Learning category, which recognizes vendors whose brands are “emerging rapidly and in alignment with leading industry trends.”

The team will maintain this momentum in 2016 and is planning to attend and/or sponsor many more events in the next calendar year. That includes more dates around the country for our HR Innovators series, which has been hugely popular and keeps attracting bigger crowds.

New website

Just in time for all the new connections the team is making, we also launched the brand new Udemy for Business website this week. It’s a great place to learn how the Udemy for Business platform has been helping companies of all kinds deliver a better training solution with real employee engagement.

Congratulations to the Udemy for Business team! Keep up the great work!