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

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.” 

New and ambitious goals for the future 

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.”