October is a busy month for L&D teams. End-of-year priorities are competing with 2027 planning, AI continues to reshape workforce needs, and there’s still the day-to-day work of keeping employees informed, prepared, and developing.
This month, we’ve got new resources to make that work a little easier.
From 2027 Course Calendars and a simpler way to collaborate in OpenSesame to new OpenSesame Plus publishers, customer-led leadership development ideas, and resources for building resilience, here’s what’s new from OpenSesame this October.
Get a head start on your 2027 learning plan
The end of the year is arriving quickly, and if you’re responsible for a full year of workforce learning, waiting until January to plan usually means spending the first few weeks playing catch-up.
Our new 2027 Course Calendars can help you get ahead.
The calendars give you monthly learning ideas across topics including safety, compliance, cybersecurity, AI, leadership, wellness, workplace culture, certifications, and more.
Use them as a starting point to:
- Map out your annual learning program
- Plan internal campaigns around timely topics
- Keep critical training visible throughout the year
- Balance required training with broader skill development
- Give managers and employees a more consistent rhythm for learning
You don’t have to start from a blank page every month. Pick the topics that matter most to your organization, adapt the ideas to your workforce, and build a 2027 plan that keeps important skills and requirements on the radar all year.
Explore the 2027 Course Calendars
The 2027 Sesames are officially open!
Great learning programs take a lot of work. The Sesames are an opportunity to recognize the people and teams behind them.
Applications are now open for The Sesames, OpenSesame’s annual customer awards celebrating the programs, progress, and people creating meaningful workforce results.
Whether you’ve found a new way to reach learners, built a program that supports an important business priority, expanded access to development, or made a measurable difference for your workforce, we want to hear what you’ve accomplished.
Winners will be celebrated across OpenSesame channels and invited, along with a guest, to Catalyst Club 2027 in Los Cabos.
If your team has done work worth celebrating this year, now’s the time to tell the story.
New resource: Understand your total learning investment
Learning teams are being asked to cover more without necessarily getting more budget. 43% of organizations reported no change in training budgets in 2025, while 16% reported decreases. At the same time, 63% of employers say skills gaps are a major barrier to business transformation.
That makes it even more important to know where your learning investment is actually going.
Our new Understanding Your Total Learning Investment guide helps you look beyond your main learning contract to uncover department-specific subscriptions, individual course purchases, overlapping vendors, and the time spent managing them all.
It introduces four lenses for evaluating your return on learning investment: cost, coverage, usage and access, and complexity. That gives you a practical way to spot unnecessary overlap without cutting training your business depends on, identify gaps that still need attention, and make better use of what you already have.
And visibility matters: only 30% of organizations say they’re good at using learning-program data to inform business decisions.
Before your next budget conversation, get a clearer picture of what you’re paying for, who it’s helping, and what’s still missing.
Customer spotlight: How Shea Homes cut its in-house training bottleneck
Before OpenSesame, Shea Homes had to build every training need in-house. That gave the team control, but it also created a bottleneck when requests piled up.
Four years later, Senior Training Specialist Mason Duncan says the process looks very different. Teams can now go directly to OpenSesame’s catalog, find the training they need, and deploy it quickly instead of waiting for an internal production process.
Mason also points to the catalog’s continued evolution as a major advantage. With new publishers and content added regularly, Shea Homes isn’t locked into a static library that gets stale over time.
In the new customer testimonial, hear how Shea Homes uses OpenSesame to:
- Reduce pressure on its internal training team
- Give teams faster access to the training they need
- Balance versatility and cost when choosing learning content
- Keep programs fresh with an evolving catalog
- Explore how AI could help leaders create more of their own training
For Mason, the value comes down to both cost savings and stronger engagement across the team.
Keep collaboration simple with the new viewer role
Getting the right training in place often takes more than one person.
Subject matter experts may need to review course options. Business leaders may want visibility into a proposed program. Other stakeholders might need to help organize or maintain course lists.
The new viewer role gives you a simpler way to bring collaborators into OpenSesame while keeping admin-only actions protected.
Viewers can browse the catalog and manage Lists without being given the broader permissions that come with an administrator account.
For learning teams, that means you can involve more of the people whose expertise you need while keeping user management and platform access easier to control.
Want help getting started with the new role? Reach out to your Customer Success Manager.
Curator’s Corner: Building resilience through change
Change is a constant at work right now.
New technology, shifting priorities, organizational changes, and uncertainty can all affect how people work and how they feel about the work ahead.
This month, OpenSesame Enterprise Curator Charise Frias is highlighting resources that can help employees strengthen resilience, navigate change, and stay grounded when circumstances feel uncertain.
Her October selections include:
- Resilience, Change Management & Adaptability by ICON
- Resilience, Safety, and Stability in Times of Uncertainty
- Build Resilience, Own Your Journey with Victoria Arlen by ICON
- October’s Holidays and Observances
These lists can be used on their own or incorporated into broader programs around change management, leadership, employee wellbeing, or workplace culture.
More expertise just landed in OpenSesame Plus
The workforce skills organizations need keep changing, and your training catalog needs to keep up. This month, two new publishers are joining OpenSesame Plus, bringing additional expertise in AI, finance, sustainability, and responsible AI adoption.
xUnlocked: Expert-led learning for high-stakes topics
When the subject matter is complex, generic training only goes so far.
xUnlocked brings expert-led learning to OpenSesame Plus across finance, sustainability, compliance, AI and data, and human skills. Courses are designed to help learners build practical knowledge they can use in real business and regulatory environments, with bite-sized videos led by experienced industry practitioners.
The library includes more than 400 courses, with an average length of around 10 minutes, making it easier to fit focused learning into the flow of work. Topics range from banking regulation and climate risk management to the EU AI Act and applying AI in everyday work.
For organizations navigating areas where accuracy, judgment, and current expertise matter, xUnlocked gives learners access to specialist knowledge without asking them to step away from work for hours at a time.
TrainTeams.ai: Help employees use AI safely and effectively at work
Giving employees access to AI tools is one thing. Helping them understand when, where, and how to use them responsibly is another.
TrainTeams.ai helps organizations build practical AI capability across the workforce with expert-led training on AI literacy, generative and agentic AI, advanced prompting, AI governance, compliance, risk, and tools including Microsoft Copilot and Claude.
Courses connect AI concepts to realistic workplace situations through scenarios, interactive decision-making, practical exercises, and role-relevant examples. Tool-specific courses are also designed to be updated as the technology changes, helping learners keep pace with fast-moving AI tools and regulations.
From AI foundations and acceptable use to the EU AI Act and recognizing AI-related cybersecurity threats, TrainTeams.ai gives L&D teams a practical way to support both AI adoption and responsible use across the organization.
Upcoming webinar: Navigate career change in the age of AI
AI isn’t only changing how people perform their current jobs. It’s also reshaping career paths, roles, and the skills employees may need next.
That makes the ability to understand and communicate your own value increasingly important.
On Wednesday, October 21, OpenSesame and workplace development experts from Ibis Consulting Group are hosting an interactive, actor-led session focused on navigating career transitions in the age of AI.
Participants will explore how to:
- Build a clear professional narrative
- Identify and communicate transferable skills
- Talk about experience in the context of changing roles
- Approach career conversations with greater confidence
As organizations rethink roles and employees consider what’s next, these are practical skills that can help people navigate change rather than simply react to it.
New resource roundup
Looking for more ways to support your learning strategy? Explore our latest resources for practical ideas and tools you can put to work right away.
- Power Up: An Industry-Specific Skills Collection
- Compliance Training for the Retail Industry: A Guide for Learning Leaders
- OpenSesame Expands AI-Powered Curation to Help L&D Teams Turn Complex Learning Needs Into Action Faster
- How to Launch a Learning Platform Employees Actually Want to Use
- 8 Ways to Build a Retail Industry Compliance Training Program That Keeps Up With Change
- The Preparedness Problem: Why Frontline Employees Don't Feel Ready for What's Next
- Forklift Safety Training Requirements: What OSHA Requires and How to Stay Compliant
