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One Company Helping More People Around the World Do the Right Thing
NEW YORK (9/9/2020) – Ethics and compliance education and technology company LRN Corporation announced today the acquisition of Interactive Services, the Dublin, Ireland-based global compliance and online learning firm. The combined organization will help more companies build and implement effective compliance programs and foster values-based and ethical cultures and workforces at a time when those imperatives are more urgent than ever.
As part of a significant investment in LRN in 2018 by Leeds Equity Partners, LRN and Leeds committed to expanding the company’s reach and scale to advance their shared objective to help more companies elevate behavior, reduce risks, and create sustainable competitive advantages. The Interactive Services transaction represents a strategic combination which accelerates the combined company's investments in people, innovation, and technology.
Together, LRN and Interactive Services will be positioned to provide even greater ethics and compliance offerings across education, technology, advisory services, and analytics to further enable companies to navigate the complex legal, compliance, regulatory, and operating environments across the globe.
“We are in a time of increasing focus and scrutiny on corporate and individual conduct, accelerated by the global pandemic and an intensifying awareness of societal inequalities,” said Dov Seidman, LRN Founder and Chairman. “In response, companies throughout the world are urgently reimagining the workplace, redefining leadership, and seeking to build cultures that are genuinely aligned and inclusive. This, in turn, requires meaningful education, communication, codes of conduct, adaptive learning environments, and other tools that inspire employees, put ethics and compliance at the heart of corporate operations, and guide the right kind of principled and profitable behavior – from frontline employees, managers, the C-Suite, and Boards of Directors. As expectations of companies and their leaders rise from society and employees alike, the winners will be those who most effectively operationalize the understanding that values drive behavior and behavior drives performance,” added Seidman.
The combination of LRN with Interactive Services enriches LRN’s offerings by expanding its vast SaaS-based education and technology platform, which includes hundreds of courses and educational products and provides LRN with additional delivery and analytics capabilities to improve employee learning and ensure corporate compliance. The transaction further extends LRN’s presence outside of North America and broadens its custom content capabilities in ethics and compliance and many other corporate functions.
“LRN has for more than 25 years helped define and shape the ethics and compliance space. Given Interactive’s long commitment to improving talent and performance in the workplace through creative design, we are extremely excited to be joining LRN, to embrace LRN’s mission of inspiring principled performance, and to add to LRN’s deep array of offerings – and we believe the business world, and society, will be the better for it,” said Matt Plass, CEO of Interactive Services.
Jeffrey T. Leeds, Managing Partner at Leeds Equity, said, “Strong leaders recognize that compliance with rules and regulations is about far more than ‘checking the box.’ An authentic commitment to the highest standards in ethics and compliance not only reduces risk – which can increasingly be catastrophic – but also creates a better workplace which leads, in turn, to better work. With this acquisition of Interactive Services, LRN enhances its stature as the leading provider of the most effective ethics and compliance education and learning resources for companies throughout the world.”
LRN invented the Ethics and Compliance industry; Interactive Services has evolved it and infused the industry with innovation and creativity. Together, we can serve organizations globally and meet people where they are—psychologically, organizationally, and geographically.
As one company, we will be able to provide more to our existing partners and satisfy prospects with a richer body of learning experiences. Together LRN and Interactive Service’s content, learning design, and technology will ensure that all organizations—large and small—can build the ethical cultures that will protect them from risk, and create a platform for future success.
"We are in a time of increasing focus and scrutiny on corporate and individual conduct, accelerated by the global pandemic and an intensifying awareness of societal inequalities. In response, companies throughout the world are urgently reimagining the workplace, redefining leadership, and seeking to build cultures that are genuinely aligned and inclusive. This, in turn, requires meaningful education, communication, codes of conduct, adaptive learning environments, and other tools that inspire employees, put ethics and compliance at the heart of corporate operations, and guide the right kind of principled and profitable behavior – from frontline employees, managers, the C-Suite, and Boards of Directors. As expectations of companies and their leaders rise from society and employees alike, the winners will be those who most effectively operationalize the understanding that values drive behavior and behavior drives performance."
-- Dov Seidman, Founder and Chairman of LRN
"LRN has for more than 25 years helped define and shape the ethics and compliance space. Given Interactive’s long commitment to improving talent and performance in the workplace through creative design, we are extremely excited to be joining LRN, to embrace LRN’s mission of inspiring principled performance, and to add to LRN’s deep array of offerings – and we believe the business world, and society, will be the better for it."
-- Matt Plass, Interactive Services CEO
Why is LRN acquiring Interactive Services?
This deal implements a strategy that we initiated in 2018 when we partnered with Leeds Equity. We committed to invest more deeply in technology and further innovations and, most importantly, evolve our offerings to bring our clients and prospects what they need and continue to inspire principled performance.
We’re seeing two main trends in the ethics and compliance arena:
Interactive Services shares LRN’s deep involvement in E&C but also has experience building learning content for sales and marketing and IT, among other areas. In order to address a growing market need and these various buyers’ specifications—including small and medium sized businesses—Interactive Services has had to make its technology flexible and easy to use. They truly have the best delivery platform in the business.
We were extremely impressed by their platform and the customization they offer their clients. By combining Interactive Services with LRN, we can both evolve our own offering and deliver more of what our partners demand today.
Why Interactive Services, Why Now?
Ethics & Compliance are becoming part of the central nervous systems of organizations. The newest generation of leaders emphasize values when they choose an employer and workers everywhere demand their leadership address racial and other inequalities.
Education and training allow a company to address these demands and create a values-driven culture.
A combined LRN and Interactive Services guarantees that all sizes of organizations—and all departments within organizations—can build the ethical cultures that will protect them from risk, help employees find purpose and meaning in their work, and inspire principled behavior.
How do our partners benefit?
Now, more than ever, the ethical culture of your organization will be crucial to its success. It’s not enough to tell employees to “do the right thing”. To change behavior, and to build and reinforce the culture you need, every colleague in your organization must hear the right message, delivered in the right medium, at the right time (and over time!)
The integration of our two companies will begin immediately. For you, our partners, expect no disruption to your service, only enhancements. Thank you for your trusted partnership, and we look forward to sharing more with you soon.
