Employee Spotlight: Charise Frias

December 7, 2022

Sam Tolman

Charise Frias

Senior Curation Specialist – Wellness

She/Her

Portland, Oregon

When the value of Wellness in the workplace began gaining momentum across corporate and learner requests, Charise Frias had been at the forefront of the industry for many years. She lives and breathes Wellness training in her own life and applies her knowledge to her customer requests. OpenSesame added Wellness to its core course offerings due to its critical role in workforces everywhere. Charise offers OpenSesame customers individualized solutions for employee Wellness programs through her expertise in course curation. As a Senior Curation Specialist, she hears what customers and their learners need and can make direct requests to publishers around nutrition, mental health, sleep, work/life balance, and much more.

Describe your role.

My role on the Curation team is to grow and promote our content and support in Wellness. I support customers with engaging online courses focused on Wellness in the workplace. My goal is to help our customers realize the importance of wellbeing and implement some level of employee Wellness training. The topics of mental health, nutrition, stress management, and lifestyle are so universally important. As our mission states, we want to help companies develop the most productive and admired workforces. Wellness is an essential part of that mission.

How do you curate the best possible course lists for your customers?

I have a strong connection to the topic of Wellness. I’m a certified yoga teacher; I’ve studied meditation, mindfulness, and ayurvedic medicine in India. Along with that, I meet with customers and listen to what’s important to their organizational goals. Our curation is primarily based on customer requests and specific needs. We also rely on the Curation Alignment Process (CAP) survey, creating lists with exact results. I’m also in the catalog all day long, and I work with the publishers directly to make sure they’re creating the content our customers require.

How has Wellness changed in the past few years, and where is it going?

Companies of all types and sizes are seeing the value of implementing an entire Wellness program. I love working with organizations that don’t already have any Wellness strategy in place. OpenSesame has so many tools to support the whole process. One way to get started is a simple survey to gauge employee stress levels. It can provide a lot of insight.

What topics do you hear requests for most?

Before the pandemic, stress and mindfulness were prevalent topics, so we introduced Wellness as its own category. There is so much new content and demand. Mental health awareness has gained attention everywhere — not just in the workplace. We get a lot of requests for courses on how to help your colleagues if you notice they’re struggling. Everyone wants ways to tackle stress, anxiety, depression, and sleep. How to take care of yourself seems to be a lot more important to people in recent years. Resocialization has been an ask from a few customers. It takes a lot more energy to socialize in a big group, and many people suffer from social anxiety. “Work-from-home and coping with stress at home are topics we hear about a lot.

What trends do you see coming for the future of elearning?

I see shorter microlearning sessions being more popular. Younger generations are all about social media style, super quick lessons in 5-10 minutes or much less. Also trending right now is stress management, mindfulness, and meditation. Further in the future, I see virtual reality gaining more traction.