Inman

Compass is making its learning portal free and public

Compass is making its digital learning and development platform, Compass Academy, free for all agents in the industry, regardless of their brokerage affiliation, the company announced Thursday.

Compass launched its Compass Academy platform in beta in October 2019 and that tool has since been used by more than 9,000 unique users at the company. Compass Academy offers interactive, bite-sized videos and live webinars for agents with a focus on growing their business.

Robert Reffkin | Photo credit: Compass

“Our industry is faced with an unprecedented event that calls for a collaborative approach,” Robert Reffkin, Compass’ co-founder and CEO said in a statement. “Compass is fortunate in that we’re able to quickly shift our focus to cater to the needs of our agents and the real estate industry as a whole, which is why I’m very proud to announce that Compass Academy — our online learning and development platform that shares the best practices of the nation’s top agents, is now available to agents across the country, regardless of brokerage affiliation.”

“Just because agents’ businesses may slow during this unprecedented time, does not mean that their personal and professional growth has to.”

The platform was originally set to launch in the second quarter of 2020, but Compass’ product and engineering team advanced the development to launch the platform this week. Once its live, new content will be added weekly for agents.

The courses are designed to be both practical and provide actionable materials from agents with video lessons supplemented by written resources.

Compass boasts a large product and engineering team, especially for the real estate industry, in part because it has raised so much from venture capital sources for this specific reason. The company has product and engineering hubs in Seattle, New York, India and Washington D.C., which likely allowed the team to quickly shift its focus to get the product out ahead of schedule.

The moved by Compass comes against a backdrop of an industry-wide slowdown. Both Keller Williams and RE/MAX are moving to offer free or reduced-cost training for their agents.