The customer: Meet Riipen
Riipen is a work-based learning platform on a mission to give students hands-on, experiential learning. The organization, which was founded in British Columbia, Canada in 2013, connects students with companies so they can both benefit from internships and projects.
As the senior manager on the People and Culture (P&C) team since 2019, Abiella King has seen Riipen grow from a 35-person operation to more than 90 employees across Canada, the US, and abroad. Managing everything from hiring to engagement and benefits, it’s Abiella’s job to ensure Riipen’s team can deliver on the company mission.
Like many companies in North America, Riipen went remote over the pandemic – and this meant staying connected, especially through one-on-ones and team meetings, became more crucial than ever for Abiella’s team. That also means all those meetings needed proper documentation and follow-up.
Time was being wasted, knowledge was being lost, and meeting fatigue was setting in. With over 90 remote employees and countless meetings, Riipen needed a better way to stay aligned — and Fellow AI delivered just that.
Abiella's Challenge: Disorganized docs slowing everyone down
Before finding Fellow, Riipen’s solution for keeping meeting notes organized was a simple combination of a Google Doc embedded in the calendar invite and a lot of manual typing. While they may have scraped by with that method when there were fewer people and fewer meetings, it couldn’t keep up with Riipen’s growth.
The first issue with this system is that it was hard to organize and share. Google Docs need to be manually shared with meeting attendees every single time. And if those meeting notes weren’t manually shared properly, that meant some people would be out of the loop.
They could put a Google Doc link in the meeting invitation, but then it became a chore to track down that Google Doc after the fact. Rather than a central hub for meeting data, there was just chaotic files in Google Drive.
This system also wasn’t helping with an overload of distracting messages. Slack is Riipen’s main form of real-time communication, so the default action if someone had a question outside of a meeting was to immediately send a Slack message. That also meant those questions were scattered across Slack channels rather than centralized.
Ultimately, the problem slowing Riipen down was a lack of intuitive centralization of meeting notes and a lack of consistent record keeping — but a solution was coming soon.
Abiella's Solution: Order and focus thanks to AI meeting notes and agendas
In July 2022, Riipen rolled out Fellow across the organization and Abiella saw sweeping improvements immediately.
According to Abiella, Fellow’s agendas have had the effect of cutting down on endless Slack messages and distractions across the organization.
With Fellow, every meeting in her calendar now has an agenda. Fellow’s agendas are collaborative, which means whenever Abiella or someone else at Riipen organizes a meeting, all meeting attendees can contribute to it ahead of time. Now, instead of peppering team members with non-urgent questions throughout the day, they can simply add them to the agenda for the next meeting. Fellow can even make AI suggestions for agendas and sends an AI pre-meeting brief ahead of calls to ensure everyone is prepared.
With Fellow, those agendas turn into a place to add manual meeting notes during calls, and are organized alongside the AI recording, summary, and transcript — all in one place. For Riipen employees, that means no more searching through Google Drives and folders to find the right document.
Sharing key decisions and milestones discussed in meetings is also a breeze. Thanks to Fellow’s AI note taker, any team member in a meeting will automatically have the AI meeting recap and notes shared to them — no more manual sharing from a Google Doc. Team members can also create clips of important moments from meetings to share with each or include in a meeting agenda.
Riipen’s recording library is easy to search, too, with Ask Fellow — like ChatGPT but for meetings.
According to Abiella, Fellow’s AI summaries, recordings, and transcripts have been a game-changer for the organization’s productivity and culture – making it easier for Riipen team members to hold themselves and others accountable.
For Abiella, AI transcriptions have also made her HR role that much easier. When she’s doing a reference call, for example, she can rely on Fellow’s AI to create a verbatim record and succint summary, reducing manual note taking. This has rippled across the organization, and now nearly all meetings at Riipen are recorded and transcribed with Fellow’s AI.
One-on-ones are also a big part of Abiella’s role, and her preference is for the report to lead the charge. Abiella says the ability for everyone to add to the agenda quickly led to more inclusive and productive discussions, especially for one-on-ones.
Results: Fewer distractions, better collaboration, and more time for what matters
Fellow has been a transformative force in how the Riipen team gets work done and collaborates with each other.
Meetings are more efficient and productive now that everyone comes with an agenda and notes are automated with Fellow AI. Riipen has gotten to the point where if a meeting doesn’t have an agenda, that means it can be canceled. That cuts down on the dreaded Zoom fatigue, which, according to research from Webex, 95% of workers experience. So not only are there fewer meetings, but the ones that do happen are more effective.
Having Fellow as a central point of organization and collaboration has cut down on messaging back and forth, giving employees less interrupted time for deep focus. When they do come together to meet, Fellow has encouraged a new culture of transparency and engagement.
That’s true for one-on-ones all the way to company-wide meetings. One example of this is Riipen’s all-hands meeting:
With the vast majority of Riipen’s meetings recorded, transcribed, and summarized with Fellow’s AI, all those calls are properly documented. And, most crucially, having that documentation centralized helps team members to easily find key decisions and action items.
All these improvements have also allowed Riipen to reassess their tech stack. For example, they were using another tool for one-on-ones but now Fellow has completely taken that over. Fellow allows Riipen to get more done with fewer apps, which is good news for both budget and employees feeling overwhelmed by how many apps they need to use.
Fellow AI is now a crucial part of the Riipen team’s day-to-day work.
At a scaling organization like Riipen, Fellow is a non-negotiable
With enhanced organization, accountability, and a reduction in workplace distractions, Fellow has become a key part of Riipen’s success in delivering on their educational mission.
Abiella says she would “absolutely” recommend Fellow and its AI features to other organizations struggling to stay organized. And if her boss tried to take Fellow away, Abiella simply wouldn’t let that happen.
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