November 2021 - Coorpacademy

A new partner for office automation training: discover Mandarine Academy!

Dans le cadre du lancement de l’offre Team – la plateforme de formation conçue pour assurer la croissance des startups et PME – nous sommes ravis d’enrichir notre catalogue de formation en proposant des contenus de Mandarine Academy. Pour découvrir ces nouveaux modules de cours, nous avons posé quelques questions à ce nouveau partenaire d’édition qui met les outils digitaux à la portée de tous !

As part of the launch of Team – the training platform designed to ensure the growth of startups and SMEs (available in French) – we are delighted to enrich our training catalogue with content from Mandarine Academy. To find out about these new course modules, we asked a few questions to this new publishing partner that makes digital tools available to everyone!

Why was Mandarine Academy born?

Mandarine Academy has been supporting the digital transformation of companies for over 13 years now. We created Mandarine in 2008 because we realised how complex it was to support users of telephony solutions and software. The only players in this field were offering e-learning content only. We know that without support, e-learning content is rarely consulted. We therefore created our own human and industrialised training model.

Today we have more than 1,000,000 users, over 5,000 training contents and more than 3,000 clients whom we have helped to introduce new technologies. We have put in place a range of training solutions to meet all needs. From the self-employed person looking for training to the HR manager in charge of hundreds or even thousands of employees, everyone can find the solution that suits them.

What are the strengths of the Mandarine Academy courses?

Since the creation of Mandarine, we have always made it a point of honour to make training participative and engaging. As I said earlier, making e-learning available to users is pointless if there is no human support. This is why today, thanks to an exclusive approach that combines a digital training platform with personalised support, punctuated by individual training meetings, we are able to offer a new way of training that is more effective in terms of skills, capacity, time and budget.

We are also fortunate to be a Microsoft partner and have been an expert on Microsoft 365 collaborative tools for over 10 years now.

How long have you been in partnership with Microsoft?

We have been a Microsoft partner since April 2010. As a Gold Partner, we have a strong relationship with Microsoft’s marketing teams to be able to anticipate the evolutions of Microsoft 365 tools and the new needs of users in order to create the most relevant and up-to-date training content.

What is the methodology behind the Mandarine Academy training courses?

For us, there is no successful training without human support. This is why we have a team of CSMs (Customer Success Managers) who provide our customers with tailor-made support every day according to their needs. They help them to define which training resources are the most relevant to view and in which order, according to the needs of each user and each business.

As for formats, each user is different, so we offer different training formats, including video (tutorials, use cases, etc.). Video is the mainstay of the training format, and we have an internal team dedicated to producing it. We produce videos for our own catalogue but also customised videos for our clients in France and abroad.

Another of Mandarine‘s flagship formats is videoconferencing. It is even Mandarine’s DNA. For more than 13 years, we have been delivering remote training courses of 45 minutes to 1.5 hours, which can be easily deployed in 48 hours thanks to our own training logistics tool. The advantages of this format are numerous: on the user side, they exchange live with a trainer, ask their questions and are involved in the training thanks to our participative teaching methods, which facilitates the commitment of the learners. For the company, it gets rid of the logistical costs associated with user travel, room hire, etc. A computer connected to the Internet is all that is needed for training!

We regularly update our teaching methods to adapt to users. For example, we have a partnership with Klaxoon. We integrate their collaborative tool to get learners involved and participate throughout the training sessions.

Why is it crucial to train in office automation tools?

For more than fifteen years now, we have been facing an increasing presence of digital technology in our daily lives. It has become commonplace to use the Internet to make medical appointments or carry out administrative procedures. This digitalization has led to a divide in the population, as many people have difficulties with digital technology. This is known as digital illiteracy and affects 13 million people in France.

This phenomenon is therefore also present in companies: how do I share my document, how can I easily contact my colleague with the tools available to me? It is therefore necessary to raise awareness and train on the tools. Especially since the tools are multiplying, it is essential to understand which tool corresponds to which use in my daily work to be productive without wasting time finding the tool to use or looking for how it works.

What are your most popular courses? And where do you start?

On the Office 365 MOOC, training content on Microsoft Teams, OneDrive/SharePoint and Power BI are always the most viewed.

Here are some of the most viewed courses for example:

So I would recommend starting with two of the most viewed pieces of content to begin to understand the capabilities of Microsoft Teams for communication and OneDrive and SharePoint to understand the difference between the two, how to store documents and how to share them.

How often do you publish new training content?

Every month, we release new content on the Office 365 MOOC platform (courses, courses, tutorials, use cases). In total, we release more than 600 pieces of content per year (creation and updates). We follow the evolution of the functionalities of the tools that make up the Microsoft 365 suite, so we update our content according to these evolutions.

Our proximity to our customers also allows us to discuss their future needs in order to build tailor-made content. For example, in January 2020, during a workshop with a client, he shared with us their end-of-year objective, which was the implementation of teleworking. So we started working on dedicated content. In March 2020, everything accelerated with containment, and this content became essential for this client and for many others. Without this proximity to our customers, we would not have been as ready to face this situation.

To discover the new Mandarine Academy course modules and reinforce your knowledge of office automation tools, discover the Team offer! In a few minutes, create your massive training platform and benefit from a 15-day free trial by clicking here.

Tell us what courses you play and we’ll tell you who you are

During the course of a day, our attention is constantly stimulated by various information. We only need to spend 30 minutes on our favourite social network, or turn on our television, to realise the constant hubbub around us. Paradoxically, we have also become more attentive to the type of information we are willing to receive. But the point is that this flood of information is one of the reasons why we want to create the most relevant content possible. But how can we deliver on this promise? We’ll explain it to you in a few lines, so you don’t lose your attention.

A finely tuned catalogue

If you have read our article on the recipe of the Coorpacademy catalogue courses, you will know that we take care of both the presentation and what is on the plate. To engage our learners and stimulate them during their learning, it is important to offer them premium content, designed by educational engineers or in co-publication with exclusive partners such as Forbes, IBM or Cegos. To build a relevant training catalogue adapted to each learner, it is crucial to offer tailor-made content, so that it fits them perfectly. Thus, our content catalogue includes courses concocted by us and also by the business experts of each organisation we work with, to promote the development of each individual’s skills.

Content tailored to the changing world

Learning means progressing, doing better, evolving. This implies not only change, but also temporality. We start from a point A, at a certain point in time, and end up at point B, in some time. Therefore, in a rapidly changing world, learning is essential. In preparing our courses, we think about the world of tomorrow, to better prepare you for it. Thus, the more than 1700 exclusive modules on soft skills that make up our training catalogue are designed to guide you through the 5 crucial transformations for the future of organisations. But fighting for tomorrow’s world means that it still exists. That’s why we offer Coorpecology, the first training platform dedicated to the ecological transition, and why we are proud to collaborate with the Collège des Directeurs du Développement Durable (C3D) to design courses that develop sustainable thinking.

Support that is as personal as your experience on our platforms

To get to know you, we have a major ally: data. If you’ve played the All About Data playlist, we’re not teaching you anything, data is essential to designing a learning experience that reflects you. Indeed, by playing courses on our platforms, we are able to refine what we offer. So, training is really just a click away. But if our courses adapt to our learners, our platform also adapts to the needs of our clients, integrating directly into their training ecosystem. When we say that we know you well, it’s also because our team of Customer Success Managers supports you in your training projects, to achieve your objectives and those of your learners. We offer you concrete actions to engage your community of learners over time and reach new heights!

My grandma’s madeleines

Sunday, 5:38 pm, I think of my grandmother’s madeleines. Determined to relive that emotion I feel at the first bite, I decide to cook. Without even thinking, the ingredients are already out on my work surface, from the eggs to the secret ingredient that I have never forgotten (and that I may reveal at the end of this article).

Some actions become mechanisms. By repeating a gesture, or by activating all our senses, we are able to learn much more efficiently. And it is by breaking the eggs in the bowl that I remember repeating this gesture when I was learning at my grandmother’s side how to make the madeleines that I loved so much.

The reason I remember it so well is precisely because I was able to learn while experimenting. I was active in my learning, I learnt the steps of the recipe, only to remember it 10 years later, without even realising it. And it’s not surprising, according to a lot of research, being active in your learning is one of the pillars of information retention.

This pedagogical approach is essential today, in a world where information is overwhelming us and where learners’ attention is increasingly selective. Thus, learning by being active, by participating, by mobilising one’s knowledge, would be more effective than passive learning, where the learner does not act or take any initiative. Thanks to technology and changing needs, training is becoming more diverse and offers more and more options for engaging learners, who are also dependent on this technology.

La pédagogie active peut se traduire par des cours sous forme de quiz, comme c’est le cas sur la plateforme Coorpacademy, dans le but de mobiliser les connaissances des apprenants en amont de la leçon, et de les faire interagir avec le contenu du cours. Si les quizz mobilisent l’attention des apprenants et permet d’ancrer les connaissances, les cours dont l’apprenant est le héros sont encore plus interactifs. En effet, les formats de cours adaptive – tel que le cours Le dilemme du prisonnier : coopérer ou tricher ? – où l’apprenant met concrètement en pratique les concepts vus dans la leçon dans un environnement fictif ou de “bureau”. Cette approche plus concrète permet d’appréhender les concepts de la leçon plus facilement, et de favoriser la rétention d’informations. Enfin, l’un des derniers contenus en date dans lequel les apprenants sont actifs et acteurs de leur apprentissage est l’enquête pédagogique : Cluedo ! Dans ce format inspiré du jeu mythique, les apprenants explorent le manoir Tudor et interroge les suspects pour élucider le meurtre de Monsieur Lenoir.

Active pedagogy can take the form of courses in the form of quizzes, as is the case on the Coorpacademy platform, with the aim of mobilising the learners’ knowledge before the lesson and getting them to interact with the course content. If quizzes mobilise the attention of learners and enable knowledge to be anchored, courses in which the learner is the hero are even more interactive. Indeed, adaptive course formats – such as the Prisoner’s Dilemma: Cooperate or Cheat? – where the learner puts into practice the concepts seen in the lesson in a fictional or “office” environment. This more concrete approach makes it easier to grasp the concepts in the lesson and encourages retention of information. Finally, one of the latest contents in which learners are active and involved in their learning is the educational investigation: Cluedo! In this format inspired by the mythical game, learners explore Tudor Manor and question suspects to solve the murder of Mr Boddy.

Diversifying teaching formats, offering interactive and fun content, are crucial to engage learners and stimulate their motivation. Because one of the key factors for successful learning is above all the motivation of the learners.

In order to cultivate an environment that encourages learning and the development of employees’ skills, it is important to promote active learning methods. This responsibility therefore requires the provision of a variety of pedagogical approaches, adapted to the expectations and needs of the learners.

Indeed, if my grandmother’s recipe for madeleines is still a mechanism, it is also thanks to the environment in which I was invited to learn, to do, to try. I was encouraged to do things. So the first bite was a real reward, which still motivates me to revise this recipe, whose secret ingredient is the desire to learn (and a dash of lemon, but that’s not really a secret since the Marmiton website exists)!

5 questions to ask yourself when thinking about long-term talent management

In 1987, the average lifetime of a technical skill was 30 years. Today, it varies between 12 and 18 months (OECD). As the obsolescence of technical skills increases, the HR function must both meet short-term requirements and think about the future of the organisation. So how do you meet this challenge and ensure the company’s long-term performance, while at the same time ensuring short-term results?

There is a duality within the company. It thinks and acts in the short term, but its survival depends on its long-term strategy. However, there is no question of rushing into emergencies, because survival also depends on a company’s ability to adapt and respond to fluctuations in its environment. Following the pandemic, it is now a certainty: the long term must supplant the short term. And if past events are not enough to convince you of this, the coming climate crisis shows us the importance of building for the future now.

The company’s main asset is its human capital, which is an essential pillar of its overall strategy. Strategic decisions are made taking this resource into account, and skills management then becomes a tool for deploying the company’s strategy. So-called “soft” skills are increasingly sought after, although technical knowledge is still valued, developing employees’ “soft skills” enables the company to promote profiles that are strong in adaptation, resilience, creativity and agility. These behavioural skills are a real competitive advantage in a context where the skills required vary and the environments are changing.

The HR function must therefore be able to align its strategy with that of the company, while taking into account its own changes within its environment. The major transformations that companies are undergoing today are strategic issues both for a company’s HR strategy and for its global strategy. It is therefore necessary to think about strategies in a common way, to coordinate efforts and to gather employees around the same objectives.

But in the day-to-day life of an HRD, long-term thinking is often interrupted by short-term emergencies. Thus, HR teams are reactive in the face of day-to-day problems but at the same time deploy strategies that respond to more global objectives such as recruitment, employer branding and training policies, all of which help to ensure the company’s sustainability and good health.

Thus, when it comes to building the competence development plan, HR teams have to think in the long term. Not least because of changing environments and evolving skills, it is crucial to build a learning culture within the company, in order to foster the agility of the company and all its employees. This is an essential skill to ensure long-term success.

So, to ensure the long-term development of skills, here are 5 questions to ask yourself as a training manager:

What skills will we need to follow our strategy in 5 years time?
How will we enable our employees to develop these skills?
Which skills will be obsolete in 2 years?
What are the current skills?
How and where can we develop the company’s untapped potential?

Faced with this reality, companies must constantly question the skills that make up the company. Identify those that will soon be obsolete, and those that will enable them to survive in an unstable environment. It is therefore crucial for companies to take into account the strategies put in place in the short term, in order to consider the consequences in the long term.

Training is a big deal!

Training is above all a human adventure. It puts people at the heart of the company and helps the talents that make up the company to progress. Through the story of my experience, I would like to try to answer the following question: does the size of the company count when it comes to training?

Having had the opportunity to work within groups of different sizes and operating in different sectors or regions, I have always noticed a common denominator in these experiences: my desire to learn. Whether it was learning how to produce an editorial calendar, something very concrete, or developing my adaptability, a so-called soft skill, the size of the company was never a hindrance to progress. But then, if size doesn’t matter, what’s left to measure? To help you understand, let me tell you the story of my rise in skills.

Here we are 3 years ago, I land in Montreal, and I discover the queue to enter the bus. If I decided to join Céline, it’s not for the love of poutine but for an internship in a big international cosmetics company. The dream – with 20 degrees less. With more than 8,500 employees, this first experience in marketing will allow me to develop skills that will be essential to me later on… Because in addition to the management and coordination tasks that I carry out on a daily basis – and which I quickly adopted the basics of – I am developing an unfailing ability to adapt without even noticing it. FYI, I work in French with Quebecers who work half the time in English. Since Canada is an English and French speaking country, all communications are done in both languages, but not all communications can be adapted to both languages. I adapt the speech, change the slogans, arrange the visuals. And when I get back to France, I feel like I’ve become a chameleon who can’t wait to change my appearance.

I’m back in France, I’ve just got a work-study contract to validate my last year of a Master’s degree in Communication, I’m starting in 2 days. The chameleon that I have become is not disappointed: I will now work in a telemedicine start-up! A dream come true – minus the Quebec accent. From my very first days, I’m learning new tools, adopting a new tone in my communications and immersing myself in new subjects. Offering teleconsultations and understanding the care pathway is a bit different than selling perfumes and understanding different skin types. And while I’m gaining skills in the Adobe suite, developing my creativity and gaining self-confidence, something happens that turns my life upside down: a certain extremely contagious and dangerous virus has appeared in the Wuhan region. You already know the rest: confinement, teleworking, Zoom aperitif and increased screen time. For my company, which has about forty employees, the adaptation is fast, and that’s good because we are at the front line. Although size doesn’t matter when it comes to training employees, it does influence the available manpower. This is why I had the opportunity during this pivotal period to provide support for tasks other than those usually assigned to me. This experience and this unprecedented situation allowed me to develop resilience and flexibility. But as I finish my work placement and head towards the world of work, I know that I will miss the school benches because I am thirsty to learn… Unless?

Unless the world of work is finally similar to the school benches. To finish our story, we are – almost – out of the health crisis and I finally found my first job as a Community Manager! The dream – minus the terraces. So I work in a start-up that does digital learning. A platform for massively developing the skills of employees, while meeting the needs of each learner. If joining a digital learning company makes it easier to increase your skills – I admit it – I discovered that, in the end, what I want to do later on is learn. Indeed, today I have understood that the common denominator of my employability, and above all of my motivation, is to progress, to improve myself, to adapt my skills to my environment. And as my environment is constantly changing, the chameleon that I am wants to learn continuously.

Thus, I have noticed through the writing of this article that all my experiences have led me to mobilise essential soft skills. Adaptation, resilience, creativity, team spirit, stress management, etc. are the soft skills that I have developed and nurtured throughout my professional life. The development of my skills is mainly based on my motivation and, to a certain extent, on the tools or situations that allow it. If the size of the company does not matter for my motivation to learn, the tools that will be made available to me can be influenced by this factor. In 2015, the inequality of opportunity in terms of training is reflected in the figures: the proportion of employees who received training in 2015 increases significantly with the size of the company employing them: 25% in the 10-19 employee group, 29% in the 20-49 group and 41% in the 50-249 group. These figures then increase to 58% above 250 employees, and to 63% above 500. Employees of large companies are therefore proportionally two and a half times more likely to have been trained in 2015.

This is why it is crucial that all companies, regardless of the number of employees, should be able to offer – and be offered – training that is engaging, impactful and accessible from anywhere. In conclusion, to train effectively, let’s not measure the size of the company, but rather measure the commitment of learners to develop their skills and the relevance of the devices put in place.

Are you a company with less than 250 employees and are you looking to develop your staff rapidly and massively? Discover Team by Coorpacademy, the training offer specially designed for start-ups and SMEs! Take advantage of a 15-day free trial – only available in French: https://coorpteam.coorpacademy.com

Clue, the educational investigation: become the hero of your training!

Having just arrived on Skill Island, the seven members of the Newcleus research laboratory’s party committee soon lose one of their number in tragic circumstances. What happened to poor Mr Boddy? While everything seems to point to an accident, Colonel Mustard suspects… murder! He decides to investigate on the sly… Who could have had it in for the good man? With what weapon was he killed? And in which room of the house did the murder take place? These answers are up to you to find, thanks to the clues that have been misplaced in the sumptuous house. It’s up to you to play detective, it’s up to you to play…

Clue !

With more than 150 million copies sold worldwide since 1950 – including 4 million in France – the mythical board game developed by Hasbro® has been invited onto the Coorpacademy platforms to make your employees the heroes of their training.

Discover this new educational format through 3 clues on the backstage of this partnership!

Clue 1 – An iconic and entertaining partnership

Building on the success of the Trivial Pursuit courses, our partnership with Hasbro continues to enrich our training offer through the world-famous game Clue. Making learning more fun is one of our core beliefs and engaging employees in training is one of our daily missions. Therefore, we are constantly looking for innovative and entertaining formats, so that the learner is a real actor in the course they are playing.

With this new learning innovation, the learners of the Coorpacademy platforms have the opportunity to develop their skills through a game that they know well, and which mobilises their full attention! Indeed, a good detective must be critical…

Clue n°2 – A formative and playful investigation!

In Coorpacademy’s Clue investigation, your objective is to understand who is behind the murder of Mr Boddy… To solve this crime, you will have to discover as many clues as possible by exploring the manor and questioning the five suspects. But be careful… they will mislead you, knowingly or not! Your critical thinking skills will be essential to unravel the truth.

This skill, identified as indispensable by 2025 by the World Economic Forum, enables people to learn how to construct rigorous reasoning in order to achieve an objective, or to analyse facts in order to formulate a judgment.

Clue 3 – An immersive learning experience

You are now in the shoes of the famous Colonel Mustard! You have access to the different rooms of the manor. These are full of clues that you can manipulate to gather all the information you need to solve your investigation. Pssst… the mansion is so big, it also hides secret passages. Pay attention, they might help you to identify the real culprit…

Set sail for Skill Island, a windy island, and find the seven members of the Newcleus research lab’s party committee! Hurry, one of them will soon disappear under strange circumstances… Start the investigation!

Month: November 2021