Author: Rédaction Blog

Outstanding recovery: OECD forecasts for 2021

 

The OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) published its 2021 World Economic Outlook and confirmed the exceptional nature of this recovery with unexpected forecasts. The OECD forecasts a 5,8% increase in world GDP, which is 0.2% more than the March estimation. 

2020 has not been without difficulties for the world economy, which has shrunk by 3.5% following the crisis we are experiencing. Activity slowed, offices emptied and time stood still as people shut down. Following an unprecedented year, an extraordinary recovery is expected this year. Laurence Boone, the chief economist of the OECD, announces that “if vaccination accelerates and people spend the money they have saved, the growth could be even stronger” and she adds: “it is the highest figure since 1973”.

Nevertheless, the recovery will not be homogeneous and although most advanced economies are expected to return to their GDP levels by the end of 2022, countries like Argentina are expected to wait more than 5 years. As noted earlier, countries that have rapidly vaccinated their populations against COVID19 and can control infections have better conditions for economic recovery. Resumption will be exceptional if countries demonstrate effective and broad vaccination programs and public health policies. 

Workers, who have also been affected by this crisis, will experience a special recovery. As the crisis has affected the labor market, inequalities among workers have increased. The OECD states that the share of skilled jobs increased in almost all 38 OECD countries during the pandemic, at the expense of others. The more or less high level of public aid for workers, companies, or certain sectors such as tourism will allow a real revival of activity and will explain the relatively important strength of the economic recovery of the different countries. One of the main challenges is to protect the incomes of the low-skilled workers and to improve training programs and access to the labor market. Training is a key tool to ensure that this recovery is beneficial to the greatest number of people. HR functions will have to do everything possible to meet the qualification needs of the most vulnerable employees and thus enable them to ensure their employability in a world affected by the crisis. 

The growth outlook has improved considerably, but it is not guaranteed for all companies. To take advantage of the opportunities created by the anticipated remarkable resumption, we need to make it possible and create its foundations now. After more than a year of living and working differently, companies and employees finally have a clearer goal, a less vague future, although still uncertain. We can look forward to the future, but we need to start preparing now because the resumption will not wait. To seize the opportunity of this renewed growth, organizations will have to rethink their management style and accompany their employees in this return to “normal”. 

As life slowly returns to normal around us, we must ask ourselves what effects the crisis has had on our behavior and motivation. The crisis has had a major impact on employees, especially with the widespread use of remote work. Reorganization issues are numerous and decisive for companies’ future, and we must prepare for them now. In order not to miss the resumption and to prepare your employees for the challenges it brings, training is essential. The HR function plays a crucial role because it can provide employees with the necessary resources to take over in the best conditions and to understand the issues they encounter.

To discover Coorpacademy’s courses:

All courses

Digital transformation: what if it is not over? Discover the top 3 skills for a successful transition

 

Following the pandemic, one out of three companies in France stated that they increased their budget dedicated to digital transformation, according to a study released by Twilio on companies’ digital transformation and their customer engagement strategies. Affected by the COVID-19 crisis, digital transformation is now more than ever a priority for organizations if they want to develop serenely and be ready for the future, even more uncertain than today. Although it is not the only lever for organizations’ transformation, it has a lasting impact on behavior and shapes new processes, as it profoundly changes our habits.

Omnipresent both in our personal lives and in our professional environment, digital tools are growing at a rapid pace, sometimes much more rapidly than their uses. Here lies the complexity of digital transformation: how to integrate and adopt innovative but constantly evolving tools?

As the pandemic taught us, it is essential to prepare for major upheavals before they occur, so as not to be caught short. In 2025, a revolution will disrupt the job market. The digital aspect of companies will be decisive in the face of new challenges. Projections made by the World Economic Forum’s “Future of Jobs” 2020 report allow us to define which best practices to adopt and the skills to develop.

What is digital transformation in 2021?

Cloud, e-commerce, social networks, Zoom or data, blockchain, automation: you already know digital tools. Digital transformation is the process of integrating these technologies into all the company’s activities to improve its performance. Transitioning to digital also involves adaptation to new uses, for example, those of new consumers, which are rapidly developing.

Many think digital transformation resumes to implementing digital processes in the company, but how can we ensure they are understood and anchored in behaviors? Guiding the digital transformation is mainly leading the employees on the handling and understanding of these digital tools. Involving collaborators in change management and improving their ability to adapt is key for any major transformation to be successful. Indeed, when facing changes, agility and adaptation are fundamental qualities. This is where the HR function is decisive to drive their organization’s digital transformation.

How to become a digital employee?

The “Future of Jobs” 2020 edition report published by the World Economic Forum highlights this: the trend has been towards digitalization for several years and it is now a top priority for companies. The Twilio survey states that globally, 97% of business leaders believe the pandemic has sped up the digital transformation of their organization. It’s a fact: businesses are not done with digitalization.

The interest of companies to invest in data encryption recently emerged. Indeed, digitalization also comes with its risks, and preventing them is an essential step to complete this transition to digital tools.

The Future of Jobs report reveals a list of 10 key skills to develop for 2025, which you can find here. In this list, 3 skills are crucial for the digital transformation of organizations. As stated before, this transformation is essentially about the employees who compose it, or rather, their ability to adapt to it.

As the survey shows, companies plan to restructure their workforce in response to new technologies. What are the 3 key skills to guide the digital transformation of companies and employees?

N°1 Technology use, monitoring, and control

Digital tools can sometimes be complex to get used to, especially when they change our habits. The WEF survey results show that skill shortages in the local labor market and the inability to attract the right talents remain among the top barriers to technology adoption.

It is crucial to learn how to use new digital technologies and understand how they work, to earn their tangible benefits. Lacking this ability, the adoption of new technologies is slower, globally affecting the speed at which an organization transforms.

Some skills that come with digital transformation, often very technical, are so-called “hard skills” that require a computer or very specific, scientific knowledge. In concrete terms, if we all use and take advantage of the disposable technologies, then we are collectively developing towards a more digital and agile company. Training can also focus on soft skills, to promote agility and adaptation, and becoming more resilient while facing unexpected changes! As an example, cybersecurity, a digital challenge that concerns not only engineers, or big data, which is also part of the digital revolution, if the entire company knows how to benefit from it.

To better understand the scale of the digital revolution, learn to anticipate the tomorrow’s world :

Preparing for tomorrow’s world

Develop your agility:

Adopt an agile mindset

N° 2 Technology design and programming

The WEF report figures that executives face challenges while recruiting talent that specializes in AI, machine learning, software development, and applications. To enable a company to take full advantage of the potential that new technologies bring, we must set them up first.

By 2025, the digitalization of organizations will speed up and the availability of new digital tools will increase. To drive this transformation, technology design and programming skills will gain value. It’s mathematical. If you decide to use more tools, you also need to increase the number of people needed to implement them. And as technology expands and becomes more sophisticated, it also becomes more complex to design.

However, companies should not fall into the following trap: thinking that digital transformation solely relies on the recruitment of technology design and programming profiles. As previously mentioned, the real challenge lies in the general understanding of these technologies by all employees, to move towards a global, concrete, and collective change. To instill this idea of change, acculturation of the organization’s key players is the first step. Digital acculturation means understanding the issues it engenders and better transmitting them to all the collaborators. Beyond this first stage, digital dexterity plays a crucial role. It refers to the employees’ desire and ability to take on existing and emerging technologies to improve their performance. A collective attitude motivated by a genuine desire to understand makes all the difference as it allows employees to take the measure of the changes digital transition implies.

To start acculturation to digital tools:

AI and cognitive technologies

N°3 Resilience, stress tolerance, and flexibility

Resilience, stress tolerance, and flexibility are essential “soft” skills to help people understand new tools.

New technologies, and any change generally, can be perceived as an obstacle for employees. Therefore resilience, i.e. the ability of a person or a group to project themselves into the future and to evolve despite difficulties, is crucial to digital transformation. These difficulties are also a source of concern but will be easily overcome if employees learn to develop a good tolerance for stress and unexpected situations.

To develop resilience and succeed in overcoming individual or collective obstacles: 

Resilience

Digital learning, the primary tool for digital transformation?

Data from the report’s survey shows the importance of training to face the future of the job market. Indeed, mastering key competencies will allow collaborators to be more productive in the long term. To address this issue, employers investigate employees’ training, and it’s already going digital! The number of employers offering digital learning opportunities to their employees will increase fivefold by 2025, according to the survey. Although companies say that by then, the in-house department will deliver 39% of training, e-learning platforms will still supplement it for 16% of training. Digital training is therefore constantly growing and ensuring employees’ skills development.

The digital transformation of companies also involves the digitalization of training, accessible to as many people as possible, adapted to each, and engaging for all. To quote the economist Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chair of the WEF: “the same technological disruption that is transforming jobs can also provide the key to creating them – and help us gain new skills”. The tools are at our disposal, it’s just up to us to use them intelligently so we can unleash the human potential already present in our organizations.

Unlock the human potential of your business:

All courses

 

Back on track

 

It’s the resumption. Business activities resume, terraces are alive again and the subway is full again. We are finally seeing the end of the crisis, and we cross our fingers while writing this. This unprecedented period arouses excitement but also interrogations about the best way to support employees, as the stakes are crucial.

How can we create the ideal conditions for this resumption? What are the best practices to adopt? What about employee motivation? How will remote working be organized from now on?

For more than a year, we have evolved in an uncertain and worrying climate that has changed the usual reference points for collective and individual interests. We made one while being apart. And this has not been without consequences on the general mood and hope for the future.

While it is now time to reunite gradually and (re)discover our habits, some might find it confusing. Whatever happens, humans get used to everything, and finally, it is returning to normal that might seem abnormal.

The revolution that this crisis has brought to light is mainly that of remote working, leading to hybrid work. And as individuals, this crisis has taught us that adaptation is an essential ability. We know that the world changes, but it is also unpredictable. Training is an effective response to this.

Indeed, without the right support, resumption can be hard, both individually and collectively. That’s why we’ve designed the Back on Track playlist, to answer these questions and ensure that your employees return to the office in the best possible condition.

To get back on track, our dedicated playlist contains the following courses:

  • Adapt in all circumstances

Test your adaptability – Coorpacademy
Learning to Learn – Learn Assembly
Boost your learning abilities – Science & Vie

  • Manage effectively

Take a fresh look at your management style – O. Sibony
Making Quick and Effective Decisions – Dunod

  • Work better together

Remote Working: From Theory to Best Practices – E.Eyrolles
Motivating your team – Video Arts
30 Ways to Make More Time – Video Arts

And to discover our entire catalog, click here

Audiolearning: a media that makes noise

 

Do you use voice messages instead of sending a text? You can’t live without Alexa, Siri, or another voice assistant? Indeed, our uses have changed since audio became part of our lives. To meet these new expectations, Coorpacademy investigated this popular format.

Learn how to provide an offer of engaging and efficient training podcasts and audio content! To better understand this phenomenon, discover our e-book on The rise of audiolearning, or learn about the key topics covered in this 2021 study through this article.

The podcast, a growing format

You can listen to it anywhere, whenever and it lasts an average of 25 minutes: the podcast. Born in the early 2000s, this downloadable digital audio content has experienced an exponential rise in recent years. With the use of cell phones and the unprecedented situation of lockdown, the audience today represents 90 million listeners per month. A trend that is not likely to decline: estimations project it will double by 2023. Investing in this medium becomes essential, as audio content is in demand and appreciated.

Learn by listening: it’s easy, engaging, and effective

Podcasts cover different uses: they can inform, entertain or immerse their audience in life stories. Yet, 74% of listeners want to learn new things quickly and screen-free! With an increase of 135,000 educational podcasts produced in 2020, this format is leading the way. Following the lockdown, audiolearning has taken off, and the offer is even wider! Lending itself to the art of storytelling, podcasts provide better memorization, and engagement rates are excellent: 93% of people listen to podcasts in their entirety or almost.

The multiplication of media allows us to solicit all of our senses and therefore to make our brain work! No scientific theory corroborates the popular misconception that everyone is rather “visual” or “auditory”. Sylvia Koenig, Director of Digital Learning at our partner Bookboon (world’s leading publisher of ebooks and audio learning for professionals) reminds us, audiolearning is like reading and it does not differ for the brain if the word is spoken or read.

What are the main audiolearning formats and their advantages?

Available in various formats such as interviews, talks, or stories, audiolearning is a fresh way of learning. Audiobooks are also flourishing and can be a real audio pleasure, even on “corporate” subjects! Beyond the diversity of formats audio content offers us, it has many advantages: easy to carry, you can listen to it at your own pace, and be able to multitask while listening. It satisfies listeners to be free of any screen, to learn informally, and find real flexibility to integrate learning moments into their busy schedule.

Download our e-book The rise of audiolearning to find a detailed typology of audio content, a podcasts’ selection dealing with major business transformations, a guide to best practices, and an overview of all opportunities offered by this format. Learn how to create and/or integrate an audiolearning offer for your training!

Future of Jobs: The top 10 skills to be developed by 2025

In October 2020, the World Economic Forum (WEF) released its third edition of the “Future of Jobs” report. It analyzes future trends of labor markets and provides essential information to guide employers and workers for forthcoming opportunities.

By listing the upcoming top 10 crucial skills, the report gives a better understanding of the challenges companies and workers will face within the next five years. It enables training managers, HR directors, and executives to take action by preparing their workforce to face tomorrow’s uncertainty. It helps keep pace with the crucial transformations that companies will encounter in a constantly changing world.

The World Economic Forum warns the job market will experience a major shift by 2025. As the COVID-19 pandemic affected every aspect of our lives, it will not be without consequences for the labor market. The report states that workers will face two considerable disruptions by 2025: job losses due to increased automation and the economic impact of the crisis we are still experiencing. These disruptions in the labor market could displace approximately 85 million jobs. By comparison, the second edition of the report published in 2018 predicted a shift of 75 million jobs by 2025.

In the coming years, millions of workers will face both reskilling and upskilling challenges to meet the upcoming needs of the labor market and their job’s transformation. The least we can say is that employees have understood this! According to the report, between 2019 and 2020, there will be 4 times more individuals seeking to learn online through their initiative. By 2025, the report estimates that 16% of the retraining of employees in companies will rely on online training platforms.

Innovative thinking, complex problem-solving skills, and active learning techniques that engage learners are critical competencies today. As predicted in the 2018 edition of the report, those top 3 skills are still must-haves and will remain by 2025.

Back when the former edition of the “Future of Jobs” report got published, our training catalog already covered over 90% of the must-haves skills identified for 2022. With an average of 3 complete training courses by skills, we now cover 100% of the competencies that will establish the future of jobs! 

What are the 10 key skills of tomorrow’s labor market ?

        1. Analytical thinking and innovation
        2. Active learning and learning strategies
        3. Complex problem-solving
        4. Critical thinking and analysis
        5. Creativity, originality and initiative
        6. Leadership and social influence
        7. Technology use, monitoring and control
        8. Technology design and programming
        9. Resilience, stress tolerance and flexibility
        10. Reasoning, problem-solving and ideation

Data used in the WEF report was collected over a nine-month period, from January to September 2020. It includes 291 unique answers from global companies. The data collectively represents over 7.7 million employees worldwide. For more details about the method, you can read the report available here.

 

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