Tag: covid19

Are we tired of resilience?

 

It’s perfect timing. In the wake of the crisis, the concept of resilience is talked about everywhere, especially in corporate culture. Introduced by Boris Cyrulnik, the concept of resilience states that it is possible to overcome a traumatic event, to draw strength from one’s misfortunes, and to “navigate through the torrents” (Boris C). To suffer and to heal one’s wounds, in order to heal more quickly. This could be an appropriate analogy for resilience, which also reminds us of the current recovery context, compromised by a labour shortage.

 

In a previous article, we described the labor shortage as an opportunity. An opportunity to focus on training, to overcome this issue that companies are facing. To draw strength from one’s misfortunes, to see the glass half full, there are a thousand and one ways to describe resilience. This term, which is basically about personal growth, is sometimes debated. Isn’t it too good to be true? Can we really ignore the difficulties, the trauma, to move forward? Is it an innate disposition or can resilience be initiated within a group? In this article, we decipher this phenomenon to finally answer the question: Are we tired of resilience?

 

A debatable term

Turning hardship into strength sounds like an admirable notion. It is true that, on paper, we would all like to be capable of resilience, both in our personal and professional lives. Realistic, yet optimistic, resilience is the prospect of a better future, without denying the reality and harshness of life’s hazards. However, some criticize this notion, which they consider unfounded, even futile. In “Carnet de Philo“, Géraldine Mosna-Savoye, producer of the French philosophical show and lecturer, deciphers the phenomenon and states “Everybody hates resilience” (i.e. Title of the episode of 25/02/2021). According to Mosna-Savoye, the critics are formed on the following: resilience is a poisoned but well-wrapped gift that tells us “get by, show resilience, rely on your ability to bounce back on your own and you’ll see, everything will be fine, you’ll manage to overcome all the trials of the world”. Said like that, it can seem too easy. Resilience is a fashionable notion, which “is enough to give oneself a moral, empathetic and supportive content, and so much the worse if the facts, the political or ethical acts, do not follow” according to Mosna-Savoye. So, the speaker opts for hope, which would be “joy, even inconsistent”, as opposed to “the naïve and bland certainty of always getting through”, which would be resilience. But is the dilemma between these two notions so simplistic?

 

The joy of knowing you will always get through

If hope and resilience do not go hand in hand, then obviously the notion of resilience cannot be applied in practice. To oppose these two notions is to deny the purpose of the resilience phenomenon: to strive for a better situation. Of course, when we talk about resilience, we tend to focus on the reaction to the crisis, because this is where everything is at stake. But over time, resilience allows us to work towards a better future, a goal towards which we can move, and to grow. Hope, on the other hand, is based on the expectation of a better situation than the existing one. Waiting is not acting. And this is where hope and resilience are ultimately inseparable. Resilience, which encourages action, can only be effective if we cultivate hope, which gives individuals the necessary passion to believe in a better future, and to do everything to achieve it.

 

Learn to live with uncertainty, or simply to anticipate

Being resilient, showing resistance, tenacity, being able to absorb shocks, bounce back, etc. The lexical field of resilience focuses mainly on the acceptance of trauma and endurance, rather than on the fulfillment that is supposed to come from it. What resilience tells us is that in order to deal with adversity and overcome crises, accepting the situation is the first step towards action. It means “rolling up your sleeves”; “never giving up”; “pushing yourself”. From then on, accepting uncertainty, living with the unexpected, allows one to minimize the consequences, so as not to end up paralyzed, unable to make a decision. 

For resilience to be constant and not just a response to each trauma encountered, anticipation is key. Some cities, such as London, have initiated preventive resilience programs. With its London Resilience Partnership website, the Anglo-Saxon capital is disseminating advice on how to visit the city in complete safety. For example, it offers a section that “identifies potential risks to the capital and the impact that these emergencies may have on Londoners”.

 

Positive attitude

Developing resilience may simply mean changing our perspective, opening up our interpretations, and changing our outlook on a situation. As an individual, or as an organization, we can choose to be more or less positive about a given situation. We have the choice, when faced with a traumatic event, a crisis, to interpret it as an insurmountable disaster or as an opportunity for improvement, like a difficult level that we will repeat over and over again in a video game, until we reach the next level. Positive thinking is a pillar of resilience, being able to think positively about a past crisis helps us to face a current crisis, while putting its catastrophic nature into perspective. Being resilient means seizing the opportunity to learn from every situation, the good ones, but especially the bad ones. This notion is ultimately a state of mind that can be cultivated, learned and passed on.

 

The pitfalls of resilience 

The risk of resilience would be to think that any failure is synonymous with trauma. In France, we often tend to fear failure, equating it with the person who fails. Our perception of this notion is particularly negative, and we wrongly consider that failure is synonymous with incapacity. In her LinkedIn article “The Culture of Failure is Just a Matter of Perception” Clara Kindt describes failure as “a deep disappointment in the face of unmet expectations” and suggests changing our perception of this phenomenon. “When we don’t know, we learn and only then we know. In the end, only people who don’t try don’t fail.” she summarizes. By developing resilience, one also learns to fail and to develop a “culture of failure”, inspired by the Anglo-Saxon, Scandinavian or Latin American mentalities, for example, which advocate assuming mistakes and imperfections. The challenge is not to value failure, but to put it into perspective, in order to draw the right conclusions that will guide our future actions. 

Another criticism often made to resilience is that it values the suffering of others, as a kind of competition to see who can bounce back the highest, the fastest or the most skillfully. Yet we all face obstacles and difficulties, both personally and professionally. The goal of resilience is not to determine who suffers the most, nor who will be the most resistant. It is first and foremost a philosophy that translates into a corporate culture that promotes the right to make mistakes, the ability to deal with adversity and that stimulates employees’ hope. 

 

But are we all capable of bouncing?

Let’s take the example of two balls: one bounces, the other does not. One is bouncy, the other is made of a material that does not allow it to bounce. Finally, it is a bit the same for individuals. Some people are born with it, others have a harder time absorbing shocks. Nevertheless, and this is what differentiates us from the two balls mentioned above, it is possible to work on one’s ability to bounce back, because resilience can be learned and maintained. Many factors can help or hinder the development of this notion. For example, the environment that surrounds us can strengthen or diminish our resilience. The people around us play a crucial role in the way we perceive a given situation. In business, the same is true. The environment in which the teams evolve as well as the interactions between collaborators are determining factors in developing the collective resilience of the teams, which will allow the company to move forward through the difficulties. The recipe for corporate resilience is therefore composed of one main ingredient: soft skills. Listening, leaving room for emotions, putting oneself in the place of others, working autonomously, etc. The manager plays a central role in fostering the resilience of his teams.

 

In conclusion, individual resilience is an incredible strength. Without being a miracle skill, being resilient allows you to move towards a better situation, or at least, it allows you to improve enough to move forward serenely, and to find pleasure in your work. However, this soft skill is above all a state of mind, unlike a tool that can be used on an ad hoc basis, resilience is nourished by our experiences and by the way we interpret the situations we face. In “Autobiography of a Scarecrow“, Boris Cyrulnik writes: “those who take a long time to recover from trauma or never recover from it are those who have been abandoned by the group”. Resilience is also contagious. A resilient group is not just made up of individuals who are prepared for anything and are ultra-resistant. On the other hand, following a crisis, group cohesion reinforces resilience, because as trite as it may sound, there is strength in numbers. 

Individual resilience is a tool for employee development, but organizational resilience is one of the essential conditions for moving forward collectively in an uncertain world.

To move from individual resilience to organizational resilience, discover the eponymous course co-published with Management Magazine.

Labour shortage: training as a crucial tool for recovery

As the economic recovery is confirmed, we are already witnessing the consequences of the pandemic on the labour market. Faced with the reopening, many companies are facing a shortage of skilled labour. According to the Dares, The French Directorate for Research, Studies and Statistics, although the job market has picked up again since the end of the health crisis, many positions remain vacant due to a lack of candidates. This problem therefore raises a training issue for organisations if they wish to participate in this revival of activity.

“Last year we provided 35,000 training courses. We would like to increase this year to 45,000 to help the working population find the right job.”

In response to the difficulties in finding workers, Frank Ribuot, President of Randstad France, explained in a BFM Business interview on 25 June 2021 that employers are forced to “recruit less experienced staff or staff from another sector“. Training is an essential pillar for overcoming this obstacle to recovery, as it will allow for the effective training of a workforce that may be less qualified, but which is ready to quickly upgrade its skills.

 

According to Alain Griset, Minister for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises, “Labour shortages were the number one concern of entrepreneurs before the crisis – it is now the sustainability of their activity – and this issue is coming back strongly with the recovery of activity“. SMEs would therefore be even more affected by these difficulties. Nevertheless, all sectors are experiencing recruitment difficulties, particularly in the construction sector, in personal services such as cleaning or assistance to the elderly, in the digital sector and also in certain industrial sectors, according to François Asselin, President of the CPME, the Confederation of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises. Thus, the construction trades (carpenters, roofers) and the health and social action trades (doctors, home helps, domestic helpers) are the trades most affected by the shortage, according to the Pôle Emploi “Labour Needs” Survey 2021.

Around the world, the phenomenon is becoming more pronounced. In early June in the United States, the US Federal Reserve Bank (Fed) warned that companies were struggling to hire enough people to meet demand.

“It is difficult for many companies to hire new workers, especially low hourly wage workers, drivers (…) and skilled sales people. The lack of job applicants has prevented some companies from increasing their production, sometimes even forcing them to reduce their opening hours.

In Germany, same observation. In a KfW Research study analysing the current skills shortage and how it could develop up to 2040, Dr Fritzi Köhler-Geib, Chief Economist of KfW Bankengruppe – one of the country’s top 15 banks – explains:

“The German economy can respond to the skills shortage and low productivity mainly through more investment, innovation, training and qualification measures. Our economy also needs these ingredients to overcome the coronavirus crisis and its consequences as quickly as possible. We therefore need a long-term growth and investment initiative from the public and private sectors for the coming years – not only in Germany but also in Europe. The main areas of action are crisis resilience, climate action and productivity growth through innovation and digitalisation.”

 

And in Quebec, the labour shortage is reaching new heights. According to Statistics Canada, the number of vacant positions in Quebec has increased by 18,500 (+14.4%) compared to a year earlier. One of the most affected sectors is the construction industry. Just over one-third (33.8%) of construction companies reported difficulty recruiting and retaining qualified employees, according to the Canadian Business Situation Survey. As a result, Quebec businesses continue to adapt to the COVID-19 pandemic and plan to invest in e-learning on an ongoing basis in the future, according to the Quebec Business Expectations Survey for the second quarter of 2021.

As we can see, the challenge of this recovery lies in increasing the skills and adaptability of companies and workers. It is clear that the available talent is scarce in most sectors. But this difficult period can also be an opportunity. The opportunity to invest in the development of skills, on an ongoing basis, to better deal with this problem in the future. Training is therefore a remedy for the shortage of skilled labour, and can also accompany the various transformations of companies at the same time. The challenge is to plan for the needs, to understand the issues and therefore to prepare for them. It is by identifying in advance the skills that will be crucial in the future that companies will be able to initiate change and face the next difficulties. It is therefore a real training strategy that organisations must put in place to promote the recovery of activity and overcome the current labour shortage. Human resources must initiate a real reflection on the talent available and the talent required, in order to put in place strategic training plans that meet the new needs: accessible at a distance, innovative and varied formats, features to engage learners and hold their attention, etc.

 

Labour shortages do not mean worker shortages. All employees are capable of upgrading their skills, learning, and evolving. What we are really witnessing is a shortage of qualified skills within the pool of potential workers. Of course, some will say that this is an optimistic way of looking at the problem. But we are convinced that it is by believing in the potential of workers and providing them with the tools for success that companies will be able to overcome all the current and future challenges.

Training in the midst of transformation: a look at the impact of the pandemic

 

This Wednesday, June 16 at 6:30 pm, Jean-Marc Tassetto, co-founder and CEO of Coorpacademy, will participate in a roundtable discussion on the impact of the pandemic on the EdTech sector in France. During this round table, co-founders and investors of leading companies in this sector will discuss their vision of the future of education following this pandemic that has disrupted the uses. In anticipation of these discussions, discover this article that set the context of post-COVID digital learning.

Educational technologies, commonly referred to as EdTech, represent digital solutions that are revolutionizing the learning experience, through mobile apps, learning platforms, and other mediums. 2020 has redrawn the contours of learning, adapting to the exceptional measures that have been imposed on us, and thus shaping new uses. To say that learning is changing is an understatement. It is transforming.

We have been told for months: stay home! And for the better good. However, this measure raises a major question: how can we ensure that continuous learning is maintained if we are individually isolated at home? To address this issue, we had to implement solutions and take full advantage of the tools at our disposal. Thus, the use of new technologies, which was already obvious for some, has become indispensable for all. Both for educational institutions, which had to organize themselves to guarantee access to education and for companies, which had to reorganize teams and introduce remote working measures, while ensuring remote team training. The use of digital technology has therefore become vital to meet the challenges created by the pandemic and to ensure the smooth running of organizations despite the constraints of this unprecedented context.

The first lockdown allowed the French population to integrate the new digital uses more permanently and intensely. For institutions, distance learning has been adopted very quickly and for companies, between remote working and online training, the use of digital technology has made considerable progress. We are moving towards an era of digitalized training, where digital tools feed the learner’s experience and reinforce the pedagogy. Farewell to the traditional face-to-face courses and the dusty e-learning: they are reinvented to offer a digital learning experience that better adapts to individuals, their learning styles, their educational content consumption habits, and their life rhythms.

To constantly improve the learning experience and adapt to the world in which we evolve, it is necessary to rethink educational formats and ways of delivering information. It is certain that our attention spans are impacted by the use of digital technology, especially with social networks and the culture of immediacy. Accelerated by the COVID19, the use of digital has increased, shaping new habits, which are the beginnings that will shape the of the future of education and training in companies.

To learn more about this future, don’t miss the roundtable discussion on June 16 at 6:30 p.m. organized by Speedinvest, which will feature the leaders of the EdTech sector in France: 

Jean-Marc Tassetto, co-founder & CEO of Coorpacademy
Pierre Dubuc co-founder & CEO of OpenClassrooms
Charles Gras co-founder of Simbel
Benoit Wirz partners at Brighteye Ventures

Register for free to the round table by clicking here.

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

The Digital Learning Club to build the future of corporate digital learning together comes back in 2020 in a new format

 

Club: an organization of people with a common purpose or interest, who meet regularly and take part in shared activities.

Digital Learning Club: an organization of people with a common purpose – building the future of corporate learning, who meet at least once a year and take part in shared activities. Lifelong learning is the topic gathering them.

The future is uncertain. Especially during this global pandemic of Covid-19, especially at times when lots of places in Europe go into lockdown again. 

A few figures to realize how complex and uncertain the world of tomorrow will be: according to the World Economic Forum, in 2022. 75 million jobs will disappear when 133 million new jobs will be created. Also, in 2020, most of 2030 jobs actually don’t exist yet! Still according to the World Economic Forum, 65% of jobs in 2030 have not been invented yet.

Facing this uncertainty, one certainty: lifelong learning is key in order to remain competitive in a fast-changing world. And that lifelong learning idea, our clients understood it very well!

This is how and why the Digital Learning Club has been conceived. This event has been created for our clients, by our clients.

Every year, the Digital Learning Club is an event that our clients hold in high regard. They can share insights with their peers and co-imagine the future of digital learning.

Because it’s 2020, we had to come up with a new format. It will be online, for 45 minutes, and we will share with our clients the latest trends in training for 2021, the best practices to adopt, the pedagogical innovation with our R&D programs supported by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, our product roadmap but also what’s new in content production and editorial partnerships.

The Digital Learning Club is also a space for discussions and gathering: our clients will meet on November 26th at 14h00 to build together their Coorpacademy! If you’re interested in becoming a client of Coorpacademy and joining the Digital Learning Club, don’t hesitate to contact us!

With the Digital Learning Club, we want to build the future of Coorpacademy’s Learning Experience – which needs to be unique for each learner.

If you want to know more, contact us!

Digital Learning won’t wait any longer!

 

Discover this new article from Jean-Marc Tassetto, co-founder of Coorpacademy, on how digital learning won’t wait any longer. This article has been published in French in l’Agefi, a Swiss economic and financial newspaper: discover it in its original version here!

Digital Learning won’t wait any longer!

Digital learning allows people to train rapidly and at scale. However, in order to turn behavior from traditional training programs (slow but efficient in the long term) to fast and scalable programs, we need incentive – immediacy. In a report published in the early months of 2020, the World Economic Forum was already advising on the urgent need to upskill and reskill, and to train for tomorrow’s jobs. 

Technological evolution created an urgent need to accelerate companies’ transformations.  Not just digital transformation, but also organizational, social, managerial, and ecological.  However, although that urgency was present, it was not really tangible or driving behavior. In our daily professional lives, new digital tools have changed the way we work including new agile methods and redefined hierarchical structures, but learning and acquiring new skills took time. Back then, we had time.

A new emergency has now arisen, one with a barbaric name,  nanometric size and an exponential reproduction rate. Covid-19 has completely modified our behavior, personal as well as professional, and has created an even greater sense of uncertainty than the 4th industrial revolution and its technological evolutions. Overnight, as we all found ourselves confined, we had to use those new digital tools to communicate with our relatives and coworkers; to work remotely with efficiency.  We had to implement new agile project management methods to manage our teams remotely and to attend webinars instead of events. Microsoft has announced that all events this year will now be planned and conceptualized first as virtual events.  The huge expansion of applications like Zoom, Slack and Microsoft Teams demonstrates that the adoption process has been quick and brutal. At the end of 2019, Zoom had 10 million users. Today, they number more than 200 million!

We have been thrust into these new ways of operating. And the new ways require new skills. We need to acquire those skills quickly, then master and build upon our knowledge fast!  The next problem is that tomorrow is more uncertain than ever. Like all pandemics, the Covid-19 outbreak will end – but then what?  How then to learn quickly, rapidly, en masse, in order to meet this emergency while reducing uncertainty in the future?

Early March 2020 McKinsey studies show that almost 100% of face-to-face training has been cancelled or postponed until at least the beginning of July. But the end of face-to-face training can’t mean the end of learning. Technological evolutions won’t stop. New jobs will emerge, work methods will drastically change. Our workplaces, whether we are blue or white collar workers, will be transformed (we will take protective measures for months to come, our spaces will be rethought, the health of coworkers will be paramount). The sector that has had to go through these changes already and at speed is, obviously, the health sector.

When thousands of nurses, psychiatrists, surgeons, caregivers, pediatricians, midwives and others were called on to help in the battle against Covid-19, they had to uspkill or reskill to meet urgent respiratory crises, an area otherwise the domain of specialists.  They had to upskill, yes, but they had to do it fast, because the virus wasn’t going to wait.

On March 16th,  I sent a text to one of the Vice Presidents of AP-HP (Paris Hospitals) offering the Coorpacademy platform pro bono for the medical staff.  He responded in 7 minutes.  This showed me two things: first, the need for new skills was, for him, as important as the need for masks, ICU beds and ventilators. Second, that scalable decisions could be taken very quickly. The day after that text, we had the platform ready. 10 days later, 20,000 caregivers and medical staff had been trained on it, with  70% of courses completed on mobile phones. This demonstrates the need to train flexibly in an emergency situation. We found extremely engaged behaviors with a strong motivation to upskill quickly.  This is where digital learning comes into its own. Digital learning makes it possible to learn rapidly, at scale, in changing and challenging situations, on any device, at any time of day.

We speak a lot about the world of tomorrow like we are currently in a pause, in a spatial and temporal bubble. My belief is that lifelong learning (through face-to-face training or via digital learning platforms) will allow anyone to upskill and expand one’s employability by accessing the best content at any time. Lifelong learning is an essential building block for the world of tomorrow.

Jean-Marc Tassetto.

To read this article in l’Agefi (in French), it’s here!

Coorpacademy trained 20,000 medical professionals and caregivers in 2 weeks during the COVID-19 outbreak

 

This article has been published in Les Echos, an economic French newspaper, and has been written by Déborah Loye. You can find it here in its original version.

Coorpacademy trained 20,000 medical professionals and caregivers in 2 weeks during the COVID-19 outbreak

The startup specialized in online training for large corporations launched a pro bono platform for medical professionals and caregivers. In particular, they can train in resuscitation processes.

 

Specialized in online training for large corporations, Coorpacademy, founded in 2013 by the former Google France Managing Director, and which raised 13 million euros, had no intent to position itself in the medical field before the coronavirus outbreak.

Training in resuscitation

Antoine Poincaré, Coorpacademy’s Director of Sales, explains: “We only had a small ongoing research project with the AP-HP (Paris Hospitals) before that. The day before the confinement in France, we’ve suggested to them that we could launch a series of online training courses based on Covid-19 recommendations, for their medical staff. They answered positively right away!” At this moment, the AP-HP is expecting to call for renforcements for resuscitation in other medical fields, and even in the poll of interns and medical students. The need for skills is urgent.

At Coorpacademy, 15 people are mobilized among the 45 employees, in order to launch the platform and to make it up and running. “We gathered existing videos and shot others, which we keep doing“, Antoine Poincaré indicates. The training material is very practical, and allows medical staff to act fast with resources available. “The platform looks like Netflix, with series of online training courses.“

Martin Hirsch is the Managing Director of the AP-HP.

In two weeks, the Coorpacademy platform saw more than 20,000 people signing up. Less than half are nurses, 30 % are doctors, 10 % are midwives and 14 % have other specialties. For Coorpacademy, offering this service, the goal is to make it known by as many people as possible.

“For now, people mainly know us thanks to word of mouth“, Antoine Poincaré says. The AP-HP wrote a press release about the partnership and Martin Hirsch, its Managing Director, published a tweet praising the initiative. “We think the platform will be particularly helpful for hospitals taking in charge COVID-19 patients“, Antoine Poincaré estimates.

Déborah Loye.

If you want to read the article in its original form, in French, it’s here.

If you want to share the platform, it’s here.

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