Tag: digital learning

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!

The playlist: a new asset to simplify the learning experience

 

It knows you better than anyone else, adapts to your desires, and facilitates your access to choice pieces: the course playlist, a new feature of the Team offer.

 

Monday morning, you open your favourite music streaming application and on the home screen, you hesitate. Are you more in the mood to discover the new releases of the month or to listen to your classics again? You’ll opt for your favourite playlist, but you’re not sure if the transition from that little alternative rock band you’ve just discovered to Adele’s latest album will go smoothly – then you feel like starting the week on a pop note, Adele, that’s for a rainy Sunday night.

 

On any platform, from music streaming to binge-watching giants, personalisation is key. To engage users, it is crucial to simplify their experience on a platform. Because on Monday morning, while you’re wavering between two musical styles, you also get 2 WhatsApp messages, 3 LinkedIn notifications and a reminder for Friday lunchtime: finish the Excel file for accounting. Ouch, Excel is not your forte.

 

So instead of browsing your playlists on Spotify, you decide to take the subject in hand! On Team by Coorpacademy, your company’s new e-learning offering, you discover a simple interface and quickly identify the ideal playlist to fill in your gaps by Friday. Having become an ace in office automation, you excel on Friday lunchtime, and the auditory dilemma of Monday morning is transformed into a learning dilemma between the playlist “Understanding digital and e-commerce” or “Make your teams more agile”.

 

As you will have understood, organising training content in the form of playlists is an effective way of customising and simplifying the learning experience. Specially designed for start-ups and SMEs, the new Team by Coorpacademy offer aims to facilitate access to training for smaller companies. Following interviews with start-up and SME managers, their needs and constraints have been clearly identified. Their employees need to be trained on a massive scale and quickly in subjects that are strategic for the company. This is why the Team offer is adapted to their expectations and proposes our catalogue of premium content organised in the form of playlists, in order to simplify learning on the platform.

 

The Team offer – available in French only for now – includes 17 carefully selected course themes to stimulate employee productivity, including digital culture, social networks, sales performance, agile management, language learning, office automation, etc. Indeed, following interviews with start-up and SME managers, these topics were mentioned as essential for the competitiveness and strategic development of companies with less than 250 employees:

 

          1. Don’t make any more mistakes when writing!
          2. Master professional English
          3. Express yourself perfectly in writing and speaking
          4. Succeed in your team management
          5. Manage your projects with agility
          6. Develop your learning skills
          7. Optimise your time management
          8. Learn to manage your emotions at work
          9. How to combine teleworking and performance
          10. Digital security: adopt the right reflexes!
          11. Strengthen your digital culture
          12. Use and value data
          13. Initiate the sustainable transformation of your company
          14. Corporate Social Responsibility: take action!
          15. Promote diversity and inclusion in your company
          16. Succeed in all your sales
          17. Become an outstanding negotiator

Test the Team offer in French for free for 15 days by clicking here!

 

Organising skills development in the form of playlists simplifies access to knowledge and makes it more fluid. Simplifying the learners’ experience encourages the development of new habits. The aim is for them to develop a real desire to learn, a boundless curiosity, and a good capacity to retain information. And simplifying the learner experience encourages these behaviours.

 

Your music streaming application knows your tastes by heart, so it can recommend the best content for you. Within the playlists it recommends to you, it identifies the music genres and artists you like. On your e-learning platform, we also observe your behaviour within the course playlists, so that we can then offer you courses that are better suited to your profile, your level, or to guide you towards a related subject!

Get 15 days trial to test the new Team offer in French 👉 https://coorpteam.coorpacademy.com/coming-soon-in-english/ 

Ecological transition: what skills will be essential for reinventing ourselves?

 

Did you know that 70% of French people are pessimistic about the future of the planet, and for 93% of them, protecting the environment is an important issue, and almost half of them even consider it to be a priority issue. The barometer “The French and their carbon footprint” published by Odoxa on September 16, 2021 does not surprise us that much. The climate crisis is the fight of the century, and companies are increasingly taking up these issues – and that’s good! However, more than half of the French people questioned in this study believe that neither their companies (55%), nor the State and local authorities (60%), nor the inhabitants of their regions (61%) encourage them to reduce their carbon footprint.

 

To transform the company, turning off the lights behind you and making great speeches is no longer enough, you have to learn about the new issues and behaviors that the ecological transition implies, as well as understand the mechanisms! So, are you ready to develop the skills to last? 

Sustainable thinking

In order to last, we must be able to project ourselves into the future and therefore think sustainably. This skill, which was not defined until a few years ago, and which has just been integrated into the Coorpacademy catalog, is essential for reinventing a business model which takes into account the environmental stakes and limits which frame the activities of a company. By developing the sustainable thinking of your employees, you ensure the sustainability of your company.

To initiate the sustainable thinking of your teams, discover the course on “The circular economy: from the straight line to the virtuous circle” co-edited with MySezame.

The Circular Economy: From a Straight Line to a Virtuous Circle

 

Adaptability and resilience

According to the latest IPCC report, a rise in average global temperatures of more than 1.5°C would have disastrous consequences on ecosystems and natural earth systems. Megafires, rising waters, threatened species, droughts, destruction of ecosystems… The world of tomorrow will be nothing like the one we know today. Therefore, to exist in a world that is unknown to us, and unpredictable, the strength of adaptation and resilience are crucial skills.

Prepare yourself for tomorrow’s world by learning to evolve in a VUCA environment through our Coorpacademy course!

Operating in a VUCA environment

 

Creativity and innovation

The challenges of the ecological transition are numerous, and above all, new. From today, we are facing unprecedented ecological disasters, and the solutions are therefore in essence innovative. Therefore, in order to reinvent our ways of thinking, our behaviors and our economy, we must be capable of creativity and innovation. Thinking outside the box, being able to imagine a world totally different from ours and being able to implement new processes are essential skills to accompany the ecological transition.

Discover the Creativity and Innovation course to develop an atmosphere conducive to brainstorming and to fostering an atmosphere of innovation!

Creativity and innovation

 

Because the ecological transition is initiated through training, we recently launched a CSR focus animation on all our platforms, to ensure the development of skills in the fight against the climate crisis. Thus, all learners had access to 20 questions on sustainable transformation, to test their knowledge and get up to speed on the challenges of the ecological transition!

 

What if we were all SMEs? Training on a small scale

 

The majority (56%) of the employees who trained during the Covid are in large companies (2,000 or more), compared to about a quarter in companies with 10 to 49 employees, according to the study “Impact de la crise sanitaire sur les mobilités, les projets, les aspirations professionnelles, les compétences et le travail” (Impact of the health crisis on mobility, projects, professional aspirations, skills and work) conducted from March 2020 to May 2021 by the Céreq and coordinated by Ekaterina Melnik-Olive. Yet their needs in terms of tools and training are just as important as those of large companies, and sometimes even more impactful. So what if we were all SMEs?

 

The Swiss Federation for Continuing Education FSEA examined the influence of the coronavirus crisis on continuing education in SMEs earlier this year. According to the study, which was published on 10 May 2021, “a majority of companies attribute a high degree of importance to continuing education in coping with the effects of the pandemic.” As with large companies, “one third of SMEs surveyed indicate that employees need new or different skills”. Thus, training is an issue for all. However, SMEs are often obliged to make a quick return on the costs of training their employees, their expectations are immediate. Their employees therefore need concrete training that can be activated quickly. Increasing the skills of their teams is a race against the clock and against the constantly accelerating evolution of the markets. They are therefore looking for agile, digital solutions covering a variety of subjects, to meet the needs of their teams and their constraints.

 

Finally, what SMEs are looking for is a need that can be found in all companies, and it is a common benefit to demand that training provides a concrete and immediate benefit. To meet this legitimate demand, digital learning is an ideal solution, because training then becomes massive and accessible quickly, from anywhere, and for everyone. In addition to this increased accessibility, providing employees with a solution that can be accessed at the click of a button also saves a considerable amount of time, compared to face-to-face training systems. Employees can learn about different subjects from their workplace in just a few minutes.

 

Thus, we would all benefit from demanding training as much as SMEs do in terms of cost effectiveness and usefulness. Training on a “small scale” is just as necessary and impactful for business transformation, especially in the long term. If SMEs need solutions that can be activated quickly to meet their immediate needs, then digital learning solutions will be able to make training an automatic and a tool to prepare SMEs to become… large companies.

The HR themes of the recovery: what are the skills to develop to go back to work serenely?

 

September is the end of the vacations and the return to the office, but it is also the time to start all over again, the beginning of a new chapter. This new school year is particular, it follows a long period where individuals and companies had to adapt in record time. In a world in upheaval, what are the key HR issues of 2021? What skills are already essential to meet the challenges of the new year?  Let’s discover the chapter that is being written.

 

Transforming to last

The list of skills you can develop by accessing the more than 1,800 courses available in our premium content catalog covers all those deemed indispensable by the World Economic Forum for 2025.

This year, the most sought-after topics on our platforms reflect the upheavals that companies and their organizations are facing. The key competencies to support managerial, digital, cultural and organizational transformations are widely represented in the catalog, as shown by the top 5 competencies covered in terms of number of courses offered.

Continuous learning to evolve in a changing world 

Learning allows you to progress and evolve, and in a context as changing as the one we know today, it is a key to ensuring the relevance of the skills you will develop to face the challenges that the future holds.

So which courses make you want to learn the most? Let’s find out in the top 5 most played courses of 2021:

  1. The course “Communicate effectively to collaborate better” co-edited with Dunod Formation, which gains 2 places compared to the 2020 ranking.
  2. The Coorpacademy course “Big Data”, which loses 1 place compared to the 2020 ranking, but which remains a must!
  3. The course “Adopt an agile culture” published by Coorpacademy, which enters the Top 5 by gaining 4 places compared to the 2020 ranking.
  4. The course “Solving complex problems with the 4S method” co-edited with Bernard Garrette and Olivier Sibony, which also makes a triumphant entry in this Top 5 2021, gaining 10 places compared to the 2020 ranking.
  5. The course “1 hour to stop stressing and stay zen” co-edited by Dunod Formation, which remains in the Top 5 despite losing one place compared to the 2020 ranking

Key skills for the future 

Training plays a crucial role in ensuring that your employees develop their skills and adapt to the new expectations of the job market.

In view of the top 5 skills consumed in the 2nd quarter of 2021, our learners are already ready to serenely apprehend the uncertainties of tomorrow’s world:

Topics that are on the rise

The skills found in the top 5 skills consumed in 2021 do not vary so much from those whose consumption is growing fastest in Q2 2021. The need to meet new employee expectations and adapt to new ways of working is only intensifying. Not surprisingly, digital literacy skills are on the rise, as the digital transformation of companies is never done. 

The start of the HR season will not take place without the transformation of companies, and consequently, not without an increase in the skills of all employees. To accompany them in the changes that are already concrete, soft skills will be essential.

Thus, to apprehend the start of the 2021 school year, we recommend:

  • To know and understand the technological evolutions that are taking place more and more rapidly;
  • Develop your ability to identify, understand and react appropriately to the emotions of others in order to promote team cohesion;
  • Demonstrate flexibility and agility to respond effectively to current and future developments
  • Successfully leverage relevant company data to create value
  • Manage your teams in the best conditions, including remotely, while making good use of diversity
  • To learn continuously on Coorpacademy, to increase your skills while having fun!

It is better to have 1 engaging course than 1000 boring courses

Most Digital Learning providers rely on a platform that provides a large library of content from various experts to cover as many topics as possible. While this may be a useful argument for HR decision-makers looking to provide employees with as much training content as possible, is it really the best approach to effective learning?

Wanting to learn

Do you remember, in high school, when looking at the clock slowed down time? Strangely enough, as soon as you participated, time returned to its normal course… Today, thanks to cognitive science, we can explain this phenomenon in a rational way. During our schooling, we get used to learning in a passive way, sitting on our chair, raising our hand and waiting for someone to give us the right – or wrong – answer. This pedagogical approach is based on the transmission of knowledge, and is centered on the teacher, who comes to deliver his knowledge in a unilateral way. The exchange is restricted, participation is a privilege. Beyond the inequalities that passive learning creates – and reinforces – within a class, we want to address the reasons why this method of learning is ineffective in terms of deep learning and retention of information.

 

At Coorpacademy, our pedagogical team, at the origin of the creation and co-edition of all the courses of our premium content catalog, relies on active learning. As you will have understood, this pedagogical approach is centered on the learner, and not on the teacher. Our quiz-based courses are based on the flipped learning method: we ask the questions, and it’s up to the learner to draw on their knowledge to test their skills! Because the learner is also involved in the learning process, his or her cognitive biases are more stimulated, which will encourage attention and retention of information. From then on, the learner is committed to his training, which he sees as a real opportunity to progress, for his own benefit. 

Engaging and quality content

What differentiates Coorpacademy courses from all the other courses that you may play in your life, is the quality and relevance of the content to your training needs. Indeed, if our unique pedagogy and our functionalities borrowed from gaming are key assets to engage learners, the quality and the relevance of the content of our courses are essential for a real rise in competence.

To ensure that our courses deliver truly effective content, our educational team is still on the job. Thus, all the courses in our catalog are created by our pedagogical team or co-created with partner publishers, experts on certain subjects. Moreover, if you wish to know more about the recipe of Coorpacademy courses, we advise you to read the interview of Solène Rascle, educational engineer. Everything that is given to learn: the reading of documents, the viewing of our short course videos, and the course questions are read and reread by our pedagogical engineers, who carry out an important work of verification of sources, to ensure the relevance of the information contained in the course.

Stimulate curiosity

Continuous learning is about being curious throughout your life. Curiosity is an essential quality to progress, because if we focus on what we already know, we don’t have the opportunity to evolve. So our courses are also designed to stimulate the learners’ curiosity. As soon as they answer a question, a screen to explain the answer appears. Whether the answer is right or wrong, one element always appears: a “Did you know? This insert is an opportunity to complete the answer while amusing the learner with general or unusual information.

This little insert is also a way of saying to our learners: keep learning! Sure, you got the right answer, but learning never stops, there is always information that can add to your knowledge, and that’s why continuous learning is essential to progress.

 

 

In conclusion, for effective learning, interaction with course content is far more impactful than interaction with a large number of courses. The more learners are stimulated in their learning, the more effective the courses will be. With the active learning mode, the cognitive engagement of learners is reinforced by the manipulation of information, or by an action on their part. Thus, their attention is required, not to say solicited. In short, it is better to have 1 very engaging course, which makes the learner interact with the learning material, than to follow 1000 courses where the only interaction is that of your mouse clicking on pause, because you stopped following what was said 10 minutes ago.

Traveling abroad builds soft skills

 

August is coming to an end and with it, the taste of vacation. This month, we’ve told you about the formative virtues of travel. In this article, we would like to refer to another type of travel – perhaps one of the most formative – to which we want to refer. Whether you are a student or an employee, it is often advisable to gain international experience. In fact, you may know someone who is preparing for an Erasmus exchange year for one of their children or someone who is moving to a country with a different time zone. But even if it is only for a short period of time, travelling abroad is extremely useful to develop your soft skills! 

 

Interacting better with colleagues

Communicating with people from different cultures can be difficult. In the world of work, corporate culture differs greatly from country to country, and if you want to successfully build relationships, work in different regions, or simply visit a subsidiary or colleague abroad, it is essential to be comfortable with cultural differences!

When you travel abroad, you are confronted with the unknown, both literally and figuratively. You discover the behaviors of a society that is different from the one you know, and you witness the customs that govern it. To interact smoothly with the inhabitants of this country, avoiding misunderstandings, you will identify the attitude, vocabulary and communication approach best suited to your interlocutor. This way, as soon as you return from your trip, you will be ready to interact with people from different cultural backgrounds.

To go further: Cross cultural communication

Training your memory

Going on a trip requires a lot of organization, and we often leave with several things in mind. Train tickets, check; hotel reservations, check; knowing how to say thank you in Italian, check; so much information that puts our memory to work, especially when we find ourselves in front of the waiter and end up stammering a timid “grazie”.

Thus, when we travel, we stimulate a specific part of our brain: the prefrontal lobe and more particularly the hippocampus, this part of the cortex which allows us to pass from a short-term memory to the long-term memory. The hippocampus receives all the information decoded in the different sensory areas of the cortex, and sends it back to where it came from. A sort of sorting center that compares new sensations with those already recorded. The hippocampus reinforces the links between the different characteristics of a thing, and by dint of repeating the links between these new elements, the cortex will have learned to link the different characteristics itself to make what we call a memory.

Thus, when you are traveling abroad, your hippocampus is strongly stimulated, which improves your ability to memorize information in the long term!

To go further: Boost your memory

 

Improve your English – if you’re not an native English speaker

Well, English is still the most widely spoken international language in the world, with 1.348 billion native and second language speakers. Mastering English is essential for professional success and for interacting in multicultural environments.

Going abroad means practicing your English – unless you are a language whiz and have mastered the national language of the country you are going to – and improving your speaking skills.  Speaking in a foreign language is not always easy. It can be stressful and impact the way you deliver information, describe a situation or express a feeling. In fact, travel allows you to confront this challenge and get used to speaking a language that you don’t practice often enough.

To go further: Holding a meeting in English

Are companies prepared to deal with short-term environmental disasters?

 

On Monday, August 9, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) presented the first of three reports expected by 2022 as part of its sixth climate assessment cycle. This new report presents the current state of knowledge on the climate crisis, its origins, causes and impacts, and on possible actions to respond to the environmental emergency. The findings of this report represent a final warning to individuals, but especially to governments and businesses around the world.

 

“Life on earth can recover from major climate change by evolving into new species and creating new ecosystems. Humanity cannot.” – IPCC report

The urgency is not new, but it has never been so current.

Established in 1988 at the request of the G7, the 7 richest countries, by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Program, the IPCC synthesizes and assesses research conducted in laboratories around the world. Its fifth report, released in 2014, had already concluded that the human influence on climate systems was clear. But the new report, the sixth since 1990, allows the organization to be even more incisive about the direct link between human activity and current global warming.

If these reports provide essential elements to limit the extent of global warming and the severity of its impacts, it is up to governments, businesses and individuals to collectively organize and take concrete action in the face of the facts highlighted.

What is currently happening in the world, such as the megafires all over the planet from California to the Mediterranean basin or Australia, are the direct consequences of climate change. And as the IPCC report concludes, directly linked to human activity. The consequences exposed by scientists for several years are a strong argument for action, yet this sixth report still has the effect of a bomb. Today, humanity does not have time for a seventh report, we already know the conclusions, but we can contribute to write a few lines, if we act now.

 

The ecological crisis: a risk for companies

In our model of infinite growth and exploitation of (limited) natural resources, only a radical transformation of our modes of production, consumption and lifestyle can limit the catastrophic consequences for which we are responsible.

“Our current mode of development, based on a linear economy, is not sustainable.” – Célestine Julien, Inter-Company Pathway Manager (GR20²°) at MySezame – In what world do we want to live in 30 years?

In business, environmental risk refers to the possibility of an accident occurring in a company, which would have harmful repercussions – direct or indirect – on the environment, people, company employees and the company’s objectives and reputation. Today, not only is this environmental risk unavoidable, but it also impacts the environment in which the company operates, i.e. the external factors that influence the proper functioning of a company, such as political, environmental, societal and economic aspects. The company’s strategy must then identify the climate emergency and evaluate how it impacts and threatens its activity. If the ecological transition is so necessary, it is because companies will not be able to exist in a world that is disappearing, or at least will not be able to survive if they do not accelerate their adaptation to climate change, the consequences of which we are already seeing. 

 

The IPCC report is clear. If global warming is limited to +2.0°C instead of +1.5°C, sea levels will rise by +30cm to +93cm, impacting more than 10 million people and the number of people affected by drought will increase by +410 million. Through these impacts, climate change is already influencing migration worldwide, and the United Nations predicts 200 million climate refugees by 2050. The impact of the migration crisis on the political and economic environment is obvious.

And internal consequences

Our modes of production are not sustainable. If the resources on which we depend are finite, it is not a shortage that we will face, but an impossibility to produce at all. Already following the pandemic, traders and businesses have faced a major shortage of raw materials, as in Canada where accumulated droughts and heavy rains have caused a drop in production and a rise in wheat prices. But in a few years, shortages may prove much more difficult to overcome. Reduced production, higher raw material prices, loss of personnel, the consequences of the ecological crisis on the production cycle is a risk that companies cannot ignore. 

Beyond the political, economic and logistical aspects, the ecological crisis also impacts a resource that is essential to business: people. On a personal level, we are all witnesses to this catastrophe, and we can sometimes feel even more helpless in the face of the emergency. Of course, we can each participate in the collective effort, but we are also aware that the emergency requires a radical and global change in our society. Thus, the anxious and cataclysmic environment in which we evolve every day with a feeling of powerlessness, has an impact on our personal well-being – not to say our mental health. In addition, the expectations of employees – and particularly of the new generations – have changed. To flourish, their work must have meaning and their values must be in line with those of the company.

The world as we know it today will no longer exist in a few years. To keep existing, companies will have to reinvent themselves, adapt and train in order to avoid the risks they face. If the ecological crisis has direct impacts on the company’s environment, it also has indirect consequences on its internal functioning. The strategy must therefore be aligned with this new reality, and the entire organization must adapt in order to anticipate certain now inevitable repercussions on their activities and businesses.

 

Because the problem is complex, the solutions will be in essence innovative. To act now, discover Coorpecology, the first training platform dedicated to the ecological transition. To quickly train all employees and give them the keys to build a viable future. Sustainable transformation can’t wait any longer, click here to learn more.

Organizational change: a collaborative approach

 

As we witnessed during the pandemic, developing the adaptive capacity of individuals and organizations is crucial to ensure their proper functioning. Because the future is unpredictable and the world is changing as quickly as customer expectations are rising, adaptation is a necessary disposition to meet current and future challenges. Nevertheless, when a company has to adapt, its entire organizational structure has to be rethought and transformed. Therefore, what skills are essential to initiate and sustain this change?

 

The pillars of change

An organization is first and foremost a human adventure, and to progress, people have to introspect. To remain competitive, improve their productivity or attract new customers, companies must also question themselves, evolve and adapt. The major transformation processes allow for the emergence of more responsible, digital and agile corporate cultures, to adapt to the objectives and constraints that a company encounters within its own ecosystem.

 

A company is also strongly influenced by its culture, and culture is only the result of who we are. As the heart of the company, employee involvement is key to organizational transformation. It is around the employees that the company’s structure and operating methods are organized. The human factor is essential to initiate organizational changes and the revision of the company’s structure, because it is at the center of the organization.

 

To engage employees in the transformation, everything possible must be done to support them through the stages of change. It is at this point that the role of the manager is as important as that of the HR function, as both are responsible for implementing the necessary actions to ensure a smooth transition.

 

The HR function at the heart of the transformation

If employees are the pillars of transformation, the HR function is the foundation. First of all, the HR function, as its name suggests, provides the company with the organizational and human capacities necessary to achieve its strategic objectives. It has a global view, enabling it to understand all the organizational issues and changes required to achieve the objectives. The HR function is responsible for creating the conditions for the company’s strategy to be realized, and this of course includes the field of corporate culture.

 

Not only because it contributes to the definition of strategy and drives change, but also because it identifies the key skills to be developed to transform the organization, through its training and recruitment strategy. By organizing the expertise of each person, but also by attracting new talent, the HR function is essential for successful organizational transformation.

 

Management that guides the transition

Evolving in an uncertain context, companies must adapt more and more rapidly. Business strategy must change in response to the changing environment, and with it, organizational and human capabilities. The most agile companies – those that identify strategies quickly and adapt – have a major competitive differentiation asset to ensure their sustainability. When it comes to aligning with the company’s new strategy, organizational and human capabilities must evolve, transform. And it is largely the responsibility of management to involve and engage employees in the transformation. To better help employees overcome the challenges and changes they face, managers must be leaders who inspire and guide their teams. However, any major transformation cannot be achieved without identifying the essential skills that will enable the change to take place.

3 essential skills to transform your organization

 

Manage your team and encourage collaboration

As the human factor is the driving force of transformation, it is essential to encourage the development of its teams.  New technologies, digital giants and start-ups are revolutionizing managerial practices to adapt to the new expectations of employees. To initiate change and foster organizational transformation, adopting a reinvented, collaborative and innovative managerial model is one of the keys to success.

The keys to emancipatory management

 

The ability to adapt

Strategies evolve, and the organization must adapt to the type of strategy chosen. As the organizational structure depends on the company’s strategy, it is also important for employees to develop their ability to adapt, to evolve with the strategy. Today, the environments in which companies evolve are so changeable and unpredictable that they are referred to as “VUCA” environments: Volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (Warren Bennis and Burt Nanus). These contexts require organizations to rely on the agility of their organizational capabilities and to develop their capacity to adopt change.

Operating in a VUCA environment

 

Shift into leadership mode to engage teams

For a successful transformation, cohesive leadership is essential. Being a leader means being able to embody the change with employees and engage them in turn. Leaders are the masters of organizational transformation, as they influence their teams to engage them in the change.

The Fundamentals of Leadership

 

In conclusion, organizational transformation is intrinsically linked to the company’s strategy. When the company’s strategy evolves, the other strategy follows and the entire organization must adapt in order to provide itself with the means to succeed.

 

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