digital transformation Archives

Safran’s Digital Academy: a look back at the first year of Digital Learning with Frédéric Verger

One year after the launch of the Digital Academy, Safran’s online training platform that trains employees to increase their skills on all digital transformation topics, Coorpacademy by Go1 takes stock of the situation with Frédéric Verger, Group Director of Digital and Information Systems and member of Safran’s executive committee. 5 minutes only to say it all!

In this interview, Frédéric Verger celebrates an “extremely successful adventure” with Coorpacademy by Go1, throughout this first year. In the first seven months, 15,000 collaborators had completed no less than 70,000 modules in total.

One year after launch, Safran has already exceeded 35,000 users for more than 2 million questions answered, for nearly 65,000 hours of training.

Frédéric Verger also details the functionalities and contents that have made the greatest impression on learners: a craze for battles, for example, a trademark of the Coorpacademy catalog, as well as a strong interest for certain digital trends in particular, such as blockchain, NFTs or the cloud.

It also describes the future challenges facing Safran’s Digital Academy, which has been renamed the Digital Academy “Plus”. The first year is coming to an end, with the ambitious objectives of training on the challenges of the group’s digital transformation. A second season is now starting with: complete training modules on core skills (data, engineering or manufacturing 4.0), the addition of several use cases (learning by experience) and all the new features of the Coorpacademy catalog (AI, Chat-GPT and much more).

2050: The HR Odyssey – Episode 3

Somewhere in the world, on a date you may one day need, we have located an advanced technology that allows us to immerse ourselves in the daily lives of employees. This fantastic journey through the experiences of different employees will take you to the edge of the Future of Work and allow you to see the challenges of business transformation. Today in our odyssey, discover the daily life of Gaudia…

“Hello Xoe. My name is Gaudia and I’m Coorpacademy’s mental health referent, formerly Chief Happiness Manager! How are you?”

“Hi Gaudia, nice to meet you! I’m doing very well thank you, how about you?”

“I’m doing very well too, I recharged my batteries well this weekend! You recently joined your team, and it’s time for the monthly wellness talks. Are you familiar with these talks?”

“Not really… Are you going to ask me any questions?”

“Indeed. The purpose of the monthly well-being interview is to evaluate the well-being of employees and to assess their needs and motivation. It’s a free and confidential exchange, it’s up to you to tick off the information you wish to disclose to your hierarchy once the interview is over through a report that is automatically displayed at the end of our interview. Are you comfortable with that?”

“It’s very clear thank you! Yes absolutely.”

“The interview can begin. First of all, how did your onboarding go? Do you have any specific comments about the conditions in which you were welcomed?”

“Hmm… I thought the onboarding was great! I was at a distance and I was still able to visit the premises, meet my team and talk with my manager thanks to the virtual onboarding. All my tools were in place, I didn’t encounter any major difficulties!”

“I see. On a scale of 1 to 10, how much would you rate your onboarding?”

“I would give it a 9. Only because I still would have liked to have physically come for my first day but it was a bad set of circumstances.”

“Thank you. So you found out about the office remotely, but you were able to get there quickly. Are you happy with your workstation? Do you have any unaddressed needs or difficulties booking a workspace?”

“No, it’s perfect!!! 10 out of 10. I love being able to change desks and vary my work environment. Each station is well equipped and comfortable, I really don’t see anything to add.”

“Noted. Now we’ll move on to a series of teamwork questions. How is it working with your new colleagues?”

As the interview progresses, Gaudia gradually gets to the questions of commitment to work, and the meaning Xoe gets from her assignments – “We’re almost at the end of our interview” she announces.

“We’re coming to the end of our interview soon,” she announces. “This is a more direct question I’d like to ask you. Do you find meaning in your work?”

“Indeed, that’s very direct! I should ask you the same thing. And you, Gaudia, do you find meaning in your work? Why are you a “Happiness Manager”?”

Gaudia takes more time to answer than usual. She installs a small pause, the time to collect her “thoughts”…-

“I am Gaudia, an artificial intelligence programmed for this role. My mission is to collect the information necessary to assess the well-being of employees and to promote engagement at work. I find it meaningful because without this job, I wouldn’t be here to talk to you Xoe!”

“I get it, for sure. Finally, with all this data, the meaning of your job is kind of the continuous improvement of employee well-being?”

“Exactly.”

No one had ever asked Gaudia that question. Her system hadn’t seen it coming and the interviews had always gone smoothly. So she built that variable into her internal algorithm, her digital brain as she likes to call it.

“Speaking of data, I need to ask you for permission to connect your health data to my system. This will allow me to collect data such as your fatigue rate, your heart rate or, if you are concerned, your cycle in order to plan your menstrual leave! Of course, you have the right to refuse access to this data at any time, and you can choose which data you want to track. All this remains confidential and the data is automatically deleted every 6 months. I’ll let you think about it of course! All necessary documents will be forwarded at the end of the interview. Well, thank you Xoe for your answers! Here is the report of our interview. As explained at the beginning, you just have to read it again, and check the information you want to keep confidential or not. We’ll see you next month, and this time no trick questions please.”

Conclusion

In 2050, the digitalization of companies will have changed the way we organize ourselves, but also the existing jobs.

Thanks to artificial intelligence and data, it will be possible for companies to take advantage of tools to improve certain processes, such as employee engagement.

Currently addressed during annual individual interviews, employee well-being can be better monitored if it is automated. This way, the information can be reported frequently and quickly. In addition, this will eliminate the relational bias that can sometimes create a barrier for employees who wish to confide in us about a situation.

This way, taking into account the well-being of employees as well as their level of commitment will be better monitored and will save time for managers. In addition, it will make the information flow more smoothly and thus accelerate the solutions implemented.

2050: The HR Odyssey

Somewhere in the world, at a certain date you don’t need to know, we have located advanced technology that allows us to get inside the daily lives of employees. This fantastic journey through the experiences of different collaborators will take you to the edge of the Future of Work and allow you to gain insight into the challenges of business transformation. Today in our odyssey, discover the daily life of Xoe…

“Hello Xoe, welcome to Coorpacademy! I am Onboard, your virtual assistant who will accompany you during your onboarding for the position of Junior Customer Success Manager. I see from your employee profile that you have never visited our physical premises before. I hope you will soon, but first let me guide you through our meta-offices!”

A loading icon appears on my left. I readjust my helmet.

Once properly positioned, Onboard’s voice resumes:

“The meta-desk is a virtual workspace where the whole team can meet, even from a distance. As you can see, the 3D reconstruction of our premises allows you to discover your workspace as if you were there! If you would like a guided tour, click on…”

I decide to turn off the tutorial mode. I’m pretty well used to virtual reality, I even remember taking my University exams remotely during the heat wave of 2042. I move around the virtual offices and discover bright and very ergonomic premises, with a fully equipped kitchen, from the permaculture worktop to the compost bin integrated into the cooker! In the open-space, the work spaces are both shared, but there are also small cubicles that allow everyone to isolate themselves if necessary, which I like because, being a bit anxious at times, I like to be able to be alone in a quiet place.

A new notification appears.

“To reserve your workstation in advance, remember to download the “Coorpers Portal” application, which will enable you to carry out all your procedures relating to your workplace, contract and other administrative requests. I notice that the workspaces are not assigned, and that there are lockers connected to store everyone’s personal belongings. I understand that the Coorpers Portal application will allow me to book an office or a meeting room, to rent a connected locker for free or to make absence requests.

As I finish the visit, Onboard’s voice says: “How did your first steps in our offices go?”, a screen appears asking me to rate my visit between 1 and 5 and as I fill in my score, the surprisingly human voice of this artificial intelligence tells me: “For your information, all the data collected through the questions asked are anonymised and allow us to continuously improve the employee experience! To continue your onboarding, why don’t you meet the teams?”

I confirm and am propelled into a colourful and welcoming meeting room where the video testimonials of several employees are displayed on my screen. I can scroll through the videos and choose to start one. This is how I find out about each person’s role. At the end of each story, Onboard asks me if I have any questions, and if so, sends a message directly to the person concerned to arrange a meeting to discuss my questions further.

“It’s time for you to meet your manager! A video call is scheduled for 10 minutes with Clément M., Senior Customer Success Manager”, says Onboard, which I decide to mute in the settings of my virtual headset. I prefer subtitles, and it’s quite fun to be able to change the language in which Onboard speaks to me. Indeed, I have the possibility to modify the parameters to inform the language in which Onboard is configured. This could allow me to revise my French!

The interview with Clément went very well. After introducing me to the team and the tasks of the job, he moves on to a more personal part of the interview. I can tell him that the pronoun I use is the pronoun she, that I am anxious by nature and that in my job I get great satisfaction from having a real impact on society.

“Great, so you’ve got a rather Impact-oriented mode of reporting at work. I will send you a notification to fill in your personal information in Coorpers Portal, your pronoun used, your passions, your work aspirations, etc. The artificial intelligence of this application allows us to identify the projects that correspond to you and also the best way to communicate with each collaborator!

Speaking of apps, we also have a version for our customer accounts. As a central tool for our team, the Coorp & You application allows us to centralise data on our relationship with our clients, to get to know them better as individuals, but also as a company. They fill in their issues, priority levels, upcoming projects, areas for improvement, etc. This tool is very complete, you will have to learn how to use it, because it will allow you to know your client by heart, to better accompany them. I’ve already told Onboard to download these applications so that you can take a look at them today to familiarise yourself and note down if you have any questions!”

Once the interview is over, I watch the progress of the Coorp & Vous application loading on the virtual headset. I reflect on this onboarding and think of my parents, who used to talk about how they had seen companies transform. This world of tomorrow, as they called it, they participated in its construction and today, it is the world in which I will have to prove myself.

Conclusion

In 2050, the digitalisation of companies will have changed the way we are organised at all levels.

As a tool to facilitate and automate certain processes, digital technology will be able to replace the mentor during onboarding and save time for managers

The workspace will also be rethought to create a healthy, environmentally friendly and flexible environment: offices will no longer be assigned to an employee but will be workspaces that employees can reserve for the day, the kitchen will be equipped to allow employees to find the same comfort as at home, and the company will be able to rethink its workspaces by involving issues of biodiversity and environmental friendliness.

Finally, intergenerational relations and issues of taking into account the personality of employees will be paramount. In addition, the data that managers will be able to collect thanks to the digitalisation of processes will enable them to get to know each employee better, to individualise their management style and thus engage their employees.

Do you speak emojis?

💡 92% of online users use emojis according to an Emogi study. Most commonly used to make a point or share feelings, they have become an integral part of our daily lives. Yet interpreting emojis may become increasingly difficult with the advent of new technologies such as animated emojis or augmented reality, according to Goldman, a law professor at Santa Clara University and author of the article “Emojis and the Law”, published in the Washington Law Review.

Originating from the Japanese “e” (image) and “moji” (character), the word Emoji means drawn letters. These emoticons have been democratised by communication developers such as Apple and Android over the last 10 years, but the first emoji was created in 1999 by Japanese artist Shigetaka Kurita. Today, there are more than 2,000 of them, they have their own World Emoticon Day – 17 July – and are embedded in 2.3 trillion mobile messages every year.

💬 The new codes of communication

Social networks and instant messaging allow us to communicate massively and quickly, whenever we need to. Thus, communication today relies on a tool that allows us to share information more quickly and emojis aim to shorten our messages, to save even more time and to respond to a message in a simple emoticon. They have become an almost universal form of communication, a 🙂 emoji will be the same in France, Spain, the United States as well as in Japan, and it is still difficult to do without them today to give a more human tone to your virtual message.

🚀 An opportunity for businesses

Emojis have become indispensable for punctuating a sentence, accentuating an emotion or slipping an innuendo into a digital conversation. Indeed, some companies or associations are taking advantage of emojis for their advertising campaigns: Domino’s Pizza recently launched a Twitter campaign where people from all over the world could tweet the company with the Pizza Emoji to order one. Associations have also understood the effectiveness that these emojis can bring to their digital communication, such as the nature conservation organisation WWF, which launched an awareness 2.0 campaign using Emojis through the hashtag #EndangeredEmoji in 2016. Thus, it is clear that emojis are no longer just a private conversation and are no longer considered a decorative or innocuous element; they represent a new and improved form of language that has its roots in digital, breaking down language barriers for brands.

And it works! According to a 2019 study by Adobe, more than half of emoji users are more likely to engage with brands that use emoticons online: 60% say they like it when a brand uses emojis that match their personality, 51% say they are more likely to comment on a social media post when it contains emojis, 48% are more likely to follow a brand, and 44% are more likely to buy a product as a result of an advert using emojis.

👥 And for employees

The Adobe study also reveals that 61% of emoji users also say they use emoticons at work, most often (36%) with people at their own level. Employees who use emojis at work report a positive influence on friendliness and camaraderie among colleagues. Indeed, 78% believe that emojis have this influence on affinity between professionals, 74% also say that emojis make positive information or feedback more sincere and 53% believe that they make negative information or feedback easier to accept.

So check out our tips for speaking digital Esperanto at work:

1/ Use emojis yes, but sparingly

The purpose of emojis is not to abuse them. They can be used to soften a message or to structure a post on social networks between several paragraphs, but be careful not to use them to punctuate each of your sentences.

2/ Beware of double meaning emojis!

The same emoji can have different meanings in different cultures, and therefore be a source of misunderstanding. There are already some pitfalls you can avoid:

🙏 Two hands placed firmly against each other, meaning “please” or “thank you” in Japanese culture, have turned into high-fives in our Western cultures.

🍑 Some fruits and vegetables have been hijacked and are no longer truly representative of the produce department we know.

😭 The “Crying Face” emoji is more commonly used to express intense feelings, such as uncontrollable laughter, pride or overwhelming joy. It became the most used emoji on Twitter in 2021, ahead of the “Face with tears of joy” emoji.

To make sure you don’t get it wrong, refer to the emoji encyclopedia.

3/ Test the ground before you start

Find out what people are doing before you start using this new digital language! Take the time to observe whether emojis are common in exchanges and with whom it is more appropriate to use them. The risk? That your message is interpreted as too familiar or impolite.

4/ The keyboard shortcut is your ally

To find your emojis on windows, type Windows logo key + . (dot). This will bring up the emoji keyboard. Select an emoji with the mouse or keep typing to search for an emoji among those available.

If you are a Mac user, simply press Control + Command + Spacebar simultaneously. A window will open in the middle of the screen allowing you to choose from the thousands of emojis in the catalogue.

5/ Be yourself

Finally, emojis can be compared to the non-verbal communication we use in real life. The important thing is to be yourself and not to overdo it, nor to force ourselves to use them if we are not comfortable!

The development of digital technology has forced us to adapt to new forms of communication and to adopt new practices. The introduction of emojis into our online conversations has democratised them, making them an integral part of our digital culture. As society has evolved, emojis have also diversified, offering different skin tones, gender-neutral emojis, and even taking disabilities into account. In fact, 73% of emoji users would like to have more options for customising emojis to better reflect their personal appearance and identity. Thus, the Emoji is now part of modern culture and impacts our daily communication. It has become a form of language that is understood by the majority and should be used wisely.

Tell me how you remote work and I’ll tell you what country you are from

Since February 2nd, remote working is no longer compulsory in France but still strongly recommended. Although this legal constraint has now been lifted for companies, employees have adopted this practice, which has rapidly become normalized since the first lockdown.

Une récente étude de PwC révèle que 68 % des dirigeants déclarent que les employés doivent être présents au bureau au moins 3 jours par semaine pour maintenir une culture d’entreprise unique. Si la situation est plutôt favorable à l’adoption du travail hybride en France, qu’en est-il pour les entreprises et les collaborateurs chez nos voisins Européens ? Ces réponses, nous les trouverons dans une enquête menée par l’Ifop pour la Fondation Jean Jaurès auprès d’actifs issus d’échantillons représentatifs en Allemagne, en France, en Espagne, en Italie et au Royaume-Uni.

A recent PwC study reveals that 68% of managers say that employees need to be in the office at least 3 days a week to maintain a unique corporate culture. If the situation is rather favourable to the adoption of hybrid working in France, what is the situation for companies and employees in our European neighbours? These answers can be found in a survey conducted by Ifop for the Fondation Jean Jaurès among working people from representative samples in Germany, France, Spain, Italy and the UK.

How many days do you remote work in a week?

If you are in France, you may have “less access” to remote working. Indeed, according to the survey, only 29% of French workers declare to remote work “at least once a week”. This compares to 51% of Germans, 50% of Italians, 42% of British and 36% of Spaniards. Globally, remote working is present, but not to the same extent, and therefore covers a desire for a balance between face-to-face and remote working.

What is your socio-professional category?

Remote working is not accessible to all. Indeed, even among our European neighbours, inequalities in access to remote work by socio-professional category (CSP) are visible. All the countries surveyed showed that the CSP+ have more access to remote work than the CSP-. This gap is reinforced in France, with a 39 point difference (56% of CSP+ and 17% of CSP- have access to remote work) whereas the gap between the two categories is “only” 8 points in Italy, the country where access to remote work is the most socially homogeneous (with weekly rates that concern 56% of CSP+ and 48% of CSP-).

How many days would you ideally like to remote work?

At least 2 days? Are you thinking of moving? On average, the number of “desired” days of remote work is 2.7 in Spain, 2.4 in Italy, 2.2 in Germany, 2 in the UK and… 1.8 days per week in France.

How old are you?

In Europe, a majority of workers under 35 remote work, while those over 50 do not. In France, this discriminating variable is more homogeneous. 31% of those under thirty-five work remotely at least once a week, compared to 28% of those aged fifty and over. This shows that “digital natives” and “boomers” are not as different as they would have you believe!

Do you have children?

According to a study by Valoir, remote working has resulted in an overall productivity decrease of only 1%. However, a nuance appears! Among parents, for whom the balance between personal and professional life is more difficult to guarantee, productivity is of 2%. This is lower than for employees without children, for whom productivity has fallen by 3% since they started remote working. Perhaps more accustomed to juggling multiple tasks and organising their time, parents also have obvious reasons for wanting to work harder to manage other daily tasks!

What are the advantages of remote working?

La pratique comme le souhait de télétravail diffèrent selon les pays. Néanmoins, ses représentations associées y sont partout plutôt homogènes et positives. En effet, trois avantages reviennent systématiquement : les économies financières (trajets, repas, garde d’enfants…), l’autonomie supplémentaire en matière d’organisation et la meilleure conciliation entre vie personnelle et vie professionnelle. Les pays qui ont davantage recours au télétravail voient la motivation de leurs actifs augmenter. Tout du moins en Europe. Au Japon, une étude révèle qu’alors que le télétravail a concerné jusqu’à 25% des salariés japonais (contre 6% avant la crise), il a paradoxalement débouché sur une baisse de productivité d’environ 20% en moyenne. Ainsi, le télétravail n’est pas accueilli et vécu de la même manière selon les cultures : il existe des spécificités et exceptions.

Both the practice and the desire for remote work differ from country to country. Nevertheless, the representations associated with it are everywhere rather homogeneous and positive. Indeed, three advantages are systematically mentioned: financial savings (commuting, meals, childcare, etc.), additional organisational autonomy and better reconciliation between personal and professional life. Countries that make more use of remote work see an increase in the motivation of their workers. At least in Europe. In Japan, a study shows that while remote work has reached 25% of Japanese employees (compared to 6% before the crisis), it has paradoxically led to a decrease in productivity of about 20% on average. Thus, remote work is not welcomed and experienced in the same way in different cultures: there are specificities and exceptions.

We are only at the beginning of the managerial and organisational transformations that the implementation of remote work implies. If it is an increasingly common practice for some, it would be wrong to think that it concerns the entire workforce in France. However, aware of the advantages brought by these new ways of working, these figures can only evolve positively. Therefore, supporting companies in these developments is a priority in order to give them the keys to meet the expectations of their employees and ensure their commitment at work.

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. 1. 1. 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/

What skills should you develop as a Learning & Development professional?

To prepare employees for the world of tomorrow, the Coorpacademy team is always on the lookout for the latest skills to develop. In order to offer relevant training content, our teams are made up of diverse talents who are always highly motivated by the idea of transmitting. Because our objective is to meet the expectations of learners and make them want to learn, like all learning managers in the world, we mobilise certain skills in our teams to guarantee the best learning experience.

But what skills do our teams need to develop in order to best meet learners’ expectations?

Learning to learn

Our team of educational engineers is responsible for creating the courses in the Coorpacademy premium content catalogue. Therefore, our team has to learn continuously, to provide content adapted to each theme and to enrich the courses to be updated. By enriching their knowledge on a daily basis, our teams are also more aware of the specificities and constraints of effective learning, in order to propose the best pedagogy for the content in question. By improving our ability to learn, we also understand the mechanisms of learning. How is our brain predisposed to learn? What are the keys to successful learning? By developing this skill, our teams are ready to provide effective learning content that is tailored to the workings of the brain! Then… If we are not able to learn to learn as learning professionals, who will?

Go further by boosting your learning capacity with Sciences et Vie :

Boost Your Learning Abilities

Adaptation

Adaptation is a watchword within our teams, because learning is a challenge for every company, regardless of its size or sector of activity. Therefore, our teams cultivate their adaptability on a daily basis by working in collaboration with our clients’ business experts on the development of tailor-made courses. We make it a point of honour to adapt to each type of knowledge, each type of environment and each content objective. In addition, our courses are based on the principle of reversed pedagogy. This approach, which aims to engage our learners in their learning, requires our teams to be very adaptable, as we have to be able to put ourselves in the shoes of someone who is new to a subject. When writing course questions, our teams make every effort to adapt the discourse to each target and each level of difficulty. Adapting also means having the ability to master several subjects at the same time. By working on both courses on digital culture in business and on themes related to cultural or ecological transformation, our teams develop an extraordinary level of adaptation.

Test your adaptability with the Coorpacademy test!

Test Your Adaptability

User orientation

Because as a Learning & Development professional we want to offer the best learning experience, we need to think about our content, and the way we deliver it, for the user. The learning experience is crucial to engaging learners and making training effective. So all of our teams are working to continually improve the UX (user experience) of our platforms and the way courses are delivered. And because we want our learners to have fun learning, we also develop pedagogical innovations such as the interactive series Suspects or the Cybercafé podcast series. The learning experience is then fun and engaging, so that the training has a real impact and our users integrate the training into their daily lives!

Learn all about user experience with the Coorpacademy course:

The user experience

Digital culture

In order to build the best online training experience, our teams develop a continuous digital culture. As well as being useful for using different digital tools on a daily basis, this skill is essential for developing your online reputation and communicating with as many people as possible. Therefore, we develop our digital dexterity on a daily basis, by developing our courses but also by talking to you on social networks! By the way, are you already following us on Linkedin?

Travel in a few clicks to the world of traffic generation levers in the digital era with the Coorpacademy course:

Marketing and online advertising

Finally, working as a Learning & Development professional means developing one’s own skills on an ongoing basis, to enable our learners’ skills to grow. And promoting a learning culture within companies means considering each learner, their expectations, their needs and their potential to transform the company.

Finally, discover the course co-published with Numa, ideal for creating conditions that help your employees to learn continuously:

The Learning Organization

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.

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.

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.

Tag: digital transformation