Tag: future of learning

We truly engage learners in their training

Michelin, which employs 125,000 people worldwide, uses Coorpacademy as a platform for digital acculturation for all its employees. Catharina Bot, Group Competency Manager for the IT and Digital professions (3,000 people), spoke at one of the workshops of the We Love Our Clients by Coorpacademy programme about the advantages and positioning of the platform. According to Catharina Bot, one of the main challenges of online training is to succeed in “bringing learners in and constantly renewing their interest! She gives us concrete details of the actions deployed to successfully meet this challenge.  

Q.1 : In order to acculturate employees in digital technology, what was important for you in choosing the training platform?   

The first criterion was to have content that was completely adapted to our needs, i.e. dealing with “soft skills” associated with digital and accessible in several languages. This training content also had to be available in microlearning mode, so that learners could follow independent five-minute modules on the subjects of their choice.

Another much needed requirement on our side, and one that was much appreciated by the top learners, was to have a mobile application where all the courses on the platform and its progress can be found. This will also allow us to reach the on-site manufacturing agents, who represent about half of the Michelin population.

Finally, the last element that seemed essential to us was the possibility of structuring the online learning paths to avoid the learner feeling lost in the 1700 modules offered, and wondering what to do! Hence the creation and promotion of “digital passports” (3 certifications of increasing level on digital) grouping together the courses considered as fundamental.

In short, the Digital Culture platform is just what we need!

Q.2 : Tell us about the flagship event organised annually at Michelin around digital: the Digital Week! 

Digital Week is an annual event that has already taken place twice in person, and which has been transformed into a 100% digital and remote event, due to the pandemic. The aim is to show everyone all the digital achievements made in the group, and to share with as many people as possible the vision of what the group wants to do in this area.

We had to deal with the transition of Digital Week to 100% remote, and to keep the interactive and fun side, we decided to use the platform as a tool for animation during this event.

In concrete terms, we deployed a program of challenges using the training platform. This enabled us to reach an even wider audience than the one usually involved in Digital Week. Digital should not remain the exclusive preserve of the IT and digital professions, but should permeate all levels of the organisation.

Q.3: How did you use the Digital Culture training platform at the Digital Week event?

The animations aimed to introduce the platform, engage learners, and of course, intelligently complement the other Digital Week workshops and remote presentations. Our aim during the week was to build a coherent and attractive experience to promote digital within the group.

To do this, we first selected the most relevant content and launched this challenge programme. I can think of three animations in particular. The first animation consisted in setting up and promoting a “Digital IQ test” allowing learners to assess their level of digital skills at the beginning of the week, and again at the end of the event. The second, called “Star Week”, allowed participants to obtain bonus stars to move up in the ranking. The third animation, called “Battle Week”, rewarded the participants who had launched and won the most duels (battles) on a series of questions!

As a result, we have seen a 3-4 fold increase in platform activity during the week of Digital Week and the following week.

One of the key success factors was the active collaboration with our Customer Success Manager at Coorpacademy, Catherine McKernan, who helped us to create and coordinate the animations and communication.

Q.4 : Do you have any tips and good practices to share on how to successfully engage learners?

Thanks to the modular courses and the certificates, we really engage the learners in the training. However, we do not impose anything, we rely on events, or on Coorpacademy’s communication, through personalised follow-up emails (Note: intelligent follow-up emails sent automatically by the platform according to the learner’s activity). 

Also to boost employee motivation, we offer prizes to be won (purchase vouchers) during the events and games organised on the platform. The winners are also highlighted and promoted via a dedicated Sharepoint.

Soon, we will be running an internal promotion campaign based on learners’ testimonials, following an assiduous collection, so that everyone can see what the platform can do for them and thus increase the number of people and their attendance!

Finally, another avenue that we are exploring is to offer highly specialised, tailor-made content, in response to the natural demand from the professions to have their specific training courses on this platform.

We are constantly trying to reinvent ourselves in order to develop our employees’ commitment to training day after day.

In what world do we want to live in 30 years?

 

For the past sixty years, the world economy has been structured around an ideal of mass consumption and infinite growth. But in a world of finite resources, this model is beginning to show its limits. So how can we transform this line from extraction to the end of the product’s life into a virtuous circle? This is the objective of the new course “The circular economy: from the straight line to the virtuous circle” co-published with MySezame, a training organization specialized in sustainable transformation and one of the 135 French companies to be certified B Corp, the label of impact companies of the 21st century!

We interviewed Célestine Julien at MySezame, Head of the Inter-Company Course (GR20²°), who collaborated in the creation of the course on the Coorpacademy platforms.

 

1- In a few sentences, who is MySezame and what do you do? 

MySezame is a training organization specialized in impact business.
We engage and train leaders and their teams in business transformations and innovations related to societal issues through inspiring meetings and action workshops. Our ambition is to create a shift from individuals to companies to engage them in a collective rethinking of business models and success, in order to make the economy sustainable, durable and inclusive.

2- Why did you choose to publish a training on the circular economy? What issues does it address?

The circular economy allows a new way of thinking the economy where collaboration is the cornerstone of the system. Indeed, the waste of some becomes the resources of others allowing, in fine, a reduction of the pressure of human activity exerted on the planet. Collaboration, by its definition, underlines the importance of working together to achieve a common goal. The notion of results and co-responsibility is therefore important. If we want to respond to the social and environmental challenges of our century, it is time to create a system with nature and all economic agents: citizens, consumers, employees, companies, industries, public authorities… to create a virtuous system.

We have a common responsibility where each and every one of us can act at their level and do their part.

3- Is the circular economy the breeding ground for the 4th Industrial Revolution? Is it the new economic paradigm towards which we should absolutely move?

If I tell you that in 30 years (I let you see how old you will be) the UN foresees +2 billion inhabitants on Earth, that the World Bank foresees an increase of 70% of our waste (where today there is already a 7th continent of plastic in the Ocean) and that currently, every year, we already consume in 6 months, on a global scale, all the resources that the Earth is capable of generating in one year. These few figures and the perspective they outline are quite catastrophic. However, they have the merit of making us aware of one essential thing: our current development’ mode, based on a linear economy, is not sustainable.

So let’s ask ourselves the question, in which world do we want to live in 30 years?

A world where, when we go diving in the sea, we will see more plastic than fish, where we will be forced to eat pills with a sour taste because we will have exhausted our resources, where machines will have replaced many uninteresting things we used to do but also things we liked to do, where we will be so connected that we will be chatting with a stranger at the end of the world but we won’t know our neighbor, where science will allow us to have 3 children, all of them born male because it would be more convenient for some obscure reasons, where we will hear every week that a country disappears from the map because of a lack of water, not to mention conflicts, natural disasters and other humanitarian disasters…

Or else, in 30 years, our waste will have become resources thanks to the collaboration of all the economic actors, we will know our neighbor, and with them, we will barter, we will share, we will exchange in all conviviality. We will eat organic vegetables produced in permaculture less than 150kms away and on the terrace farm of our building. We will have 3 children who will all be different, very creative and empathetic, because the school will also have changed. It will have taught them to read, write and count, but not only. It will also have taught them to manage their emotions. To make plans. To succeed with rather than against others. To ask questions rather than recite answers. To take care of themselves, of others, of their environment.

We will preserve our resources, we will share them, we will live together on the same planet.

4- The first perspective you mention is scary, and… the second seems far from our current world. How would the circular economy make us avoid the worst?

Let’s say the wave is there. The question is whether we ride it or let it drown.

We won’t lie to ourselves, the task is big. But if we choose the glass half-full option, the fear dissipates and makes way for an incredible field of possibilities!

The circular economy is a first step to act and collectively redesign our development model to make it more sustainable and desirable.

It implies taking a step aside and looking at the whole functioning of our economy in a different way. It opens up numerous opportunities for all economic agents by rethinking their relationship with the territory, their activities, but also the societal contribution they wish to make. It can therefore be a formidable lever for commitment, at all levels, around a common and revolutionary societal project!

5- Which companies (whether or not MySezame is working with them) do you think have made a particularly significant and successful sustainable transformation? Do they have a secret?

30 years ago, Ray Anderson launched a total transformation of his company, a world leader in the production of highly polluting carpets, to make it a “zero impact” company. The result? Unflinching growth in the bottom line. A better planet. Convinced consumers. Employees who are committed. (I invite you to learn more about this leading example in the course 😉 )

And on this side of the Atlantic, in France, Camif, a historic company created in 1947 to equip teachers with furniture through mail order, is reinventing itself. In 2008, the company went bankrupt and was taken over by Emery Jacquillat, who was able to engage all of his stakeholders and actors in the region around a mission: “To offer products and services for the home, designed to benefit people and the planet. To mobilize our ecosystem (consumers, employees, suppliers, shareholders, local players), to collaborate and act to invent new models of consumption, production and organization.” A true laboratory for experimentation, Camif places CSR and the circular economy at the heart of its operations. Now profitable, it proves that growth and social, societal and environmental responsibility can go hand in hand.

The secret of these successes? A sincere desire to make the company contributive and committed to the common good. Economic profitability is no longer the only objective to be achieved, but rather the contribution to the resolution of social and environmental issues.

6- Who is the course you have co-edited with Coorpacademy aimed at? What is the main objective?

This course is aimed at all employees, from all sectors and professions and can also touch the consumer and citizen in each of us. Through concrete and varied examples which illustrate this paradigm shift, the course allows to understand the main principles of the circular economy and to identify the “key success factors” which allow the economic agents to be part of this virtuous approach!

Coorpacademy is integrated in Teams: when working, collaborating and training are done in the same place

We are witnessing the emergence of new, more ergonomic collaborative tools, designed to communicate in a faster and more organized way. Emails are less and less common and the expression “Slack me“, referring to the collaborative communication platform Slack, is starting to democratize, while in September 2019, the platform exceeded 12 million daily active users. These tools that streamline communication between teams and improve overall productivity are slowly replacing older, more segmented work tools. This is both a digital transformation, which favors the adoption of these digital tools, but it is also a generational transformation of collaboration methods at work. Employees will favor comprehensive, interconnected communication channels, or ecosystems such as Microsoft Teams, which facilitates teamwork and telecommuting by combining instant messaging, video conferencing, and file sharing on its eponymous collaborative platform. By 2020, the Teams platform exceeded 115 million daily active users.

Under pressure from the lockdown and generalization of remote working, companies are adapting and adopting these new tools that allow them to work together on files simultaneously, to organize meetings, conversations, and calls, in short, to collaborate – even remotely – from a single location, common to everyone. You might as well say that next to what these new tools allow, messaging services such as Outlook, almost look like fossils of professional communication. Today, we can have everything at hand on the same interface, designed to facilitate and streamline communication. It’s a natural progression, as the user experience on the platforms improves, the work tools also become easier to handle, and respond even more to the needs of a company.

But then, to truly meet all the needs of your employees and provide them with all the tools to improve their productivity, training must also be part of this ecosystem to naturally integrate into the employees’ workflow. Because a tool is useless if no one uses it, digital training solutions must be accessible directly on these new collaborative tools, because this is where employees are active, but it is also where they encounter the need for training. There is even a parallel between the evolution we are witnessing concerning our working methods, which are becoming more ergonomic, digital, and which respond to a set of needs thanks to the same global solution; and training, which is becoming digitalized, innovating to create formats adapted to the needs of the learners and offering contents with high added value in a single place. Our ambition at Coorpacademy is to make training accessible to all your collaborators and to meet them where they work. Thus, to make training accessible to all, the Coorpacademy platform is integrated into Teams! Indeed, on the Microsoft Teams platform, you can train in 1 click by integrating the Coorpacademy application, which will be accessible directly on your working environment once downloaded.

 

Work tools are becoming ecosystems and are more and more integrated, to guarantee a secure sharing of information within the whole organization and to promote collaboration. As we mentioned in our article “Learn and work at the same time or when training is just a click away“, training must be integrated into your organization’s productivity spaces, to allow your employees to have access in record time to a catalog of premium course content and thus immediately put into practice the knowledge acquired and optimize the retention of information.

Coorpacademy promotes innovation and skills development within Swiss Life France

 

Our clients have training needs and our mission is to meet them. At SwissLife, the challenge of training is to give employees the opportunity to be more than ever a player in their professional lives and to encourage innovation by developing their skills, according to their choices, their needs and at their pace.

In order to achieve these objectives, Swiss Life and the company’s Training and Skills Development Department regularly enrich their catalog of learning offers with differentiating digital training. Today, the Training Department is integrating the Coorpacademy platform, in order to stimulate the curiosity of employees and their desire to learn!

We are very proud to be able to support the strategic objectives of the SwissLife group through 4 training courses on innovation and digital transformation, selected for the launch of the platform in mid-June 2021: “Entrepreneurial culture”, “Digital culture”, “Creativity and agility”, and “Anticipating change”.

Through our catalog of premium content, SwissLife employees will have the opportunity to develop their skills on strategic topics for the company such as cultural, digital, or sustainable transformation and to further develop a culture of innovation in line with the company’s purpose.

“The challenge is to allow everyone to live according to their own choices and our strategic objectives. To achieve this, we need to combine creativity, method and rigor. A combination of behaviors that we must adopt collectively.”
Eddie Abecassis, Director of Innovation at Swiss Life France

To know more about the role of Coorpacademy in innovation at SwissLife.

 

Coorpacademy announces a partnership with 7-Shapes to learn the main principles of Lean Management

 

7-Shapes, through its 7-Shapes School offer, the 1st interactive training offer in Lean Management, 100% online and accessible to all, and Coorpacademy, an EdTech start-up offering intelligent learning experience platforms to more than one million learners, announce a partnership to train employees in Lean Management.

Lean Management is a work organization philosophy based on collective intelligence and aimed at improving a company’s performance. Invented by Toyota in the 1970s, this philosophy has led to the creation of numerous methods and tools that offer many advantages: elimination of non-value added, reduction of excessive inventories, improvement of deadlines, quality, and greater agility thanks to the involvement of all employees.

While most of the world’s large corporations have a Lean approach (also called Continuous Improvement or Operational Excellence), the training and application of Lean Management remain complex to organize. Indeed, traditional Lean training courses are often face-to-face, time-consuming and costly, and most of the time they are only aimed at managers and engineers. However, one of the foundations for the success of an operational excellence approach is that it be carried by all employees. 7-Shapes takes up this challenge by making Lean Management training available to everyone!

7-Shapes School offers a practical, fun and engaging solution to Lean Management training, whatever the learners’ level. The learning paths are composed of modules that are unlocked as the learner progresses. For the theory part of Lean, the 7-Shapes School includes motion design videos, interactive lessons and quizzes. But the specificity of the 7-Shapes School lies in its challenges and mini-games, exercises based on an interactive business simulation. These exercises allow the learner to put his knowledge into practice and encourage him to take action in the field, on a daily basis.

In order to train all employees in Lean in a fun and efficient way, Coorpacademy offers with 7-Shapes to integrate these interactive training simulations on Lean Management, directly on the learning platforms of its customers. This new option, in the form of an add-on, enriches the “Premium Content Hub” offer with high added value for the increase in competence of all the employees and the development of their employability.

In addition to this, Coorpacademy will enrich its content catalog by proposing two courses co-edited with 7-Shapes to understand the history of Lean Management and to learn the basic concepts of operational excellence.

About Coorpacademy

Founded in 2013, Coorpacademy is a European startup member of the EdTech France association, specialized in innovative and scalable digital learning solutions. Based in Paris and in Lausanne at the Swiss EdTech Collider of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), Coorpacademy is at the heart of research on new learning methods. With its platform, Coorpacademy accompanies the transformation of companies by engaging their collaborators, partners and customers in their rise in skills. To unleash this desire and desire to learn, Coorpacademy has developed a proprietary Saas platform based on innovative pedagogical engineering supported by the EPFL innovation laboratories and exclusive content focused on soft skills. The result: a more fun, flexible and collaborative learning experience, focused on the learner.

About 7-Shapes 

7-Shapes is a training start-up founded in 2017 that creates and publishes 7-Shapes School, a performance training course offering based on a business simulation, a fun and operational way to effectively learn the principles and tools of Lean Management, Agility and Supply Chain.

7-Shapes offers its courses in the form of licenses that can be used by consultants, trainers or Lean managers to train all company employees.  Many schools also use the 7-Shapes School to train their students. Most of the 7-Shapes courses also lead to hybrid training courses that can be certified and are eligible for CPF, OPCO, FNE, regional funding, etc. More than 5000 people have already trained with 7-Shapes School and the satisfaction rate of the solution on the CPF is 4.86/5.

Learn and work at the same time or when training is just a click away

 

If like 91% of French and European HR managers, you consider skills development to be a strategic lever for the company, then this article should interest you. This figure is one of the four basic trends identified in the CEGOS 2020 European barometer “Transformation, skills and learning“, which questioned 1783 employees and 254 Human Resources Directors or Managers / Training Directors or Managers (HRD/HRM/HRM) all working in private sector companies with 50 employees or more. 

Businesses are facing new challenges, transformations of all kinds, tensions, uncertain futures, and to face this evolving context, the competencies’ development is a key subject that allows the growth of organizational and individual resilience within the company. In the same study, 88% of the companies surveyed adapted their training offer during the health crisis, and 75% of the levers activated by HRDs to face the impact of digital transformations were based on skills development.

To foster skills development, we need to focus on learning, which in turn relies on training that must be continuous, accessible, and above all, integrated with the applications and tools already existing in the organization. This is the new paradigm that is shaking up training and the HR function: Learning in the flow of work. 

Training integrated into employees’ work life

In his article “A New Paradigm For Corporate Training: Learning In The Flow of Work“, Josh Bersin describes this model for Deloitte. Companies are implementing solutions to support continuous learning, but the entry point to training is quick and easy access to the learning tool. As J. Bersin points out in his report for Deloitte, an employee will spend only 1% of a working day learning new skills. By integrating a training solution directly into the work tools, employees will be able to devote more time to their learning and thus develop their skills much more effectively. 

With a short format, personalized content, and a learner-centric learning experience, training is transformed. Learning in the flow of work allows you to learn whenever you need to, at any time of the day. It is when faced with a difficulty, being able to train in a few minutes to overcome this obstacle. You’ve probably already found yourself not knowing something, looking for the answer to a question you’re asking yourself, right? Your first reflex is to “Google” your question? This is already a first step towards Learning in the flow of work as you learn at the very moment you need it. 

With learning in the flow of work, you are only one click away from accessing training content, most often in the form of microlearning (course formats reduced to a few minutes). For example, on the Coorpacademy platform, our 5-minute learnings allow you to understand a subject very quickly and without interrupting your work. If you need to understand the stakes of 5G, what is SCRUM, or develop your agility in a few minutes, to meet an immediate need, learning in the flow of work is an adequate answer. Directly integrated into your organization’s productivity spaces, you can, in record time, immerse yourself in a subject that may have seemed complex at first. Learning while working also means better retention of information, because not only do we really need it when we learn it, but we also put into action what we have learned, in a short period. By making these tools available to employees, the company creates an agile culture and develops reflexes, so that training is a real tool for change. 

What revolutionizes learning in the flow of work is temporality. While traditional training requires the mobilization of a specific time, even when it is done remotely, this new paradigm revolutionizes our learning time by integrating it into our professional life. It all lies in its name: it is integrated into our workflow and becomes an integral part of the daily life of the employee, the learner, the individual in general, as they progress in their daily tasks. Training time adapts to the learner and not the other way around, the content comes directly to them, i.e. at work.

Learning in the flow of work also means promoting agility, an essential skill to develop in a constantly changing world. Better adapted to the challenges of tomorrow, but also employees’ needs, this model improves employee’s experience, who no longer perceives training as an imposed time, but rather as their initiative to nourish their curiosity and to upskill. By integrating training into employees’ workflows, we also make the learner an actor of their learning path. With more involved, engaged, and interested learners, the impact of training increases and influences employee satisfaction, and ultimately the overall productivity of the organization. 

In short, learning in the flow of work means integrating digital learning content and an engaging learning experience directly into the employee’s work environment. In other words, it means integrating the functionalities of a training platform into professional software, accessible to employees at any time. For training to become natural, access to online training must be simplified, allowing an increase in usage. Without interrupting the work in progress, learning in the workflow is a revolution that not only trains employees in the essential skills of tomorrow but also provides them with the skills they need for today. 

But then, how do you integrate learning into the employee’s work environment? Learning in the flow of work requires the integration of tools within human resources management information systems (HRIS) and software that accompany and manage the learning paths of employees, the LMS (Learning Management System). To find out more, don’t miss our next articles on how to make training just a click away.

Learn by listening : Cybercafé, the first podcast to learn everything about the Web

 

Coorpacademy, an EdTech startup offering smart learning experience platforms to one million learners, is launching Cybercafé: a series of 5-minute podcasts in 5 episodes to learn about the great history of the Web.

With over 135,000 educational podcasts produced in 2020, the audio format is booming. The productions are increasing, the audience is growing with 90 million listenings per month and the engagement rates are very good: 93% of people listen to podcasts in their entirety or almost. 

Coorpacademy innovates by launching an audiolearning series of 5 episodes to better understand the Web and thus develop digital skills, to accompany the training of employees and more broadly, the digital transformation of companies. 

Cybercafé is a discussion between Yann and Lya. Every morning, Yann takes his coffee with his virtual assistant. He shares his questions about the vast world of the Web while Lya corrects him, informs him, and gives him information on a multitude of digital-related topics. 

With this format, which is conducive to storytelling and arouses emotions, Coorpacademy relies on the audio to allow the learner to be truly immersed in the world of Yann and Lya, as Laurence Mijoin-Duroche, in charge of pedagogical innovation at Coorpacademy explains: 

“Digital culture is a strong axis of Coorpacademy’s catalog. This is why we chose audio to tell the story of the Web. The audio format offers us plenty of possibilities, especially with storytelling, sound design, and sound staging, which engages the learner and optimizes concentration.”

Because there are many ways of learning, Coorpacademy integrates audiolearning into its training catalog and optimizes its global digital learning offer. Learning through various learning formats allows better retention of information, as well as a more diverse content proposal, to adapt to all uses. The audio format is accessible everywhere, practical for the learner, and offers a multitude of creation tools, to always better accompany training in companies. 

 

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Register for free to the round table by clicking here.

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

 

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

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

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

What is digital transformation in 2021?

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

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

How to become a digital employee?

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

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

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

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

N°1 Technology use, monitoring, and control

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

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

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

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

Preparing for tomorrow’s world

Develop your agility:

Adopt an agile mindset

N° 2 Technology design and programming

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

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

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

To start acculturation to digital tools:

AI and cognitive technologies

N°3 Resilience, stress tolerance, and flexibility

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

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

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

Resilience

Digital learning, the primary tool for digital transformation?

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

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

Unlock the human potential of your business:

All courses

 

Audiolearning: a media that makes noise

 

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

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

The podcast, a growing format

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

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

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

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

What are the main audiolearning formats and their advantages?

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

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

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