The Sopra Steria Group, a major player in the European Tech sector, is fully committed to developing the skills of its 55,000 employees to become a true learning organization.
In this video interview, discover the testimonies of Louis-Maxime Nègre, Human Resources Director at Sopra Steria, Adrien Kéruzoré, Head of Learning Experience and Innovation at Sopra Steria Academy, and Marianne Abadie, Training Manager at Sopra Steria Academy!
Sopra Steria, a major Tech player in Europe
As Louis-Maxime Nègre reminds us, Sopra Steria is a Group that is constantly preparing for the world’s major transformations, in an environment that is constantly changing. This reality is characterized by societal, social, environmental and ethical changes. As a European leader in Tech, recognized for its consulting, digital services and software publishing activities, Sopra Steria is committed to supporting its customers in their digital transformation, thus contributing to a more sustainable world.
Training is of crucial importance at Sopra Steria. It is the key to helping the company’s 55,000 employees develop their skills, both technical and behavioral, and thus ensure customer satisfaction.
How to build a learning organization
Sopra Steria Academy has a clear ambition: to build a learning organization at all levels of the company. The idea is to enable each employee to become a player in his or her own learning process, and to encourage continuous skills development.
To achieve this objective, Sopra Steria has set up various training systems. Among them, the Coorpacademy by Go1 platform plays a central role, covering needs in three key areas:
1. Management & Leadership: For coaching and cross-functional management.
2. Behavioral skills development: for learning to learn and stimulating creativity.
3. Technologies : For an introduction to digital and emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Digital Sustainability, Data, and Security.
The latter theme has been widely covered since the merger with Go1, which offers a wide range of short courses on the subject.
Make training an event and create learning rituals
To anchor the learning culture within the Group, it is necessary to make training an event and create learning rituals. To this end, the Group organized several events throughout the year:
– The Learning Month
According to Louis-Maxime Nègre, it’s essential to make training an event to create learning rituals. Last June, Sopra Steria launched its first “Apprenticeship Month”. The aim was twofold:
1. To embody the learning culture by involving all employees through a unifying event.
2. Introduce rituals to change the mindset towards training.
– “Learning World Tour”: June in two highlights
As Adrien Kéruzoré, Head of Learning Experience and Innovation at Sopra Steria Academy, explains, the month of June featured two highlights. Firstly, the “Learning World Tour” on June 7, 8 and 9, with the theme “Skills for a Greener Future”. The company is committed to increasing skills in green and sustainable skills, crucial for a more environmentally-friendly future.
Then, from June 12 onwards, Sopra Steria distributed Coorpacademy or customized educational content on a daily basis, created by Sopra Steria Academy experts, to encourage and anchor learning rituals among employees over the long term. Modules were shared to train employees in digital transformation, a strategic priority in the company’s training plan.
Engaging employees in training: the benefits of Digital Learning
Personalization and gamification are essential levers for engaging employees in their skills development. The functionalities of the Coorpacademy platform make the learning experience pleasant and motivating, which, as Adrien Kéruzoré reminds us, “makes employees want to go on the platform and encourages emulation”. In this way, several factors encourage commitment:
Easy integration into everyday life
Marianne Abadie, Training Manager at Sopra Steria Academy, comments: “The accessibility of the platform and the diversity of formats make it easy to integrate training into my daily routine”. She often sets aside half an hour a week for regular training. These courses have helped her in specific situations, such as managing international projects in hybrid mode, which encouraged her to take the module on “Intercultural communication”.
Diversity of learning methods
Adrien Kéruzoré emphasizes the diversity of the modalities on offer, including podcasts on technological developments and forward-looking issues. These varied formats enable learners to choose what best suits their needs and learning style. Marianne Abadie also cites other features, such as the revision mode, which enables learners to revisit concepts they have already learned, and innovative modules like Cluedo and Trivial Pursuit, which make learning fun. It is through this diversity that every Group employee can learn, at his or her own level, pace and needs.
How to prolong the learning dynamic?
The learning dynamic doesn’t stop with “Learning Month”. The Sopra Steria Group continues to innovate in order to maintain training as a lever for day-to-day development.
New highlights are organized throughout the year to maintain training as a lever for day-to-day development. A new training catalog format has been rolled out, making it easier for employees to find their way around their learning path. The catalog contains numerous Coorpacademy modules carefully selected to enrich training paths.
As Louis-Maxime Nègre reminds us, in an ever-changing world, it is essential to offer relevant, up-to-date content, available in several languages, to meet the challenges of international transformation. This is how Sopra Steria ensures that its employees remain prepared and competent to face the challenges of the future.
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).
In this video interview, Jérôme Pesenti, HR Project Manager for digital training, and Dora Mosalo, Head of Learning and Development at FDJ, tell us about the success of the Coorpacademy “Digilearn” platform within the leading French gambling group, and share best practices and future challenges for online training at FDJ!
What are the successes of the “Digilearn” online training at FDJ?
Dora Mosalo: Two successes. The first is obviously the implementation of this learning platform, which is known by all our employees. The second success for us is the creation of pure FDJ content. Content that is either legal or compulsory, but also cultural, about FDJ culture.
The 3 advantages of Digilearn, especially for learners?
Jérôme Pesenti: The first advantage of Digilearn is the ATAWAD aspect: Any Time, Any Where, Any Device. This means that the employee can connect whenever he wants, wherever he wants, on any tool (smartphone, PC or tablet).
The second advantage is speed. Indeed, we have quick course modules that use reverse pedagogy, i.e. the employee starts with the questions and if he does not know the subject, he can watch the course.
A final advantage is the gamification of the platform. The more courses employees complete, the more stars they earn and the more they are included in the company’s overall ranking. We also have battles where employees can compete on a subject and find out who is the best.
A key number and a good practice to remember?
Dora Mosalo: The key number is 93.
Because 93% of our employees have connected at least once to the platform.
The good practice, and we are practising it more and more, is to create FDJ content based on what exists in the Coorpacademy catalogue by mixing it with custom-made content with our experts.
Do the learners engage in the game?
Jérôme Pesenti: Even though gaming is our business, we are always surprised to discover the competitive side of our employees. That is to say, when we carry out challenges on the platform, we see an increase in the number of battles carried out.
What are the next big challenges for e-learning at FDJ?
Dora Mosalo: This autumn, we have two major challenges. The first is to use the Coorpacademy catalogue as a prerequisite for our face-to-face training courses as part of the reengineering of these courses. This will be a much more interesting offer.
And our second challenge, as we have just done for the managerial function, will be to create courses which will allow a real progression and deepening of our training offer.
HR Tech Show 16/10: How can successful offboarding help a company’s employer brand?
-Alexia : Hello Arnauld. So, is this your last column?
Hi Alexia. Yes indeed… But I’m not sad: to prepare my topic, I read a lot of articles on offboarding, i.e. the support given to employees when they leave, and I understood that this stage should be played down! So everything is going well!
What’s more, with Julie, your producer, as I’m sure you’re concerned about your “employer brand”, I feel that you’ve organised a great farewell party, bringing together all the guests from the last 6 weeks, Quentin and Arnaud, your Minute Geek columnists, and so on… Did you collect a lot of money for my fund?
-Alexia : But Arnauld, none of that… I’d like to remind you that you’re our partner and also a businessman, not a BFM Business employee!
Ah ? OK… You’re right… I think I got carried away reading all those articles on the proper management of departures…
Because it’s true that if the offboarding process is well formalised in the company, everything should go like clockwork: handing over of files, internal announcement, departure review, etc., etc…
It is easy to understand why the departure must go well: the former employee must remain an ambassador for the company he or she is leaving. And we all know the ravages of a bad review on the internet.
It’s true, Alexia, we all have an example of a hotel where, despite the 100 positive reviews we’ve just read, all we have to do is come across the one that says “the bathroom was dirty”, and we think “ah yes, but maybe not, so in fact…”.
-Alexia: Yes, that’s for sure. That must speak to a lot of people!
Well, Alexia, it’s the same thing in the recruitment world! Are you familiar with the Glassdoor website?
-Alexia: Yes of course!
So it’s an anonymous rating site for companies by employees, past and present. And it’s not to be taken lightly! The site claims to have 50 million unique visitors each month who come to view reviews of over 800,000 companies worldwide. Company reviews, interview stories, salary information. The site even allows you to compare two companies. Useful if you are hesitating between two job offers.
On paper, the promise of this type of site is tempting: to offer candidates a more realistic representation of a company than that conveyed by its corporate site.
Obviously, as with customer review sites, this also raises many questions: the representativeness of the reviews (aren’t it often the disgruntled who are most likely to post reviews?), the veracity of the reviews (some companies encourage their employees who are still in post to give their reviews), the business model (these sites earn their living by charging companies for services).
When questioned, candidates themselves say they are a bit dubious (according to a study found on the CAIRN portal).
Nevertheless! According to Glassdoor data, 2 thirds of candidates read at least 5 reviews before making up their mind about the company they are considering joining!
So, to avoid damaging your employer brand, you have no choice but to leave well enough alone. Hence the importance of a good departure management process!
-Alexia: You don’t seem very convinced Arnauld…
Of course I am!
The web has given a tremendous power to all users, to be able to give their opinion and potentially share it with the rest of the world. In many areas, this has rebalanced the balance of power between the business world (hotels or restaurants as well as employers) and the user world (customers as well as employees or candidates).
It is a great power and as Spiderman said, “with great power comes great responsibility”.
So be careful never to abuse it…
HR Tech Show 09/10: The need to work on your emotional intelligence in the age of artificial intelligence
Alexia, today it’s not really a column that I’m proposing to you: we’re more in the field of news, of scoop!
-Alexia: Really?
Yes! Breaking News: To measure a person’s intelligence, it’s not enough to measure their intelligence quotient, their IQ, you also have to take into account their emotional intelligence, i.e. our capacity to recognise, understand and analyse our emotions, but also to deal with the emotions of others!
-Alexia: Well yes, but Arnauld, everyone knows that, it’s even the theme of today’s programme!
Yes, you’re right, Alexia, I know I’m pushing an open door…
And yet, several surprising things struck me during the preparation of this column.
The first is that the notion of EQ, emotional quotient, is very recent. About thirty years ago. Whereas the notion of IQ dates back well over a century.
In the business world, this means that for decades, the major criterion for evaluating an employee’s performance was considered to be his or her IQ, and that emotions (ours and those of others) had no place in the office.
The second is that many companies have not yet grasped the importance of emotional intelligence. According to a recent study by Capgemini, only 40% of them test the EQ of candidates when hiring, and less than 1 in 5 companies train all their employees in the development of emotional intelligence.
-Alexia: ah yes, that’s low.
Yes, it’s not much. Especially if you subscribe to the thesis of Daniel Goleman, doctor in psychology and pioneer in the field, who states that two thirds of a company’s results are due to the emotional skills of its managers.
Why is this? Because our emotions are intimately linked to our ability to think and make decisions.
So without awareness and management of our emotions and those of others, we risk making bad choices.
Let’s take a concrete example. Many managers may find themselves confronted with feelings of fear: fear of not delivering results, fear of disappointing their superiors or fear of giving feedback to an employee who may threaten to leave the company. If we don’t know how to control this feeling, this fear can lead to immobility (it’s better to do nothing than to do something wrong), to avoidance (I’d rather not offend him, I need him too much), or to excessive pressure on a team (my stress becomes your stress because we have to meet our objectives!).
-Alexia: So what should we do?
Well, the good news is that unlike IQ, which is relatively static, EQ can change. It is no coincidence that the World Economic Forum has included in its list of 10 soft skills that every employee will need by 2025 many elements related to emotional intelligence: resilience, stress management, flexibility, but also leadership or social influence… Training platforms offering catalogues to work on these soft skills, such as ours, but there are of course other examples, contribute to increasing the competence of all employees on these subjects.
In short, in the age of Artificial Intelligence, we need to work on our Emotional Intelligence!
But we can dream of a world where children are taught to work on their emotional intelligence right from school. Many experiments conducted in the United States and Europe show that children obtain better results, free themselves from their anxieties and approach life more serenely.
Because, Alexia, it’s not necessarily those who had the best results at school who were the most successful professionally, is it?
-Alexia: That’s right, we all have a few examples in mind…
In the world of work, is EQ more important than IQ?
Probably, since in most jobs we work with other human beings…
And remembering this can’t hurt, even if it’s not a scoop…
HR Tech show of 02/10: Is commitment at the heart of knowledge transmission?
-Alexia: So Arnauld, has the topic of Story Learning inspired you this week?
Well, Alexia, you’re not thinking straight. I’ll even tell you a little story:
Once upon a time, in the wonderful land of knowledge, there was a beautiful princess who loved to learn. Unfortunately, her teachers were so boring that she often took a nose dive. When she woke up, like a curse cast on her, she had systematically forgotten everything.
One day, after a particularly boring lesson, she fell asleep for good: she was called…
-Alexia: Sleeping Beauty?
Exactly!
100 years passed.
A prince, who was passing by, had the idea to teach her what he knew by presenting it as a novel.
She woke up, having retained and understood everything as if by magic!
They lived happily ever after and had many children…
… And posted pictures of their happiness on Instagram regularly, but that’s another subject…
Did you like it?
-Alexia: yes, but why are you telling me this?
Well, Alexia, what I have tried to do through this little tale is to engage you in my story. And why? Because engagement is at the heart of the transmission of knowledge.
So, in truth, it’s not really new. I would even say that it is in our genes! In fact, most animals learn through play, because play stimulates and encourages the anchoring of knowledge. In the end, it was only man who once imagined that teaching should be serious and grave.
Be careful, I say “serious AND severe”, and therein lies the misunderstanding! Because you can say serious things without being severe (as we try to demonstrate every week, don’t we?)
-Alexia: Absolutely!
What the animals do through these games is what we should all dream of: learning without even realising it, like Mr Jourdain who writes prose without knowing it (a little cultural reference while we are at it… ;))
The good news is that for several years now, we have been seeing a lot of initiatives that go in this direction, even in the world of continuing education, i.e. in companies, which are undeniably the realm of seriousness and gravity!
I am thinking, for example, of the English company Video Arts, founded almost 50 years ago by John Cleese, a former Monty Python, which produces training videos with a very English sense of humour in which good managerial behaviour is demonstrated, but through the absurd. Their cult training is called “Meetings, Bloody meetings”.
-Alexia: quite a programme indeed!
Another example: Duolingo, a mobile application for learning languages through games, has 300 million users worldwide and offers, in addition to the 38 languages available, to teach you more exotic languages, such as “Klingon”, the fictional language of Star Trek!
On our training platform, we have been offering our users courses on general culture for the past two years, which we designed with Trivial Pursuit, where you have to win, module after module, all the colours of the pie chart, just like in the real game.
To go further, in a few weeks we’re launching a series with Cluedo, where to help Colonel Mustard solve the enigma of Mr Boddy’s death, users will have to mobilise their negotiation, active listening and empathy skills… Serious skills, used without even realising it, as if we were playing a board game!
-Alexia: Is this what we call gamification?
Yes and no. The word “gamification” implies taking something serious and trying to make it fun. This is often not the case.
If we dream that users will one day talk about our training content as they do at the coffee machine when talking about the latest series, it is better to do the opposite: start with the codes of entertainment, of the game, and add some seriousness.
We can then talk about entertaining: entertainment + learning.
And if everyone gets on board, learning throughout our lives will become, with a wave of a magic wand, a real fairy tale…
HR Tech Show of 25/09: HR predictive tools: Big data or Big brother?
The dream, Alexia, the dream! Predictive HR tools now allow us to recruit the best performers, detect the highest potential and offer them personalised career paths, or even predict the resignations of key employees.
A dream, I tell you!
But I have a doubt: would I be sitting in front of you right now if you had used this type of tool to select your columnists?
-Alexia: Who knows! I don’t know…
Anyway, Big Brother has just been appointed HRD.
As a company director, I know that recruitment and career management are among the most difficult exercises in the life of a company.
So the prospect offered by its Big Data-based tools is very promising.
Successful examples can be cited, such as the “My Itinerary” application set up by Orange a little over ten years ago, which enables each employee to visualise possible career paths, open positions and training courses that he or she can follow based on the skills that he or she currently possesses.
Still on the subject of training, on the platform that we offer to our clients, the behaviour of all users is stored anonymously and then processed in order to feed the course recommendations that we make to each person connected, to try to best match their needs for skill enhancement.
In terms of recruitment, a study by the very serious Harvard Business Review shows that by using algorithms, the employees hired perform 25% better on average than when a human makes the decision. Why is this? Because our brains are excellent when it comes to collecting the data needed to make a decision, but pretty bad when it comes to weighing up the pros and cons between several hypotheses.
We can also cite the case of those companies that analyse the weak signals sent, sometimes in spite of themselves, by employees (travel time, remuneration, number of projects managed or absenteeism) to anticipate and possibly avoid departures.
-Alexia: So why so much reluctance?
Well, Alexia, it’s the word “predictive” that raises questions. Because everyone knows that predicting the future is very difficult, if not impossible: Nostradamus and Paco Rabanne have paid the price…
I am thinking, for example, of my favourite streaming platform which, in the “recommended for you” section, only offers me cartoons since I had the misfortune to watch Winnie the Pooh with my children from my profile.
Or that recent day when an online merchant started suggesting that I buy a banknote counter, probably thinking that I had just started trafficking in some way…
These two examples are of course not serious, I just don’t click and everything is forgotten.
But when it comes to applying Big Data to the upstream selection of candidates’ files, for example, you have to be well aware of the limits that such a system can present.
For example, Alexia, do you believe that a person’s future job can be determined in advance?
-Alexia: So from a technological, technical point of view, no, I don’t think so. I think that we can still change our minds at the last moment, have an epiphany!
That would mean that our individual desires and motivations are so secondary that they don’t count in our professional decision-making.
Not easy to admit, is it?
Even Google has backtracked on the use of Big Data in recruitment, admitting that after analysing tens of thousands of resumes, combing through interviews, and looking at the performance of recruits, they found no correlation…
Predictive systems work well when the past looks like the future, i.e. in environments with little change.
But recent history has shown us that our repositories can completely change in a few months, days or even hours.
So, yes, HR Big Data! Of course it is!
But only if you have the choice to click. Or not…
HR Tech Show of 18/09: Onboarding, why do first impressions play such a determining role?
Alexia, you arrived not so long ago on BFM Business, would you say that you had a good onboarding?
– Alexia: I was lucky enough to have a great producer, Julie Cohen, whom I salute, and yes, she was superb with me anyway, so very good onboarding.
Well, you’re lucky, because a lot of employees who joined their new company during the chaotic period we’ve just been through have found it rather difficult: 100% digital, to make a place for yourself in a new environment, it has its limits!
Especially as first impressions of the new company, even in ‘normal’ times, play a determining role in the future.
Did you know, Alexia, that according to a 2018 study, 1 in 5 employees leave their company within the first 3 months, and 4% even leave on the first day?
– Alexia: I didn’t expect that much!
So the first few days are key!
So how do you make a good impression when you are a company and you welcome a new employee?
Probably, to start with, by realising that you need an onboarding process… Don’t laugh, a study by Mercuri Urval shows that ⅔ of companies don’t have one. Or didn’t have one…
Because the good news is that the health crisis has forced companies to look into the subject (how do you welcome someone in the middle of a lockdown?) and therefore to speed up the digitalisation of the onboarding process.
The bad news? It sometimes boiled down to: meetings with colleagues via Zoom/Teams/Meet, e-aperos on Zoom/Teams/Meet, weekly plenary sessions on Zoom/Teams/Meet… Not easy to develop a sense of belonging to a group in these conditions!
-Alexia: So what is the right formula?
Well, as in many areas, the right answer is probably hybridisation, a clever mix of digital and physical. With the gradual return to the office, many things are becoming possible again. In our company, for example, we have just launched a board game for new employees, where each week they have to discover their job and the company culture in order to advance in their quest to become a real “coorper”, as our employees call themselves.
But there are some areas that lend themselves particularly well to digital, such as the training of newcomers. Of course, this does not mean replacing the direct transmission of knowledge by peers. But the digitalisation of business training, or training on products and services, has the advantage of structuring the discourse and thus avoiding the unintentional omission of certain elements that may seem too obvious to the most experienced employees.
This type of training also makes it possible to quickly make remote employees operational, for example in networks of shops or franchisees.
A final example of an induced benefit: these digital training courses can also bring employees who have been with the company for a long time and who sometimes no longer dare or cannot admit that they do not know everything up to speed.
Finally, a clear distinction must be made between the provision of knowledge about the business, a task that can be given to an employee who will be called, for example, the newcomer’s coach, and the transmission of the company culture, the whole informal part. This last function can be entrusted to another employee who can be called a Mentor or Buddy.
Because we must not forget that the grail of successful onboarding is not that the newcomer develops a FEELING of belonging, but rather a PIERCE of belonging.
And the nuance is important…
HR Tech Show of 11/09: Back to school in 2021, campuses continue their digital transition
“Classrooms are dead! Long live classrooms!” This little phrase may well sum up the paradox that university and secondary school campuses are facing today, just like most companies.
Indeed, after long months of forced distance learning, the majority of students want to return to the classroom, but beware of “not like before either”!
(And it’s exactly the same when we ask employees in companies: “we want to come back, but not all the time. we want to be flexible!)
This is where the puzzle begins: how to manage “Blended Learning”? That is, the combination of physical and distance learning. Because all whisky lovers know that it is not enough to mix blindly to obtain a good product!
At the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, where we have premises, an eminent professor told me, in view of this column, that the students cannot stand even a week of non-stop online classes. So they tried hybrid systems with one third of the students in class and two thirds by video conference. But as with meetings of this type in companies, it is difficult to manage: those in the room forget those who are at a distance and interactions between the teacher and the students become complicated.
Not to mention the “digital inequality” issues! It is enough to note our dismay when faced with an ADSL connection or when our mobile phone indicates that we are on 3G (??!!)
A good idea is undoubtedly, beyond the tools, to rethink the “traditional” teaching protocol, i.e. lessons in class and exercises at home.
In Lausanne, a small quarter of the teachers have opted for the flipped classroom: online lessons at home and face-to-face sessions dedicated to questions and practical work.
Students appreciate the “framed” autonomy offered to them as well as the changing role of the teacher who becomes a “companion” during classroom sessions.
A study has shown that this face-to-face practical work was crucial for understanding and anchoring knowledge: at the beginning of the practical session and after having followed the online courses, only 25% of the students in the study obtained the average in the knowledge test. At the end of the session with the teacher, 75% of them obtained the average on the same test.
The teacher’s support remains at the heart of the success of a flipped classroom: phew!
The question now is whether the results obtained by the students are better than those obtained with the traditional teaching protocol, and here the answer seems less obvious, with some studies showing that they are, and others showing that the results are the same. What is certain is that no study on the subject has shown a drop in results with the flipped classroom!
OK… Great…
But are there ways to go further? For example, can we imagine distance learning exams? Not only can we imagine it, but it already exists. In the Anglo-Saxon world, they are called “take home exams” or in French “tests non supervised”. This is a test given to students to take when they want to without supervision within a given time frame. It is usually open book. It is particularly applicable when students’ ability to apply knowledge to a specific situation, context or problem is to be assessed: a case study for example. In short, to cases where there is no ready-made answer.
Of course, there is the problem of “cheating”, in this case getting help from someone (because obviously copying texts is no longer possible with the widespread use of anti-plagiarism software). As a result, it is still necessary to alternate this type of examination with more traditional classroom examinations to validate the acquisition of skills.
But these exams, which are based on the empowerment of students by offering them autonomy and therefore flexibility, are increasingly used on campus: another good way of mixing on-campus and “virtual” moments.
We are all convinced that we will not go back to the old world. What students want is not so different from what we all want: the best of the campus of the past (social interactions) + the best of the campus of today (autonomy and flexibility offered by the tools) = the campus of tomorrow.
And, but really, that’s the equation of progress, isn’t it?
Engaging learners in their learning is one of the main missions of Coorpacademy. The objective is to enable employees to continuously learn, in order to guarantee their employability in an uncertain world and a changing job market. But how to create innovative, qualitative and engaging content? What methodology should be applied? These are some of the questions we wanted to ask Solène Rascle, educational engineer in our content team and who co-constructs the courses in the premium content catalog with partner publishers.
Not everyone is familiar with the job of educational engineer. Straddling the line between engineering and teaching, the job title can sometimes lead to confusion. Nevertheless, training engineering is evolving rapidly as it becomes more digital and as learners show an interest in diverse and innovative formats.
In this interview, discover the job of educational engineer and go behind the scenes of Coorpacademy!
To begin this interview, introduce yourself in a few sentences…
I am Solène, educational engineer at Coorpacademy! To give you an idea of my background, I have always been quite knowledgeable about education and training. I started in teaching, I have notably taught French in London or organized cultural and academic programs for international and American students in France / Paris. I have always loved learning, discovering, sharing, and as I like to invest myself in various activities, I thought I could blossom in the field of e-learning.
The job of educational engineer is not yet very well known, it is a term that I discovered myself with Coorpacademy. Could you describe the main missions of this position?
So to begin with, you can imagine that I also discovered this job by applying to Coorpacademy! In fact, an educational engineer is in charge of designing a learning path, designing courses, learning experiences, all of this to train a given public on various subjects. Hence the name of engineer, which concerns the design, creation and implementation of training devices adapted to a public of learners, and to which is added the whole pedagogical part, so that the training devices meet the fixed pedagogical objectives.
How does the educational engineer create a course? Is there a methodology specific to Coorpacademy?
First of all, several factors can influence the way a course is created. First, it depends on the educational engineer in question, but also and above all on the target audience, the subject of the course, the objectives and the company or the partner publisher! At Coorpacademy, we have our own method for building courses. Our unique pedagogy is based on several pillars. We start by asking questions to the learner, who can then play the short course video whenever they wants. This is the principle of inverted pedagogy: the learner is involved from the beginning of the course and everyone can progress at their own pace! So at Coorpacademy, when we work on a course, we must first keep this format in mind. Then, we must also think about the fun aspect of our courses, with quizzes, battles between learners, and stars and lives to accumulate. The gamification of training invites the instructional engineer to think of these courses in an entertaining format, which makes the course and the learning experience more fun and engaging, as opposed to the classic course format, which we already know by heart.
To build a course, you must first master the subject matter, and for that, we work with partner course publishers, or experts. We have the pedagogical expertise, but not the expertise on all the subjects we will cover in the premium content catalog, which already includes more than 1,700 courses! So, when we have to think about creating a course, we talk to those who have the expertise on the subject, our role being to take ownership of it, to understand what is at stake, to define the pedagogical objectives and the skills that the learners will have developed as a result of the course.
Could you give us a recipe for creating a course at Coorpacademy?
Of course! First of all, you will need essential ingredients: curiosity, desire to learn, a zest of humour and a good dose of rigour. As far as the recipe is concerned, I invite you to follow the following steps:
Step 1
For a successful Coorpacademy course, start by getting to grips with the subject. Once you have a good grasp of the subject on which the course will be focused, you can define the pedagogical objectives with the client or partner. These elements are crucial to building a course architecture. With this detailed plan, we will be able to think about and define which essential ideas we want to convey, in which order we want to organize the ideas, in how many chapters and, above all, in how many levels.
Step 2
Once the course architecture is ready, let it rest, the better to make the dough rise! In non-cooking terms, this means leave yourself some time to analyze the course progression: is it coherent? Is there a gradation in terms of difficulty of the questions? What format would be most appropriate to best address the topic? All these questions are essential to ensure that the pedagogical objectives are achieved.
At Coorpacademy, it is on this basis that we will then produce all the course content, making it engaging with short and entertaining videos! To remain in the analogy of the recipe, it is a bit like the cherry on the cake.
Step 3
You’re almost there, but there’s still a lot of preparation to do: this is the production of the videos, which are our main course materials. To begin, write a script. This writing step may require working with an editor (external or partner). Once the script is finalized in your hands, it’s time to taste the dish: proofreading! And if it’s not to your liking, the ideas are not clearly stated or the tone is not appropriate, make the necessary changes. Finally, it’s time to cook! The videos are produced, and naturally, this step will also require you to pay attention to the final production, even if it means cooking a little longer.
Step 4
The oven is ringing! The course materials are ready and it is time to assemble them. On the basis of the courses, therefore the scripts, you will be able to write the inevitable quizzes, the Coorpacademy trademark. To make sure that the dish will be delicious, you have to put yourself in the shoes of those who will taste it! So, we put ourselves in the place of the learner, we try to vary the question formats (True or false, multiple choice, situation, illustrated questions, etc.) and to vary the situations. In fact, the hardest part is often finding the wrong answers! They should not be too obvious, nor too complicated.
Step 5
It’s time for service and tasting. Everything is ready. Put it on the plates, or rather, on the Coorpacademy client platforms! Then, after the final proofreading and uploading, it’s time to play the course of our colleagues, and to get some good practices and feedback from them.
What about custom courses, i.e. courses tailored to our clients’ topics?
For custom courses, the same production process and methodology is used. The steps of the recipe remain the same. The only difference will be in the subjects. Often, with custom courses, we will deal with subjects that are more specific to a sector, an industry, a customer need – and for a more precise target: learners from the same team, from a specific profession, or who already have a certain level of knowledge on the subject. The first step, which consists of taking ownership of the subject and defining the client’s training objectives, will also be defined by the theme that the client wishes to address. Then, it is the CSM team that takes over the cooking, by the way, discover the CSM job in this article!
What do you like most about your job today?
Beyond the fact that I really like Coorpacademy and my colleagues with whom I get along very well, what I like most in the work of an educational engineer is the multitude of subjects that I have to deal with. I learn every day and interact with a variety of people, so I never get bored! I also like the challenges that it can sometimes represent and the intellectual stimulation that it provides to think together about well thought-out course paths for learners.
Do you have any courses that you prefer to work on?
Overall, all subjects are interesting to work on, but if I have to name one, I would choose sustainable transformation because it is a current topic and because it is urgent to act! But in itself, all topics interest me. What will matter most to me are the courses that require different formats. It’s kind of fun to work on innovative formats, and then I like the reflection that it requires to build the course. Innovating, thinking, putting yourself in the shoes of the end user/learner to make the learning experience as pleasant as possible, always with the pedagogical objective in mind. Finally, I think that what stimulates me is to create, to do new things and especially when we invest in subjects that seem classic but are nevertheless unavoidable.
Could you describe a typical day for you?
I don’t have a typical day in the sense that, as we manage several projects or several partners at the same time, I am constantly developing my agility! Switching from one subject to another, from partner X to partner B, managing emergencies: my typical day is ultimately a mosaic. On the other hand, there are tasks that are constant and cannot be ignored: reading sources, books, proofreading and writing scripts and quizzes, and finally, a lot of spelling and typography work. It’s a job that requires both work and dedication upstream of the publication of the course, but also downstream because it also means following the feedback (from learners, customers, partners) to improve ourselves, perfecting our content so that it is as qualitative in content as in form!
Do you have any advice for those who are interested in becoming an educational engineer?
Among the ingredients of the recipe, you can’t do without the two main ones: stay curious and keep learning! Curiosity is one of the primary qualities of an educational engineer. You have to be willing to learn about all subjects, even those that don’t necessarily speak to you at first. From a more pragmatic point of view, there are more and more training courses for educational engineers, and I think that this can be a good way to discover this profession! But any experience in education, training, writing, or publishing are interesting experiences to have in this position. Finally, and not surprisingly, I would advise sleeping with a Bescherelle on your bedside table, because you need to have impeccable grammar.
And finally, a little quiz: If you had to choose between these 3 new courses in the catalog, which one would you choose and why?
The new Trivial Pursuit courses
The “Making Better Decisions with Game Theory” course
The “Preventing Discrimination and Encouraging Diversity” course co-published with Wolters Kluwer
I would say Trivial Pursuit because it is a perfect course for summer and vacations! Trivial Pursuit is 30 questions to learn while having fun, while developing one’s general culture and knowledge of certain subjects. Moreover, at Coorpacademy, we provide you with an explanation of the right answer and a “Did you know?” as a bonus, unlike the classic general knowledge game. Frankly, a course played on the phone at the beach with your friends or your family, it is still the best way to learn in a fun way and with others!
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.
As part of our We Love Our Clients workshops, Jérôme Pesenti, HR Project Manager for digital training at FDJ, shared the best practices used to launch their CSR acculturation programme. The objective is simple: train 80% of the FDJ group’s employees in CSR in 9 months.
Q.1: How will you manage to reach 80% of the Group’s 2,000 employees in a few months?
The essential condition was to have a common training platform that was accessible to all of our large subsidiaries. This is the case with the Coorpacademy platform.
On the Coorpacademy platform, we have created a course of 11 CSR acculturation modules at FDJ. We chose to include modules previously created with Coorpacademy and our in-house experts, as well as a mini-series filmed with actors. The advantage is that we managed to integrate this innovative format into Coorpacademy’s, to have the same functionalities and user experience we were looking for.
Q.2 : What communication actions have you put in place to bring 2000 employees of different profiles and subsidiaries to this training programme?
We designed a 360° communication plan: we did everything we could do!
On the intranet, we published an article presenting the programme and its challenges. Newsletters were sent to all employees.
To engage learners, we need to communicate: both internally, but also through Coorpacademy emails, which have a very good opening and click rate.
In order to reach more people, we have therefore established an emailing plan in several waves to reach as many people as possible.
We are also counting on the game and the gamified aspect of the platform. We are going to look for the gambling side of employees, because at FDJ, games are in our DNA! For a month and a half, we pushed a “CSR acculturation” challenge. To earn points, employees had to complete the entire CSR course and compete in battles. This game, where the winners are those who win the most battles, reached the most active learners (about 10%) and allowed them to anchor their knowledge by repeating the questions and answers.
Q.3 : This programme responds to the FDJ Group’s desire to accelerate its CSR shift and its sustainable transformation. How does the Group support the ambition to acculturate all employees?
It’s true that the entire Group is involved.
We have mobilised all our HR referents for the different populations and we are fortunate to have two official sponsors in the persons of Pierre-Marie Argouarc’h, Group Human Relations and Transformation Director, and Vincent Perrotin, Group CSR Manager.
Furthermore, the decision is official: the completion of this programme will be one of the criteria for the incentive scheme this year for all FDJ SA employees.
Q.4: What are the results to date?
At the end of June 2021, i.e. 3 months after the launch, 20% of the teams had already completed the 11 training modules. They have acquired the basic knowledge of CSR at FDJ, and we are confident that we will reach the objective of 80% of employees trained. All employees will thus have the same common base of knowledge on CSR issues within the Group.
SQLI, a European digital services group with 2200 employees, has been using Coorpacademy as a digital learning solution for 2 years. Within the framework of the workshops of our We Love Our Clients programme, Alexis Guillotin, Group Development and Training Manager, shared with us the backstage of the most original animation of 2020, aimed at learners and rewarded a few months ago by a Coorpacademy Award.
Q.1 : Where did the idea of offering a digital Escape Game on your online training platform come from?
We had the idea of taking advantage of the European Week for the Employment of People with Disabilities (EWPD) to raise awareness of the recruitment and integration of people with disabilities. This week took place last November and so our plans were disrupted because of the lockdown imposed at that time.
We had a double challenge. The first was to create an event for the whole group, simultaneously in several countries, several languages and which could be done at a distance!
There was also the question of the content, and how to disseminate it to raise awareness of disability. With this in mind, we chose our Coorpacademy digital learning platform Onegenius to reach all our employees. We worked on the content with the agency T by Talenteo, an agency that supports us on the subject of disability, and then, with the help of Coorpacademy, we decided to adapt it to integrate it into the Onegenius platform in order to benefit from its gamification aspect.
We had noticed the great success of a playful format among our teams: the digital Escape Game! It allows you to learn without realizing it, by solving puzzles to move to the next level! We therefore reused our existing initial content, but put it into this new format in order to raise awareness among our employees while keeping the gamification aspect.
Q.2: How did you go about setting up this Escape Game?
The Escape Game: Disability Awareness was created, translated and put online in a record time of one month. The idea was to make it clear how the five disabilities we had listed (essentially non-visible disabilities) impact the daily lives and therefore the work of the people concerned.
We decided to turn the tables: each level of the Escape Game takes the learner to a world where people with attention deficit disorder, autism or visual impairment are in the majority. It is up to the learner to adapt!
The pitch was as follows: “Travel aboard a ship in other dimensions where the disabilities you know are mostly shared. Practice with our simulation module to better understand the daily consequences of each of these disorders and diseases.”
Q.3: What communication actions did you carry out to promote this game event? Are you satisfied with the results?
We set up a very fast-paced communication campaign to ensure that as many employees as possible tried to solve the Escape Game and were effectively made aware of disability during this European week.
The first step was to send out a teaser by e-mail a week beforehand.
All the members of the CODIR participated in the promotion and were active relays.
Then, each day of the week, the learners were reminded by e-mail to invite them to travel to a new dimension, with five disabilities being covered. Finally, all the employees received a summary email containing all the stages and solutions to the riddles of this unique journey, so that everyone could finish or redo the game as they wished.
We are pleased with the results, as we observed a 280% increase in connections on the platform during the week of the animation.
And all the countries played the game! Beyond the figures, in this particular year, the Escape Game helped to unite the teams and encourage exchanges between them, as well as raising awareness about diversity and disabilities.
Since 2019, we have been supporting Square Management‘s employees in training, in order to promote their upskilling on various subjects and their progression within the group.
Square Management met with one of the 3 co-founders of Coorpacademy, Arnauld Mitre, to discuss the benefits of this partnership. Back to this interview which describes the projects and successes of this partnership!
A continuously evolving collaboration
This partnership with Square Management began in early 2019. The platform was first made available within two of the group’s practices and then, as more and more employees showed their commitment to training on Coorpacademy, we expanded the partnership to the entire group practice in early 2020. To date, we have trained around 700 Square Management employees thanks to the Coorpacademy platform.
Why choose Coorpacademy as your online training solution?
The need expressed by Square Management was clear. Training was a pillar to accompany the progression of the employees within the group and to enable them to increase their skills, improve their performance and guarantee their employability. Thus, several elements guided the choice of the consulting firm:
A catalog of premium content
The off-the-shelf catalog that we offer contains premium contents, with courses created in collaboration with publishing partners and our team of educational engineers, and also the possibility of using an authoring tool in order to add their own content to the training catalog. Square Management also chose Coorpacademy to accompany the training of their employees because the consulting firm had a real need to train on specific subjects, such as management, leadership and other soft skills, which our catalog covers in depth.
Certifying courses, to validate the expertise of the consultants
Another success factor of the Coorpacademy platform within Square Management is the possibility to validate a range of courses corresponding to a field of excellence of the consulting firm. With this functionality, the consultants could concretely validate their acquired knowledge but also motivate themselves to complete the set of courses thanks to the delivery of a certificate once the set is completed. One of the success factors of the platform today is therefore the strong match between Coorpacademy and Square’s training teams, which gives employees the possibility to use the platform as a tool for their career progression.
Employees seduced by the platform gaming universe
Another aspects that has generated so much enthusiasm for Coorpacademy is the significant attraction for the gaming universe that the platform offers and which is also possible thanks to our pedagogy. Indeed, the Square consultants particularly appreciate the video game inspired functionalities: the quiz format, the player’s life which designates the chance given to them to progress in the course, the battles between learners, etc. The consultants really played the game. This motivation is also rewarded, because we also have a feature that is obviously rather positive, where we present the 20 best participants on the platform. This motivates learners to go to the platform and challenge each other to commit to training.
Pedagogical innovations to encourage collaboration
At Coorpacademy, our objective is to release one pedagogical innovation per quarter. The latest one: the Escape Game “The Forum of Babel“. In this innovative format, learners will join forces to climb the four floors of the digital Tower of Babel. Each week, they are provided with documents and clues to solve a riddle. A Babel Forum is also available for peer-to-peer exchange. In this Escape Game, collaboration is key to finding the answers to the riddles. Employees had only one week to decipher each puzzle and reach the top of the tower! This format generated a lot of engagement among Square Management’s consultants, who won the collaboration award with the highest number of exchanges on the forums.
Previously, we also launched an interactive series, “Suspects“, where the goal was to help conduct three interrogations – one per episode – by applying behavioral skills, the famous soft skills. And most recently, we launched a podcast series called “Cybercafé“, to learn about the great history of the Web!
A final word
The success of this collaboration would not have been as great without the involvement of Square Management’s training teams, with whom we are thrilled to keep this partnership going. We look forward to seeing the learners engage in their training and learn things! As Arnauld Mitre reminds us, at Coorpacademy, we believe that all means are good to learn something, even the most unusual ones, such as gaming.
Coorpacademy trained 20,000 medical professionals and caregivers in 2 weeks during the COVID-19 outbreak
The startup specialized in online training for large corporations launched a pro bono platform for medical professionals and caregivers. In particular, they can train in resuscitation processes.
Specialized in online training for large corporations, Coorpacademy, founded in 2013 by the former Google France Managing Director, and which raised 13 million euros, had no intent to position itself in the medical field before the coronavirus outbreak.
Training in resuscitation
Antoine Poincaré, Coorpacademy’s Director of Sales, explains: “We only had a small ongoing research project with the AP-HP (Paris Hospitals) before that. The day before the confinement in France, we’ve suggested to them that we could launch a series of online training courses based on Covid-19 recommendations, for their medical staff. They answered positively right away!” At this moment, the AP-HP is expecting to call for renforcements for resuscitation in other medical fields, and even in the poll of interns and medical students. The need for skills is urgent.
At Coorpacademy, 15 people are mobilized among the 45 employees, in order to launch the platform and to make it up and running. “We gathered existing videos and shot others, which we keep doing“, Antoine Poincaré indicates. The training material is very practical, and allows medical staff to act fast with resources available. “The platform looks like Netflix, with series of online training courses.“
Une très très belle initiative parmi tant d’autres belles initiatives en open access @APHPhttps://t.co/MkrRqPhnmg
Martin Hirsch is the Managing Director of the AP-HP.
In two weeks, the Coorpacademy platform saw more than 20,000 people signing up. Less than half are nurses, 30 % are doctors, 10 % are midwives and 14 % have other specialties. For Coorpacademy, offering this service, the goal is to make it known by as many people as possible.
“For now, people mainly know us thanks to word of mouth“, Antoine Poincaré says. The AP-HP wrote a press release about the partnership and Martin Hirsch, its Managing Director, published a tweet praising the initiative. “We think the platform will be particularly helpful for hospitals taking in charge COVID-19 patients“, Antoine Poincaré estimates.
