Tag: soft skills

Are we tired of resilience?

 

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

 

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

 

A debatable term

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

 

The joy of knowing you will always get through

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

 

Learn to live with uncertainty, or simply to anticipate

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

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

 

Positive attitude

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

 

The pitfalls of resilience 

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

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

 

But are we all capable of bouncing?

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

 

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

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

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

Contest “Show us where you learn” – To learn continuously during the summer, with Coorpacademy!

What if summer was the best time to learn and train? With a slowdown in activity, vacation and a more relaxed atmosphere, the month of August is an opportunity to enrich one’s skills, in total mobility.

Distance learning has always taken advantage of technology to develop. Educational practices have evolved in record time, adapting to learners’ uses. At Coorpacademy, our mission is to accompany employees in their continuous learning, with the aim of promoting their employability. Thus, our catalog of premium contents is available everywhere, all the time, in particular thanks to the Coorpacademy mobile application!

 

This summer, Coorpacademy is organizing an Instagram competition to help you discover the pleasure and freedom of learning from anywhere in the world!

Show us where you learn

Engaging learners in training means first and foremost making them active in their learning. This philosophy is the foundation of our pedagogy. Make a catalog of premium content available anywhere, anytime, on any device, so that learning becomes a daily reflex.

This summer, try to win a weekend for two people worth 230€, as well as other prizes, by taking 5 minutes to train on your Coorpacademy platform!

 

But then, what is this Instagram giveaway and how to participate? 

The “Show us where you learn!” contest will be held on the Coorpacademy Instagram account. In order to democratize the use of the mobile application and to encourage the continuity of your learning, we invite you to share a photo of the place where you are learning this summer!

 

To participate and try to win a weekend for two, follow these steps:

1 – Follow @coorpacademy on Instagram.

2 – Send us by direct message on Instagram, a photo of the Coorpacademy platform, used on mobile or any other media, of where you use it (the platform is accessible on coorpacademy.com – the link is in the bio). We will relay it on the official Coorpacademy account if it respects these two criteria (platform and location); aesthetics and originality will also be taken into account!

3 – Comment on the post of the competition announcement, using the mention #mylearningspot and tagging the person you would like to go away with for a great weekend together!

At the end of the contest, on September 15th, the winning photos will be chosen by a jury and the winners will be notified by private messages.

Find the rules of the contest by clicking here.

And what can I win by participating? 

At Coorpacademy, we like competition and rewards! With the battles between learners and the stars to accumulate, which increase your ranking on the platform, we make the learner active and an integral part of the training. They can set their own personal objectives, over and above the pedagogical objectives communicated by the HR functions.

At the end of the “Show us where you learn!” contest, there are 3 prizes to be won: 

🥇 The first prize is a surprise weekend for two worth 230€, to keep learning from everywhere!

🥈 The second prize is an Escape Game for two, to diversify the ways to learn and have fun!

🥉 Finally, the third winner will be able to do like Yann and Lya from the Cybercafé podcast series and learn about the history of the web with a Google Home mini!

The final date of the contest: September 15, 2021. This contest is in no way sponsored by Instagram or Google. By participating, you confirm that you are over 18 years old.

Need some inspiration? 

To get your creative juices flowing, be sure to check out the 2018 “Show us where you learn!” contest entries!

 

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.

A digital Escape Game to raise awareness of recruitment and integration of people with disabilities

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.

Management as a pillar of the cultural transformation of companies

Following a year of lockdown, organisations’ culture is undergoing a profound change. The pandemic has changed our habits and behaviours, beyond the personal sphere. To ensure recovery, companies are resilient and are preparing to face the transformations they are going through. The new management and working methods also imply a profound change in the corporate culture and this transformation is essential to support the other transformations to come.

 

Google searches around Employer Brand have doubled in three years, and 77% of adults in four countries (US, UK, France and Germany) say they first learn about a company’s culture before applying for a job, according to Glassdoor‘s Mission and Culture 2019 survey. 

 

The culture of a company is now an inseparable factor in employee well-being. This trend is only becoming more pronounced as Millennials enter the workforce. The new generation is challenging organisations, demanding a corporate culture that shares their values and, above all, that these values are supported by management and embedded in the day-to-day running of the business. The Glassdoor study confirms this new paradigm as 73% said they would not apply to a company if they did not share its values.

 

But the arrival of millenials on the labour market is not the only issue of cultural transformation. Indeed, our contemporary economy is giving rise to new trends, new modes of organisation, which are giving rise to transformations. There are many issues at stake: the transition from a vertical organisational mode to a more horizontal and open organisation, the transition from a product-centred economy to a customer-centred strategy, new managerial functions and practices (start-up model, reinvented company, emergence of the manager-coach). Companies are also working more and more with a wide range of international players: suppliers, customers, employees, etc. Being able to work, exchange or negotiate with people of different nationalities and profiles is now a key skill. For all these reasons, companies must transform themselves to meet the new needs of the talents they recruit, to ensure the diversity and richness of their teams, to consolidate their operations on a global scale and, finally, to adapt to a changing world. 

Transforming a company’s culture means questioning all the behaviours in the company, but also the policy, commitments and processes, so that all these elements that make up the organisation reflect the values and beliefs of the employees. It is not just a question of adopting behaviours and ready-made sentences, but of deconstructing the tacit “rules” that regulate the life of the company and the unconscious, informal and non-verbal behaviours of each person. Thus, a cultural transformation is also an individual transformation, which upsets the ways of thinking of the employees, which makes the values shared by the group evolve, and concretely change the way employees act.

 

Corporate culture is defined with words and implemented with actions. Behaviours are the concrete testimony of an organisation’s culture. To ensure that change is successful, that attitudes are aligned with the company’s values, collective and individual coaching is crucial. The manager is a pillar of all major transformations, as they guide change by involving each employee in the great adventure that is corporate life. So, what skills must the manager develop to ensure the cultural transformation of his organisation? 

 

Diversity and Inclusion

Our organisations are made up of people from different backgrounds and interact with a multitude of stakeholders around the world. The term diversity, as Dr Derrick Gay – an international educator specialising in intercultural competence, diversity and inclusion – points out, is often used to refer to people who are identified as ‘different’. But different from whom, from what? The term implies that there is a normality, but there is only a plurality of personalities, cultures, religious practices; ways of perceiving and experiencing the world. While the company is a place where societal changes can be brought about and developed, knowing how to disseminate a culture of inclusion and truly understand diversity is crucial for today’s managers if they want to accompany the cultural transformation of their organisation and encourage employee fulfilment. Working in a company that encourages different points of view, that listens to a variety of experiences, and where everyone can express themselves freely, has a positive impact on the overall performance of the team and the company. 

Preventing Discrimination and Encouraging Diversity

Adaptability and Resilience

In physics, resilience is the ability of a body to absorb shocks. In psychology, it is the ability of an individual to cope with a difficult or stressful situation. As the COVID19 crisis has surprised us all and forced us to change our processes, resilience has become an urgent skill to develop. Indeed, employees and organisations today evolve through disruptions, which we must learn to overcome without being destabilised! This is the whole point of developing resilience in business. A resilient individual will be able to better manage stress, adapt more easily to an unforeseen situation and remain optimistic when faced with adversity. Resilience and adaptability are two highly sought-after soft skills. According to an Ifop Lavazaa study, adaptability is even one of the most valued soft skills in companies. Adaptability means knowing how to evolve in an environment that is different from the one you know, without letting yourself be conditioned or influenced by this new context. As a manager, developing the resilience of teams is key to fostering group cohesion and supporting the cultural transformation of the organisation. Overcoming hardship, being resilient together reinforces the feeling of belonging to a group, a tight-knit group in which we can rely on each other. Knowing how to adapt also means knowing how to work surrounded by different ways of thinking, doing and conceiving projects, which is key for organisations that wish to succeed in their cultural transformation. 

From Individual to Organizational Resilience

Creativity and Innovation 

Working in teams, especially when they are composed of diverse profiles, is an excellent way to foster creativity and innovation. To support the cultural transformation of companies, managers must favour co-creation and facilitate the expression of each individual. Creativity is sometimes innate, but it can be cultivated and developed through training. To stimulate teams and create true multicultural collaboration, managers must also stimulate their own creativity and spread this climate of the right to make mistakes, imagination, etc. All employees must feel legitimate to express their ideas, to experiment, but above all, to build collectively. The challenge of creativity for cultural transformation lies in the group’s ability to work collaboratively, to expose itself to different ways of thinking and to hear the points of view of the other members of the team. In addition, our new ways of working have also led to the emergence of new methods such as Design Thinking or Mind Mapping. These new methods, which are familiar to the new generations, promote team cohesion, unleash creativity and bring out innovative solutions. Eventually, in an organisation where everyone looks the same, ideas are similar, and questioning is more complicated. Creativity is therefore an essential element for successful cultural transformation, because it initiates everyone to work together and to imagine diverse solutions, just like the company. 

Unleash your inner creativity

In conclusion, organisations are facing new challenges regarding their employees. New quests for meaning, new managerial paradigms, new demands, the company must transform itself to meet the values and expectations of today’s and tomorrow’s workforce. To promote cohesion, creativity and innovation, the manager must instil this culture of diversity in everyone, so that everyone understands it and promotes its inclusion. We are all different, and everyone is “abnormal” according to an established norm. The company must be nourished by this plurality, and must also put in place the means to achieve it. This is the cultural transformation and the manager is a pillar for its success. 

 

The Coorpacademy platform as a progression tool for employees: a Square Management success

 

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.

 

New skills available on the Coorpacademy catalog!

 

Coorpacademy’s catalog is being renewed to better meet the training expectations of tomorrow. In a constantly evolving environment, it is necessary to know how to train continuously. To do so, it is crucial to identify the essential skills to be acquired. As mentioned in our article on the 10 key skills to be developed by 2025, identified by the World Economic Forum in its Future of Jobs 2020 report, training is essential to prepare companies and employees for the challenges that will disrupt them, and to anticipate the major transformations to come. While we already cover 100% of the skills identified by the World Economic Forum, we are investing in new skills for the future, such as sustainable thinking!

Therefore, we are glad to enrich our training catalog with 3 new skills. The ones that we, and the World Economic Forum, believe will shape the future of work in the years to come. In order to better accompany you in the training of your employees, in your upskilling or simply to feed your curiosity, discover the new skills to be developed on Coorpacademy:

Adaptability and Resilience

Showing adaptation and resilience is crucial in all circumstances. We can never say it enough, being prepared for the unexpected is essential to remain efficient and not to be destabilized by the obstacles we encounter. For companies, developing a culture of adaptability and resilience allows them to prepare for the unexpected, paradoxically. 2020 has shown that the unexpected is often confusing, which is why you should learn how to react to such situations, and do so before the next event.

Sustainable thinking 

The next (r)evolution will be ecological and to prepare for it, we are adding the competence entitled “sustainable thinking” in the Coorpacademy catalog. The ecological transformation of companies involves numerous stakes and the changes it implies must be thought sustainably, in order to conceive an organization that would take into account its whole ecosystem (economic, social and environmental) to build a sustainable model. To begin the acculturation to these vital subjects, we’re adding the sustainable thinking competence to the Coorpacademy catalog!

Learning to learn 

Because learning is not always easy, between notification and lack of concentration, we think it is important to go back to the basics: learning to learn. This is the theme of the new skill added to the Coorpacademy catalog. Rediscover the mechanism of your brain, to better understand the way it processes information and thus learn more efficiently. As we evolve in an uncertain world, learning to learn is essential to develop your adaptability and respond rapidly to the transformations of your profession. Become a learning ace with this new skill available on Coorpacademy! 

By enriching the Coorpacademy catalog with new skills, we enable companies to promote their transformation(s).  To ensure a successful digital transition, discover the 3 main skills to acquire:

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

To discover in detail the new skills available in the Coorpacademy catalog, click here.

Are you familiar with the concept of ‘Binge Learning’?

The Coorpacademy Content Team is producing ‘Suspects’, its first fictional series in 3 episodes involving the use of soft skills.

After launching the digital Escape Game in 2019 in order for the learner to discover the platform’s features playfully, after having released several immersive courses where the learner dive into – almost – real-life situations to apply his/her newly acquired knowledge, the Content Team decided in 2020 to go a step further in the interactive storytelling process.

First, the fiction, second, the learning!

Laurence Mijoin-Duroche, learning manager at Coorpacademy, came up with the idea to reverse the usual course construction methodology. How so? You start from a fiction, a compelling story, and then you add to it pedagogical elements. In this new format – we haven’t seen anything like it yet in the world of corporate digital learning – knowledge and learning elements will be presented furtively, almost subliminally, to the learner/player/viewer. By making decisions that will impact the course of the story, learners will be actors in their own learning processes, without sometimes even knowing they’re actually learning something. 

This new format production was launched during lockdown, but with a team full of motivation and scenarios ideas. This new pedagogical series will be a real fiction, illustrated with interactive videos, and the story will be told in 3 episodes where players will make their own choices and will learn from their decisions. 

If you liked the movie Searching, or the TV shows Calls or Criminal, you will like Suspects by Coorpacademy.

The fiction being the starting point, the Content Team chose to draw inspiration from some crime movies and TV shows… Using the idea of a detective case and questioning witnesses as the context of Suspects!

Less is more!

Série Calls de Canal +
Calls on Canal+

The TV show Calls on Canal+ rely on a quite simple concept: on the screen, you will only see written dialogues and you will only hear those dialogues. No images. With some light effects and the actors’ voices and interpretations, the stories – and the suspense – build up.

A direction relying on a succession of screens.

Searching

The movie Searching shows a father looking for his missing daughter… uniquely through the actions he does on his computer or his smartphone: mails, webcam, searching in files or looking for clues on the web… Everything is done through screens. 

A detective duo with two different profiles.

Criminal on Netflix

In the TV show Criminal on Netflix, a detective, quite good at psychology, observe interrogations behind a one-way glass and advises an other detective, with quite different and rough methods…

Paris, 3rd February 2031, 29°C in the shade. Global warming is more topical than ever…

Naturally, the announcement of GreenDynamix was a bombshell: the research centre would have developed a revolutionary fuel. Virtually zero greenhouse gas emissions. A patent that would have been worth millions… But as soon as it was finalised, the formula was stolen and all project files erased. Three people are to be heard in the ongoing investigation. The case has been assigned to Detective Carl Sanchez, assisted by Alice Postel, an expert in behavioural analysis… Carl Sanchez is a young off-the-academy detective who just arrived in criminal police… And who needs to demonstrate its effectiveness! He won’t be alone though: Alice, behind her computer screen, will observe the interrogation room and advise Carl on how to lead the questioning. Using soft skills, of course…

Ok, this sounds cool… But what about the actual learning and upskilling in all that?

In each episode, only one suspect will be interrogated. Carl will gather important information for the case only if he leads the questioning correctly. If Alice – the learner/player – doesn’t give the right advice, the suspect won’t give critical information. Then, everyone (Alice, Carl and the learner) can follow the other courses on the platform to see how they got it wrong. Soft skills involved will be: 

  • Negotiation and persuasion power
  • Problem-solving
  • Active listening
  • Critical thinking
  • Emotional intelligence
  • Conflict resolution

Who said it was easy to lead an interrogation? Anyway, the case won’t be solved until the end of the third and last episode, when all three suspects would have been interrogated. And this calls for quite a few binge learning sessions!

Suspects, soon on Coorpacademy.

An episode a month from October 13rd.

Available in French and English.

International partnership: Coorpacademy will distribute Cegos e-learning solutions in Europe [Press Release]

 

Cegos, a worldwide leader in learning & development, and Coorpacademy, a EdTech startup which deploys a digital learning platform adapted to the learners’ new uses, sign a distribution partnership agreement.

Through this new partnership, Coorpacademy customers will now have access to Cegos’ e-learning catalog on Soft Skills (in three different Html5 formats). This premium content will be available to Coorpacademy customers in France, Germany, Switzerland and in the UK.

Founded in 2013, Coorpacademy is a European EdTech startup specialized in innovative, scalable corporate digital learning solutions. Based in Paris and Lausanne, at the EPFL (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology)’s campus, the company is at the heart of Learning Sciences and Educational Technology Research, partnering with EPFL’s Research Centers. Thanks to its digital Learning Experience Platform, Coorpacademy supports companies’ transformation and efficiency by engaging their employees, partners and clients in upskilling on any topic central to their competitiveness, thus reaching top quartile engagement rates. To unleash the desire to learn, Coorpacademy has developed a proprietary Saas platform delivering latest generation instructional design backed by Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne Innovation labs, making corporate learning more fun, flexible and collaborative, truly centered on the end-user: the learner. Coorpacademy is part of the EdTech France association.

With its international culture and French origins, the Cegos Group is both a keen observer and a dedicated player in the world of work and business. The Cegos Group deploys a global offering, including turnkey and tailored training and development, operational consultancy, Digital Learning, Managed Training Services, international training projects, and certificate or diploma courses.

Running its own operations in 11 European, Asian and Latin American countries, Cegos is also active in over 50 countries through its network of partners and distributors, which are all leading e-learning solutions providers. Thanks to this network, its Catalogue on Soft Skills has 2.5 million learners per year.

Arnauld Mitre, co-founder of Coorpacademy, explains: “Since our creation in 2013, our vision of learning has been supported by outstanding, premium, unrivaled learning content and our ambition has been to offer the best possible learning experience to our learners. We have observed that our methods, from flipped learning to courses co-edited with top industry experts, showed high engagement rates amongst learners. We also thought that it was time for us to give our learners a pluralistic content offering in order to become a learning hub for top qualitative content. This is why we’re very proud to unveil this first partnership with Cegos, whose content catalog quality has been acknowledged worldwide and has won multiple awards. We’re thrilled to celebrate this major milestone in becoming a hub, allowing learners to find the best available content, with Cegos’ offer plus our existing catalog on learning soft skills.”

Pascal Debordes, Head of Channels and Alliances at Cegos Group, adds: “We are particularly proud to start this partnership with Coorpacademy. This fast-growing company and Cegos share the same learning & development conviction. Digital transformation and technological breakthroughs are revolutionising jobs and skills. The challenge is even more significant with the global health crisis we are facing, and which will have huge consequences on employment and organizations: millions of employees around the world will have to upgrade or refresh their skills through learning. More than ever, L&D has a crucial role to play. The power and the services provided by the Coorpacademy Learning Experience Platform (LXP) coupled with the innovation and the 18 languages of our Soft Skills catalogue is a premium answer to skills development challenges that companies need to address.”

If you want to discover more about the partnership, it’s here.

Digital Learning won’t wait any longer!

 

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

Digital Learning won’t wait any longer!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jean-Marc Tassetto.

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

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