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The two-pager on Coorpacademy in the latest special issue of Capital Magazine

“Coorpacademy: the Netflix of knowledge. Say goodbye to boring training! This Franco-Swiss startup is revolutionizing corporate training by putting the user back at the center of a collaborative and playful experience.”

This is how the article from Benjamin Janssens starts in the latest special issue of Capital Magazine. By interviewing Frédérick Bénichou, co-founder of Coorpacademy, he showcases the stand-out factors of the platform, from ‘simplexity’ to the soft skills catalogue, from the ludic and addictive features to the engaging and individualized learning paths.

Discover this article (translated from French):

“When La Redoute definitely went from paper catalogue to focus solely on digital, they had to train their employees on digital culture and tools and on the latest trends of e-commerce. And what better way to do this than through proposing… online training! The retailer chose Coorpacademy to conceive a digital learning branded platform with tailored content meeting their needs. In 6 months, 800 employees were connected on the platform and – most notably – 88% of started courses got completed. Way faster and more efficient than the old ways – when face-to-face training were needed for each and everyone of the employees.

Moreover, traditional training usually focus on developing ‘hard skills’, technical skills, at the expense of ‘soft skills’, those more human and cross-sectional skills – the ones robots can’t acquire – which are more and more sought after by employers and recruiters. It is with the idea to fill that void that Jean-Marc Tassetto, Arnauld Mitre and Frédérick Bénichou, two former Google executives and one serial web entrepreneur, launched Coorpacademy in 2013. This Franco-Swiss startup, which won a lot of awards since then, started to put together a disruptive pedagogical method based on soft skills assimilation. The concept? ‘Simplexity’. Behind this portmanteau word is a very easy-to-use, ludic and engaging user interface, but giving access to targeted and relevant content.

“We’ve conceived a flexible tool which adapts to the user: our content pieces can be consumed everywhere at any time, in 20 minutes on average, or even in 5 minutes thanks to microlearning”, Frédérick Bénichou, one of the co-founders, says.

More specifically, how does it work? “We use the flipped pedagogy. The learner watches a 2 minute video or answers questions, and it is only just after that the learner will access to the pedagogical content. This content allows learners to either correct themselves, or go further, and the whole thing infuses a new dynamic to the learning process.

The success amongst employees can also be explained by the playful aspect of the platform: we score points at each levels, progressively. Numbers prove that offering gaming elements creates high engagement rates and a healthy competition between coworkers. “For a company, it is also a good way to find hidden talents within the company, people that will potentially turn very helpful for the company”, Frédérick Bénichou adds. At Pernod Ricard for example, the employee who had the best score on digital culture was a storekeeper in Cognac; his knowledge on the topic and the fact that his bosses realized this brought him to coach the Chief Marketing Officer.” While having fun, one develops his digital culture and his emotional intelligence with the possibility to challenge his peers or to be helped and coached by another learner within his organization.

So what’s the link with Netflix? Training modules, short and playful videos are all accessible anytime from any support (smartphone, tablet, computer). And thanks to machine learning, played content pieces help to recommend others – the startup created 27 distinct learners’ profiles.

After having tried at the beginning to target individuals, Coorpacademy revised its business model since then and only works in B2B for large accounts (Crédit agricole, Renault, Auchan, L’Oréal, Engie, Michelin…). Companies pay a subscription which allow their employees to access the training catalogue. Rates are decreasing depending on the number of users: from 9,90 euros a month for less than 100 employees to less than 7,90 euros from 300 employees, without any fixed-term appointment. It can be specific training content made for the company or the more general catalogue with soft skills oriented training – or a mix of both.

Coorpacademy recently implemented an internal control training program for Pernod Ricard, or a platform to make ‘La vie en bleu’ – a program around healthy good, health and wellbeing – known to all 350 000 employees at the Auchan Retail group. For soft skills training that are proposed to all companies, Coorpacademy is relying on a network of more than 40 partners and experts, including Capital and Management magazines, but also Dunod, Bescherelle, Video Arts, IBM. The website offers more than 1,000 videos and 8,000 questions (digital culture, management and leadership, future of work…) and covers more than 90% of soft skills identified by the World Economic Forum. A 10 million euros fundraising in 2016 allowed Coorpacademy to go abroad, by translating the training content in English.”

Benjamin Janssens

The Skills Gap And What It Means For The 21st Century Financial Services Worker – an article from Jean-Marc Tassetto, co-founder of Coorpacademy, in Finance Derivative

Coorpacademy’s Jean-Marc Tassetto discusses the importance of cultivating soft skills and how financial services firms like BNP Paribas are leading the way in upskilling and reskilling their employees.

This article was originally published in Finance Derivative, a global financial and business analysis magazine, published by FM.Publishing. It is a yearly print and online magazine providing broad coverage and analysis of the financial industry, international business and the global economy. Finance Derivative brings the latest News & Analysis from the finance world and corporate excellence. The magazine targets an audience of finance professionals, and corporate and private investors.

You can find the original article here!

Here are some extracts of the article:

“More and more experts tell us that soft skills in particular will end up in greater demand, in contrast to skills more reliant on fact-retention. Soft skills-based occupations may account for two-thirds of all jobs by 2030, according to Deloitte, while the Manpower 2018 Talent Shortage Survey underlines how transferable soft skills are gaining greater importance – with more than half of employers saying communication skills, both written and verbal, are their most valued employee attributes, followed by collaboration and problem solving.

The World Economic Forum’s recent Future of Jobs study says creativity is one of the top three skills workers will need and while robots may help us get to where we want faster, they cannot as yet be as creative as homo sapiens.”

[…]

“The financial services sector is not exempt from these trends. After all, superior customer service is quickly becoming an increasingly important competitive differentiator in the financial services field. That means that the development of soft skills such as empathy, emotional intelligence, motivation and effective communication can help brands elevate customer interactions and the customer experience overall. Financial services organisations may also overcome many of the obstacles limiting their growth by cultivating leaders with a strong set of key ‘human’ skills that can help them engage workers in digital transformation initiatives. A June article in the FT argues that ethics and navigating ethical dilemmas will also take centre stage as an important skill for future finance leaders, for instance.”

[…]

Making corporate learning relevant again.

“Learning and having fun are a good way of starting to encourage the development and practice of soft skills, as play and learning are both based on the desire to progress, to work with others and to have a social experience. Neuroscience has also shown us that playing stimulates curiosity and the desire to progress, for example, and play creates a congenial learning experience. Constant upskilling in things closely related to our daily job activities is a natural human goal to desire that we should be capitalising on.

To be successful, a modern workplace learning experience in the financial services universe should be deeply integrated with a job position and be directly useful to the learner. Modern workplace learning methods like microlearning are a powerful way to make this happen, for example, and this is an approach that can be easily integrated into the learning experience, allowing the employee to dynamically look for the knowledge she needs in situ. At the same time, the contribution of wider communities of learners can encourage uptake, as the ability to interact and measure up to others increases learning capacity.

One customer of ours has achieved this. BNP Paribas Asset Management employs these modern e-learning techniques, including pedagogical videos, online learning modules and games on digital platforms deployed across the entire network worldwide to update the skills of its workforce and to keep its advisors fully up-to-date on its suite of financial products.”

[…]

“For an approach that puts the user centre stage, user support is everything. Some comments HR at the bank has received suggest it’s doing this right: “The platform is user-friendly thanks to the battles, much better than traditional online learning;” “Very clear, the videos are graphically pleasing, and just the right length;” “A way of revising that is quick and efficient, very succinct content, a congenial platform.”

As a result of the kind of seismic drivers of employment change taking place in all industries including financial services, it is becoming more imperative that we all manage our long-term employability. Businesses that don’t equip their workforces with the tools to help will not be able to compete – shrinking, or even disappearing, as disruptive new players better prepared to help their teams develop the skills they need will take their place. Don’t let that happen to you.”

Discover the full article here!

You can also discover other articles from Jean-Marc Tassetto in the press!

Why acquiring soft skills is not as hard as you think – RealBusiness

Let’s start using a whole new class of meaningful HR KPIs – HRReview

How to Stop Worrying About a Jobless Future? – Bdaily Business News

Why acquiring soft skills is not as hard as you think – an article from Jean-Marc Tassetto, co-founder of Coorpacademy, in RealBusiness

Coorpacademy’s Jean-Marc Tassetto outlines how to respond to new data on what skills are important in the workplace.

This new article written by Jean-Marc Tassetto, co-founder of Coorpacademy, has been published in Real Business, the content brand that tells the truth about SME life today for people starting, running and growing a small business.

To read it in its original version, it’s here. You can find here some extracts of the article:

“In its latest Annual Global Trends report, LinkedIn says it’s detected a real paradigm shift in what global recruiters are looking for in job candidates. The report, based on input from over 5,000 talent professionals across the globe, says soft skills like ‘creativity’ are increasingly sought after in today’s workplace.

Hard skills or soft skills for today’s era?

Hard skills are still highly sought after, such as competence in cloud computing. But as advancements in automation and AI change, the skills employers require is increasingly soft skills. In short, employers are recognising that computers can’t perform soft skills to the level that talented humans can. As the pace of business and automation speeds up, demand for employees to be able to think outside of the box, including their ability to work well with others is moving to the foreground. Skills such as critical thinking, communication, collaboration skills are what candidates need in the modern workplace.”

[…]

“Despite the increasing value of soft skills, the majority of companies lack any policy in this area. As a general rule, our work culture is not equipped to search for, grow or even accommodate these capacities. The critical question, then, is how will organisations adapt to acquire these increasingly desirable new capabilities?

Being a more flexible and adaptive working environment is the new way of doing business. We must take the right steps towards this shift. But most importantly, we need to accelerate their efforts to upskill and reskill. Plus we need to see a radical change in the way training is delivered.”

Make Skilling and Reskilling Engaging

However, acquiring soft skills is hard. Millennials especially, find traditional workplace PPT-driven instruction or traditional e-learning courses too uninspiring. Such indifference can turn your training budget into an expensive resource-wasting, tick-box exercise.

To get started, leaders should start using a new generation of digital tools. For example, the Learning Experience Platform (LXP or LEP), makes training relevant and exciting by putting the learner at the centre of the learning experience. Businesses need to re-think training. This includes getting people to really engage with it. This includes training content that’s diverse, interesting and easily accessible.

Gamification & Microlearning for Training

Firms should exploit the engagement potential of techniques like gamification, online competitions and learner quizzes. Neuroscience has shown us that playing stimulates curiosity and the desire to progress, as the term ‘play’ in the widest sense creates a positive, reinforcing learning experience.

Microlearning is a very powerful way to make this happen. This should be well integrated into the learning experience, as it allows the employee to directly look for the knowledge she really needs before a meeting. At the same time, the contribution of wider communities of learners should not be underestimated as the ability to interact and measure up to others increases learning capacity.”

[…]

“Training has a crucial role to play to skill and upskill your staff in new soft skills. Firms need to also pay heed to the learning experience in order that their staff genuinely acquire these new skills. Acquiring soft skills shouldn’t be hard – just use the tools out there to make it as easy as possible.”

Read the article in its original form here!

If you want to read other articles from Jean-Marc Tassetto, co-founder of Coorpacademy, it’s here:

Let’s start using a whole new class of meaningful HR KPIs – HRReview

How to Stop Worrying About a Jobless Future? – Bdaily Business News

Let’s welcome a new dawn of behavioural learning analytics – TrainingZone

How Manor’s top executives and managers train on soft skills and digital culture: exclusive interview of Graziella Ribic

Manor is the largest department store chain in Switzerland. It has its own online shop. With a market share of 60%, it is the market leader. The company employs around 9,750 people in its 60 department stores, 28 Manora restaurants, 31 Manor Food supermarkets, 4 distribution centres and in its headquarters in Basel. Tradition and innovation come together in this company; since its founding in 1902, it has reinvented itself time and again. After all, change is – and will remain – a great constant. As the dynamic, fast-paced and innovative company that it is, Manor began working with Coorpacademy in October 2018, mainly to help its employees adapt to digitalisation.

The partnership with Coorpacademy is based on the following premises: no content generated, but the desire to train Manor employees on topics related to digital culture, the future of retail, management and leadership skills. On the occasion of the beginning of this partnership, we met with Graziella Ribic, Head of Executive Development, who is leading the project.

How does Manor implement its innovation strategy in everyday life, particularly in the areas of human resources and employees’ personal development? What does the company do in real terms?

We offer a range of professional development courses in these four areas: Digital Basics, Sales, Leadership and Purchasing. These courses are tailored to the future needs of the company and of the market, which we continually adjust in the face of emerging changes. For example, we are currently offering our managers the ‘Leading Change’ training course, which is made of 2 parts: digital courses with Coorpacademy and a subsequent classroom training component. In addition, our managers have free access to all Coorpacademy course offerings. This allows them to engage in continuous training in an independent manner on a whim.

You already have a process for designing training content. What were the requirements and what did you like so much about Coorpacademy and its catalogue that you wanted to add it to your existing content catalogue?

Since we were primarily looking for content and methods that would help us in the areas of digitalisation and leadership, Coorpacademy suited us immediately. The playful approach also appealed to us, as we already make sure our self-made e-learning courses have content that is as easy to understand as possible and that the knowledge is tested using short quizzes. The option of doing a five-minute learning session on a break or on the go is something that really goes down well with us, as our days usually have too few hours. Such short learning nuggets always fit in somewhere in the day!

Why do you think having a proper digital culture and learning soft skills are a key 21st century challenge?

Digitalisation has brought with it – and continues to bring with it – so many innovations that directly or indirectly change our daily lives. Who can imagine life without smartphones today? And we must know about all these innovations and learn how to use them. People who cannot keep up will one day – sooner rather than later – be left standing puzzled in front of a machine, helplessly looking around for staff that will no longer be available. But in my opinion, the question will not be one of ‘humans or machines‘ but rather of ‘both humans and machines‘. There will be areas where machines will dominate, but there will also be areas where humans will prevail. In order to find our way in daily life, we need to engage with the digital world. After all, digitalisation has come to stay.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Discover Graziella Ribic’s interview in video! (in German).

Computational thinking: a key skill in the 21st century

In a world increasingly dominated by automation we need to equip employees with skills that complement computer technology and learn to work in partnership with robots.

Jean-Marc Tassetto, co-founder of Coorpacademy, wrote this new piece published in TrainingZone, the UK’s leading learning & development publication. As employees will need to have abilities that complement digital technology in the future, bringing a computational/programming-like approach into all of our approaches to work will be become a must-have 21st century skill to thrive in the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

Discover the complete article here!

Here are some extracts of the article.

“In the decade since computational thinking (CT) was first formulated by then Carnegie-Mellon Professor Jeannette Wing, it has been emerging as a really powerful universal problem solving technique, in particular for helping us all to work better with automation technologies.

Hence Stephen Wolfram, inventor of the plain English Wolfram programming language, and an advocate of early years computer science, defines the approach as being”about formulating things with enough clarity, and in a systematic enough way, that one can tell a computer how to do them.”

[…]

“So could CT [Computational Thinking] be the way to bridge that gap between hard and soft skills? Yes, because not everybody will be in need of hard programming proficiency.

This could mean skills associated with the cloud, analytics, mobility, security, IoT and blockchain. There is also growing consensus that we have to introduce a computational/programming-like approach into all of our approaches to work.

After all, topping the list of the World Economic Forum’s recent list of essential skills necessary for thriving during the Fourth Industrial Revolution is the skill of ‘complex problem solving.’”

[…]

“What does this look like in practice? Let’s say you’ve agreed to meet your friends somewhere none of you have ever been before. You would plan your route before you step out of your house.

You might consider the routes available and which route is ‘best’ – this might be the route that is the shortest, the quickest, or the one which goes past your favourite shop on the way.

You’d then follow the step-by-step directions to get there. In this case, the planning part is CT, and following the directions is like programming.”

Discover the full version here on TrainingZone’s website.

And discover other pieces from Jean-Marc Tassetto:

Improving workplace e-learning for employees.

Is e-learning about to go through a major transformation?

Is e-learning on the brink of an engagement revolution?

World Economic Forum: the top 10 skills you’ll need for the future of work

The second issue of the World Economic Forum’s “Future of Jobs” report predicts the loss of 75 million jobs by 2025. But it also predicts the creation of 133 million jobs thanks to the digital revolution. A positive balance of 58 million jobs; pretty optimistic, right?

Yes, at the condition of learning and training on tomorrow’s skills in the meantime. Amongst most sought-after jobs, we’ll obviously find numerous jobs related to new technologies and digital applications such as machine learning, AI, big data: data scientists, developers, growth hackers… Other in-demand profiles will be more “classical”, such as sales representatives, marketing directors or learning officers… But uncertainty still lays in the future. One thing is certain though: the more you’ll work on your soft skills in addition to your hard skills, the more you’ll navigate easily tomorrow’s job market.

The World Economic Forum advises us on the essential skills to develop today and tomorrow, with predictions for 2022! They are essentially soft skills… The good thing is, more than 90% of skills identified by the World Economic Forum are addressed and covered by Coorpacademy’s course catalogue.

Today:

Analytical thinking and innovation
Complex problem-solving
Critical thinking and analysis
Active learning and learning strategies
Creativity, originality and initiative
Attention to detail, trustworthiness
Emotional intelligence
Reasoning, problem-solving and ideation
Leadership and social influence
Coordination and time management

What will change tomorrow?

Active learning, learning capabilities and creativity will make a difference and climb up the ranking of most in-demand skills for 2022; emotional intelligence and leadership abilities will keep being sought-after. Computational thinking and programming become crucial:

Analytical thinking and innovation
Active learning and learning strategies
Creativity, originality and initiative
Technology design and programming
Critical thinking and analysis
Complex problem-solving
Leadership and social influence
Emotional intelligence
Reasoning, problem-solving and ideation
Systems analysis and evaluation.

Find out more about the WEF’s complete report here.

And discover Coorpacademy’s soft skills training catalogue which targets these crucial skills for the future of jobs!

Skills development: it’s time to revamp learning culture

This piece by Jean-Marc Tassetto, co-founder of Coorpacademy and former Google France CEO, has been published in Personnel Today. If you want to read it in its original form, it’s here!

With PwC recently predicting that artificial intelligence will replace seven million jobs by 2037, employees need to learn new skills to reduce the risk of being displaced by new technology. But Jean-Marc Tassetto, co-founder of Coorpacademy and former Google France CEO, warns the UK’s current ways of developing employees’ skills are inadequate.

By now it should come as no surprise that employees in all sectors will soon need to work alongside technologies such as artificial intelligence, with many having to change jobs or reskill as technology develops.

But in order to equip employees with the skills needed to thrive, professionals in learning and development need to create a culture that delivers life-long learning at work. This is imperative for developing the skills organisations require now and in the future, and in attracting and retaining talent.

However, there is one problem – we’re not doing it.

Learning teams provide the resources, tools and time to support skills development – considering the career plans of staff, booking the armies of trainers and making hundreds of hours of relevant content available. But many are missing the needs of the recipient.

Traditional training culture seems to assume learners are passive objects that simply get shuffled in and out of training rooms. Yet for any training to succeed, it’s essential that employees buy into the concept and stop seeing training as something forced upon them.

Engagement is low

Corporate learning is currently in a state of crisis. According to research from Towards Maturity, 44% of L&D leaders report that staff are reluctant to engage with online learning. Engagement rates are perilously low – as little as 5-10% − and course completion rates can be as low as 2-3%, research by the University of Graz in Austria has found.

Translated into business reality, this means the small number of people who go on training courses or download company-mandated e-learning modules barely complete what HR and L&D teams think they do.

To stop corporate learning being a poor investment, this culture needs to change. In particular, if we are serious about our commitment to reskilling and upskilling workers to prepare them for the future, we need a way to connect with them as learners and find a better way to deliver what they want.

We also need to rethink the way content is delivered. We have to ask ourselves if it’s realistic to expect people to stop everything they’re doing and sit in front of a trainer with a PowerPoint presentation and a laser pointer for eight solid hours.

Plugging the gap between L&D and staff

But change is coming and a new generation of digital tools has emerged to plug the gap between L&D teams and the disengaged learner.

Global analyst Gartner found that “learning experience platforms”, which prioritise learners’ experiences and ease of use, will become invaluable as attitudes to learning change.

Training strategies should consider the reality of how people learn; content should always be available remotely – increasingly via mobile – and at the learner’s convenience in bite-sized chunks, making use of video, gamification and collaboration.

What does that look like in practice? Very much like what employees are already doing in their day-to-day lives. We live on our phones: making dead time waiting for a train or a phone call useful, turning to the internet to plug a lack of understanding, and playing a mobile game for a few minutes to let off a bit of steam.

“Training strategies should consider the reality of how people learn; content should always be available remotely”

Imagine if you delivered your training that way – mobile, always available, in short bursts, and, where appropriate, in a quiz format? Need to know about Blockchain? Employees could either be sent on a two-day residential course once a year, or offered a way to consume five to 10 minutes of useful, tailored content when they want or need it.

This is a new, powerful and flexible way for L&D teams to help learners to reach a certain level of knowledge day by day. These methods, alongside more traditional elements, can help develop a more user-centric learning culture.

Of course face-to-face training to hone certain practical skills is still part of that user-centric model. But a customised learning experience platform approach will mean employees are more likely to be thoroughly engaged in the training they need to keep pace with the changing world of work.