Interview: The business world is facing major changes in terms of digital evolutions, the organization of work, the rise of younger generations, new competitors and the transformation of services. In response, Grenoble Ecole de Management offers custom training programs that address transformation processes through the sharing of skills.
We speak with Adrien Champey, deputy director of custom continuing education programs, at Grenoble Ecole de Management.
Why chose a custom program?
Our partner clients need skills that help them deal with issues related to collaboration, performance, innovation, customer experiences and digital transformations. To meet their needs, we rely on the knowledge and skills of our professors and experts. They interact with our clients and provide educational engineering to develop personalized solutions.
What are the advantages of custom programs which are designed in collaboration with the client?
By collaborating with our partners, we can mix and match the various strong points of our ecosystem to provide the right solution: essential knowledge from professors, unique learning experiences, programs built on exchanges, experimentation or innovation in education. These are the foundations of our offer.
A personalized program enables us to integrate the specific challenges faced by a company. In addition, we can adapt the program according the various management levels that will be participating in the training. As a result, we integrate concrete cases and real-life application with company projects. This really facilitates the acquisition of skills and improves the program's efficiency.
Custom programs are also a great way to gain the loyalty of employees and teams.
We offer a complete range of services that meets the current needs of organizations: education engineering, expertise in training, various types of training (in-class, augmented training modules, digital solutions), project and logistics management, and evaluation tools.
How do you identify a company's needs?
This is the first step in the development of a custom program. It’s an essential step that is often integrated as part of an operational or strategic plan.
What skills do we need for our market? What factors will improve differentiation? How do we want to evolve over the next three years? What are our current challenges? What operational skills do we need? What internal constraints do we have to consider? What kind of learning experience do we wish to provide our employees with? Companies have to ask themselves many questions such as these.
We help our partners expand and develop their answers to these questions in order to provide a program that offers results, meets their strategic goals and matches the organization’s culture.
Why should designing a program be a collaborative process?
Through meetings, workshops and exchanges with the company and social actors, we provide our clients with a process to collaborate on the development of the program’s content. We work closely with HR and operational managers.
This enables us to create a program that matches the employees’ work rhythm and includes concrete topics that can easily be transferred to real-life work situations. As a result, the content and means of delivery are always adapted to meet the organization’s needs.
In addition, GEM has a dozen or more titles and certificates that are officially recognized and can be integrated into custom programs in order to qualify for continuing education funding.
What types of projects and partners do you work with?
We collaborate with a wide variety of economic actors who have a diverse set of needs. We adapt our approach to meet the needs of each situation. From international corporations to mid-caps, SMEs or public organizations, our custom programs are extremely diverse. Each request has unique parameters and needs.
What do you mean by "maximizing learning by doing"?
Our programs prioritize the importance of practical real-life learning experiences. Our use of digital technology is focused on an intelligent and efficient approach that enables participants to learn fundamental concepts before coming into class. This allows them to apply newly learned concepts to concrete and practical problems during their in-person learning experience.
The idea is really to maximize the benefits of being in class and enable participants to solidly acquire concrete skills. We are committed to real-life learning experiences which facilitate the transfer of new skills to the workplace.
What are current institutional evolutions and major technological developments?
Continuing education is undergoing important changes. I will cite three good examples.
- The use of digital technology is revolutionizing how we share knowledge. Custom programs have to use this new technology in an intelligent manner without forgetting the importance of learning in person, which allows participants to benefit from exchanges and concrete situations that help them integrate skills.
- The creation of the CPF (French funding mechanism for continuing education) and other institutional changes have impacted how continuing education is funded and what official recognition participants can receive for newly acquired skills.
- The arrival of new players from EDTECH or traditional sectors (media, consulting and universities) forces us to continually renew and improve our offer.
