How Altarea is Engaging 10x More Learners by Unlocking Internal Expertise

The team

Ivana Tassotti

Group Human Resources Development Director

Emma Ameline

Head of Marketing and Digital HR

Paul Lassalle

Business Director, Cogedim

Benoît Guichard

Head of Sales, Paris Area Cogedim

The challenge

The company is especially proud of its workforce, which Ivana sees as its main strength in the market. In order to achieve its ambitious goal of becoming the country’s top real estate company, Altarea needs to stay competitive, especially regarding recruitment and employee and client loyalty. This entails:

• Attracting and keeping skilled employees that are in short supply

• Effectively training the workforce, for better performance and employee retention

• Embracing the Learning Organization model, empowering all employees to transmit knowledge

The solution

Personalized content with Altarea’s Digital Academy

Emma Ameline, Head of Marketing and Digital HR, decided to invest in a solution that was more collaborative than a traditional LMS.

“We wanted a platform that would allow us to create personalized content, and that would enable instructors and learners to interact with each other much more easily”, says Emma.

A collaborative Digital Academy

What really convinced the Altarea team to choose 360Learning, explains Emma, was its collaborative aspect, and the ability to easily create communities of learners. The company's subject-matter experts already had a wealth of knowledge at their fingertips—they just needed the right platform to help them transmit it to each other.

The company used 360Learning to create their own online learning hub—the digital version of their strategic skills development plan—called the Digital Academy.

“What’s really amazing about the Digital Academy is that creating content is incredibly simple and intuitive,” says Paul Lassalle, French Business Director at Altarea. “Absolutely anyone can start creating content via the platform with zero prior training.” For the entire, team, this is a huge time-saver.

Learning anytime, anywhere

360Learning also stood out for its flexibility and mobile capabilities. “I use the tool myself, and with my sales team all the time. You can connect on your smartphone or on a computer,” notes Benoît Guichard, Paris Sales Director at Altarea. Learners were also happy to be able to connect and continue their learning journey at their own pace, from wherever was convenient for them.

Interactive learning

Via features like the Discussion Forum and Reactions, learners are encouraged to start conversations and ask and answer questions, all healthy signs of a thriving Learning Organization. As Emma explained, learners’ behavior and expectations are constantly evolving, and an interactive digital learning solution is the best way to keep up.

“We can interact directly with the course author, and it’s easy to see what course content worked well, what worked less well. This helps us understand what new training to add, and what to tweak. Everyone gets involved, and that’s the whole point.”, Benoît says.

Results

The Digital Academy enables Altarea to capitalize on their employees’ significant subject-matter expertise, and this approach is already paying dividends:

• Virtually all of Altarea’s employees use the platform (up to 2,000 from 150)

• They increased their course completion rate by 10% over one year

• In that same timespan, employees doubled the amount of time they spent on training activities

After seeing the positive results the Digital Academy had with Altarea’s sales force, the team decided to introduce the Academy to the entire company in March 2020. Now, all Altarea employees have the reflex to check the Digital Academy whenever they’re looking for a specific piece of content, or if they want to further develop a certain skill. In fact, the Altarea team credits 360Learning and their collaborative learning approach with helping them nab the title ‘top employer’, a strategically important achievement given the company’s recruiting goals.

Now, the company is focused on rolling out even more courses via 360Learning, notably modules on corporate social responsibility, soft skills, and preboarding. As Altarea continues to grow, their main challenge will be to empower each individual to share their knowledge, develop skills collectively, and solve tough problems together.