Medical Training By and For Healthcare Professionals: The Cerba Healthcare Learnathon

Challenges

In an industry where employees work in highly regulated professions, frequent upskilling and training is essential to staying compliant. That's why, in 2017, the HR department decided to launch a virtual corporate university, offering a wide range of training programs. But beyond this mandatory dimension, the group's HR teams chose to use it as a genuine opportunity to enrich employees personally — technicians, biologists, nurses, and medical secretaries alike. In addition to regulatory training, the group also delivers medical training, which varies significantly depending on each team's management.

In 2020, Cerba Healthcare's teams were at the heart of the health crisis, facing intense and sustained pressure. In that context, asking employees to create training content alongside their daily responsibilities seemed unrealistic. That's why the L&D team decided to bring employees out of their labs and gather them together for several days dedicated entirely to content creation — four days for the 2021 edition, five for 2022. That's how the learnathon (“Formathon”) was born. The goal? To create genuine collective energy and strong bonds between participants. The learnathon proved to be an ideal format for fostering peer learning.

Solution

Before the launch of the learnathon, medical training at Cerba was delivered locally, across multiple sites, and was not integrated into the group's corporate university. One of the key objectives of the learnathon was therefore to deliver these training courses through coherent, unified, and fully digital learning paths — accessible to all employees across every site in the group.

The different steps that led to the learnathon:

Step 1: The brief

The learnathon project started with thorough scoping. The HR teams set out to build a comprehensive brief outlining the project's main objectives: to have employees themselves create clinico-biological training, 100% tailored to the teams, in short and engaging formats — all integrated into the 360Learning platform the group was already using.

A core team was then formed, made up of two biologists with deep subject matter expertise and two HR leads to support them. The approach? Working in project mode, remotely, to develop the themes that learnathon participants would work on.

Step 2: Pilot and concept validation

This project-based approach allowed the team to quickly deploy a pilot. In June 2021, two learning paths on two different themes were integrated into 360Learning and made available to two French regions of the group. For 15 days, employees in those pilot regions could access these paths.

At the end of those 15 days, the verdict was clear: the pilot was a success. The team also gathered over a hundred pieces of feedback to help sharpen the rest of the project. With the concept validated, the real work could begin.

Step 3: Call for applications

In July, a call for applications was launched to find the right employees to become content authors during the learnathon. In September, the team conducted interviews to select participants, while simultaneously preparing the learnathon itself, which was set to launch in mid-October.

Before the event: Thorough preparation

The first key to a successful learnathon is preparation. It's crucial to have a clear sense of the training objectives and expected content in order to define a framework that will guide teams throughout the content creation process.

That's why Cerba Healthcare made sure to:

• Build a comprehensive brief
• Train facilitators thoroughly — teaching them how to use the authoring tools, test them, and learn how to simplify content and make it engaging
• Select authoring tools that were well-suited and easy for participants to pick up, such as 360Learning and Genially
• Define a precise schedule to meet deadlines and produce the desired volume and quality of content

Careful participant selection

The second key to success: selecting the right participants. Cerba Healthcare needed 12 participants to create content and 4 facilitators to run the event. The application review process was critical, with candidates asked to submit their application in a creative format — to ensure they were comfortable using the digital tools involved.

During the interview phase, the team focused on three things:

• Knowing their subject: essential for delivering the right learning outcomes
• Being pedagogical: since content needed to be made accessible, candidates were asked to explain a complex concept clearly in just one minute
• Having the right mindset: motivation and a genuine desire to connect with other participants were key to ensuring a dynamic and productive event

Optimal facilitation during the event

Bringing together motivated, knowledgeable participants isn't enough on its own. One of the keys to a productive learnathon is having facilitators who are fully available to support authors throughout.

At Cerba Healthcare, facilitators run ice-breaking workshops each morning to get everyone in the right headspace. In the evenings, dinners are organized, with motivational messages shared across the group. This creates strong bonds between participants — and that sense of connection becomes a real driver of engagement when it comes to creating the content.

Getting the whole company on board

Last but not least: making sure the entire company is invested in the project. At Cerba Healthcare, the learnathon has had senior leadership backing from the very start. That's what makes it possible to bring lab managers on board — because asking them to reorganize their team's schedule and release an employee for four or five days requires a clear, well-communicated purpose that comes from the top.

It's thanks to all of these elements that the Cerba Healthcare learnathons have been genuine successes, bringing together different functions from different regions and business units. Training production targets are met, and participants leave the experience genuinely energized.

Results

Following the 2021 and 2022 learnathons, the HR teams released a new learning path on a new theme every month.

In the first edition in 2021, learnathon participants produced 70 activities across 14 themes in just four days. These were then developed into 30 learning paths, tailored to the different profiles and needs of learners based on their roles within the company. Cerba Healthcare replicated the experience in France in 2022 and plans to roll out the same peer learning approach in other international branches of the group.

The training modules created are polished, interactive, and engaging — featuring tools like multiple-choice questions that are ideal for driving learner engagement.

Participants also produce a content distribution schedule in parallel. The learning paths are added to the Cerba Healthcare corporate university catalog, and each time a new program becomes available, employees are notified by email. The training then remains freely accessible, on demand, for all relevant learners.

Interested in learning more about 360Learning? Get your demo, now.