Operational efficiency International case study
Learning as you like
At automotive parts manufacturer Faurecia, L&D was overhauled to
make educational content easily and quickly available to all staff at
any time. PETER CRUSH hears how take-up was encouraged
The organisation
Paris-headquartered global automotive
supplier Faurecia is the ninth-largest
automotive parts manufacturer globally,
and the world number one for providing
vehicle interiors and emission-control
technology. It employs more than 122,000
people across 35 countries, creating
revenues of €17.5 billion (£15.6 billion) in
2018. It counts Volkswagen, PSA Group
(owner of Peugeot, Citroën, Opel, and
Vauxhall brands), Ford, General Motors,
BMW, Daimler, Fiat/Chrysler and Jaguar
Land Rover among customers. As such,
Faurecia equips approximately one in
three new cars made today.
The challenge
In the face of huge disruption in the
automotive sector carmakers increasingly
demand that their suppliers innovate. Faurecia
needed to guarantee that the skills of its 60,000
French-based employees were leading edge in
two very different areas – emissions and
emerging technology. (The firm is seeking to
become the leader in creating immersive and
tech-laden ‘cockpits of the future’.)
As part of this Faurecia started a companywide
digital transformation three years ago. In
parallel it has overhauled its learning and
development strategy. It has created an
internal staff ‘university’ using platform
Coorpacademy to give employees access to
on-demand learning – everything from videobased
micromodules to gamification learning
tools and virtual reality (VR). The project is
under the leadership of David Jestaz, vice
president of Faurecia University.
The strategy
“In the past our sector was predictable. Not
anymore,” says Jestaz. “We took a decision that
as leaders we needed to understand current
competencies, capabilities and skillsets and
move them forward – not necessarily to create
a training centre but to create a library of
knowledge staff can tap into.”
The strategy has been two-pronged. First it
brought on board its cohort of 10,000
managers, to both develop them and ensure
they understand how to cascade learning
down the line. This was then followed by
extending learning to Faurecia’s 45,000 shopfloor
staff (this has now expanded to the rest
of its global locations).
“High-level management content has
included everything from how to manage a
plant in transformative times to securing
better performance and managing suppliers,”
says Jestaz, who has been given a budget to
buy in external courses as well as modify
Faurecia’s own content and host it on the
platform. Two-thirds of learning is now from
externally-sourced content, direct from subject
matter experts.
Keen that buy-in comes from the very top
CEO Patrick Koller has been involved in
creating content – developing his own sales
and transformation course on megatrends and
how to respond to them.
To make learning more inquisitive and fun
for staff a policy of providing content that
sparks curiosity and self-directed learning has
been adopted.
One of the courses teaches how to develop visuals of car “Only around half of content is operational,
and what I would call ‘need to know’,” Jestaz
says. “The rest is material that opens staff up to
new areas they may not have even realised they
were interested in.”
He adds: “The more people search around
the better, because a tool on the platform will
then suggest other courses or areas that might
be of interest to staff, based on what they’ve
already consumed.”
Given that the ‘life expectancy’ of content is
only considered to be two years at most, all
barriers to it have been removed. This includes
allowing shop-floor teams to access training
on their smartphones during breaks. Breakout
rooms have also been equipped with screens
for staff to view learning material on.
Each Friday afternoon emails are sent to
workers telling them about the latest in-house
or external MOOCs (massive open online
courses) that they can request to join. As many
of the courses as possible carry video
components to make them easily digestible.
VR learning has also been created – from
management-level courses that demonstrate
(through 3D renderings) how they should
move around a plant, to courses on developing
visuals of car interiors so designers can see
how a car cockpit looks from all angles. Even
staff who don’t work in that area are
encouraged to experience this so they
understand what their colleagues do.
The result
From the outset Faurecia has aimed not just to
develop pure technical expertise, but also to
“inspire a vision” among staff about where the
company is going (and how they can grow
with it).
48 HR October 2019 hrmagazine.co.uk
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