Business case study– AXA
Following the introduction of English as a second work language, AXA had to rethink their learning strategy in order to train a large number of employees. With the World Speaking solutions, they quickly found a way to rapid progress.
The company
The AXA Group is a leading global insurance company with 214,000 employees serving 95 million customers worldwide. With operations on five continents, their activity covers asset protection, health insurance and pension, wealth accumulation and asset management.
The challenge
When AXA reached out to World Speaking for their language training needs, the group had chosen English as their second work language. This was done primarily to facilitate communication between their international subsidiaries.
In this new environment, there rose several challenges: the need to train more employees on the same budget; the need to obtain more rapid results; and the need to simplify program management.
Most importantly, AXA had to address the difficulties encountered with past training experiences. The traditional methods used previously were difficult to organize and offered cluttered and overly general content, which resulted in trainee absenteeism and high costs.
“Given the inadequacy of our traditional training initiatives, it was urgent for us to upgrade to an innovative program. We wanted to deploy multimodal and custom formulas that could be adapted to each individual profile, level, occupation and learning environment.”, says Beatrice Lassat, Operations Manager and Training Expert.
Finally, AXA chose World Speaking. They saw it as the most relevant solution for their diverse blended learning programs, individualized course content, elaborate learning management system and the ability to teach multiple languages.
The partnership
The collaboration between AXA and World Speaking began with a detailed analysis of their employees’ training objectives. Each learner completed a language audit to identify their proper level, professional goals, and availability. This enabled World Speaking to propose different training plans based on individual learning profiles.
320 trainees were enrolled in 20 to 30 hour courses. AXA needed to ensure a gradual transition from their traditional learning method to an entirely new approach. They decided to first introduce a blended program including telephone sessions, group classes and one-on-one courses. The programs were offered in five languages: English, Spanish, German, French, and Italian.
“The blended learning trainees achieved a higher progression rate than those only having followed traditional face-to-face classes. The alternation between two methods allowed them to address various linguistic problems, which translated into a more consistent learning experience. When the overall satisfaction rate reached an impressive 95%, we were finally ready to permanently introduce distance learning methods in our training strategy.”
Beatrice Lassat, Operations Manager and Training expert.
The following year, AXA adopted a broader course catalog. Besides face-to-face and telephone courses it now includes a customized e-learning program, CyberTeachers®.
The learning management system was simple and clear: trainees reserved their telephone classes over the Internet and received a full report after each session. Their e-learning platform provided sophisticated dashboards where each learner could visualize their improvement as they went along. A quality questionnaire was sent to participants in order to adjust the program as needed. In case trainees lacked assiduity, a motivational program was immediately activated, by e-mail or telephone calls, to encourage them to regain rhythm. AXA training managers could follow their employees’ progress via an advanced monitoring tool, NetReporting.
The World Speaking difference
World Speaking is one of the rare training companies to provide such a complete assortment of language learning methods to choose from. From distance-learning to face-to-face courses, all World Speaking programs are available in several languages, anywhere on the globe. Each training project is fully customized to individual company needs and is adapted to 4 levels, 218 job specialties and 20 key industries.
Thanks to World Speaking’s dual role as a language school and a learning software engineer, the company is capable of fully customizing a program to any client’s specific scope statement.
The Results
Through detailed performance charts, accessible in real time via the Internet, AXA could accurately measure their return on investment:
- In the first year, the rate of progression in Blended Learning programs was 30% higher than in private one-on-one lessons;
- The connection time in e-learning exceeded the recommended monthly amount of self-study by 50%;
- In the second year, the satisfaction rate reached 97%.
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