Human Resources Management Set
coordinated by
Jean-Luc Cerdin
Volume 3
Edited by
Jean-Luc Cerdin
Jean-Marie Peretti
First published 2020 in Great Britain and the United States by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
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ISBN 978-1-78630-473-5
True to its pioneering spirit, ESSEC was the first French business school to offer the apprenticeship pathway. This was 25 years ago, and this anniversary is an opportunity to recall all the topicality and relevance of this pedagogical model, which is constantly evolving to meet the challenges of tomorrow. Throughout this book, edited by two ESSEC professors, Jean-Marie Peretti and Jean-Luc Cerdin, you will find testimonies on the good practices developed through the long experience of the school, as well as very many contributions from teachers from other institutions around the world.
ESSEC introduced the notion of an apprenticeship in the early 1990s, offering its students this privileged link with companies and allowing students to benefit from a first experience of work, financing their schooling at the same time as providing a first salary. Today, ESSEC has a know-how unique in France, based on a quarter of a century of experience, 6,500 apprentices trained and a network of 1,200 partner companies.
To better measure what apprenticeships have brought as a pedagogical and social innovation in a major French business school, it is worth returning to the revolution that apprenticeships represented, after the first transformation that was the incorporation of internships in companies into ESSEC programs in the early 1970s. Internships in companies then, and today, consisted of shorter periods of up to six months. This highly appreciated model, which is based on the pedagogical value of the business experience integrated into the academic background of students, was based on the model of engineering schools. The aim was to apply the knowledge taught in the school and acquire “know-how”.
By accessing apprenticeship contracts, students quickly understood the added value of this model, which pushes integration much further than internships: companies offered them long-term assignments that matched their skills and expectations. Indeed, the engagement of apprentices in a two-year contract allowed both the company to better understand their skills in order to entrust them with relevant missions and projects and the apprentices to integrate into the company’s culture and to develop the “know-how” essential to successfully carrying out the projects for which they were responsible. With apprenticeships, students not only discovered a company and a sector of activity but also became a fully fledged actor.
As a result, the introduction of apprenticeship at ESSEC has made it possible, beyond quantitative change (duration of the period in the company), to make a qualitative leap in the acquisition of new skills. The experience of apprentices has been so valued that some companies, and not insignificant ones, have decided to grant a salary and hierarchical advantage to the ESSEC apprentices they hired at the end of their degree.
An apprenticeship is an essential element of the education-by-experience model that ESSEC offers. This is a guarantee of the relevance of our programs because it allows us to be as close as possible to the skills needs of companies on a global scale. It is a response to the challenges of the constant evolution of professions and the professional environment in the digital age, where these changes are accelerating ever faster. Through the unique link it creates between students and companies, an apprenticeship also encourages the emergence of alternative pedagogies.
Apprenticeships are also a commitment to the model of openness that ESSEC has made an essential component of its excellence and distinctiveness. ESSEC must make its training programs accessible to all talents, thus contributing to having a global impact for the benefit of business, the economy and society. An apprenticeship is a concrete lever for social openness, as it allows talented students, regardless of their financial resources or background, to access excellent training and successfully enter the labor market.
Thanks to the apprenticeship tax, ESSEC has been able to develop the excellence of its research and teaching. The funding that supports apprenticeships has been decisive in enabling ESSEC to bring to life and sustain its unique pedagogical model, which combines the acquisition of cutting-edge knowledge with the development of know-how and interpersonal skills, which are all major levers for professional success for our apprentices.
As I write these words, the French government is preparing an apprenticeship reform. To anticipate this, ESSEC has taken a series of ambitious new measures. The first decision is to open new programs to apprenticeship to better meet the new needs of businesses. This expansion of apprenticeship programs will go hand in hand with an increase in our number of apprentices, with a target of 1,000 apprentices in 2021. We will also strengthen individual support for apprentices in the definition and construction of their professional projects according to their motivations and skills. Apprentices with disabilities will benefit from enhanced and specific support. As a world school, ESSEC will finally develop international apprenticeship formulas co-constructed with companies and our international academic partners.
The value of learning as a human being is in line with one of the historical values of ESSEC and marks the uniqueness of the leadership model that our school is preparing. The human dimension of business that ESSEC instills also reflects the expectations of citizens who consider that the role of business is no longer only to create profit but also to do so by creating social value and having a positive impact on the world.
To embody this logic of co-construction, ESSEC intends to make its CFA, the Centre de formation d’apprentis (apprenticeship training center), a privileged place for exchange for companies, industries and public authorities, in order to continue to be an ambassador institution for this training model, which combines the relevance of the field with academic rigor.
Vincenzo ESPOSITO VINZI
Director General of ESSEC
Globalization is competition, the competition between talents and human skills on a global scale. Faced with the rise of emerging countries, the Western world is beginning to doubt its model, based on the democracy–freedom relationship, because growth can no longer satisfy all popular expectations. The relocation of activities and digitization have disrupted the world of work, pushing many women and men into precariousness and uncertain futures.
In the face of rising youth unemployment, many countries are questioning the effectiveness of their education systems. It must be said that those who have left the responsibility for providing vocational training for young people to companies have had more convincing results than those who have chosen to rely on their academic authorities. It was therefore only after the double shock of the relocation of activities and digitization that the virtues of learning were rediscovered. Inherited from the Middle Ages, this practice of initiation to professions had almost disappeared in several countries in the name of a mystifying ideology. National experiences provide lessons. Consequently, considering the baccalaureate to be the key to personal success, France has decided to award it to as many young people as possible at the risk of sacrificing their employability. On the other hand, Switzerland is satisfied with having only one-third of its graduates in each age group and allows its graduate apprentices to continue their studies at university.
Faced with the challenges of globalization in Europe, leaders agree that vocational training has become a priority among future investments, and apprenticeships are regaining their rightful place at the heart of a pact of trust between entrepreneurial citizens and public authorities. There is an urgent need to make up for lost time and fill in gaps. There is considerable scope for progress. Based on the model of the Olympic Games, the international collective WorldSkills organizes the Skills Olympics every two years. The workshop replaces the stadium. In the trades they have chosen, the best apprentices in the world compete as athletes do. This competition gives indications of the relative levels of the selected young people in their countries of origin. According to the jury, in the welder category, comparing the work of a Korean apprentice to that of a European apprentice is a painting by Leonardo da Vinci next to a child’s drawing. If the line is forced, it probably reflects something obvious.
Apprenticeships imply the responsibility of companies in vocational training. The exemplary countries in this respect, Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, Austria and Switzerland, are rich in a culture rooted in economic and social structure. All entrepreneurs are aware of their duty to assume and invest directly in training, without relying on institutions run by public authorities. For a long time, apprenticeships were confined only to the field of crafts, but are now developing in all companies, SMEs and multinationals, as well as for the benefit of all levels of general education, to become a worker or engineer. A sign of the times, higher education, Grandes Écoles1 and universities have taken up apprenticeships by including them in courses open to students.
The commitment of companies calls for the transformation of apprenticeship training centers and, more generally, of all institutions hosting professional learners. Their partnership with companies is based on mutual trust and the need for excellence. Apprenticeships bring together the pragmatism of companies and the academic rigor of teachers. Technological progress requires increasingly heavy investments. In addition, the influence of artificial intelligence heralds profound and costly transformations. The specialization of training centers will undoubtedly lead learners, in certain disciplines, to move to perfect their knowledge and professional skills in hyper-specialized centers. From this perspective, national borders will no longer be like barriers. Like higher education institutions, apprenticeship training centers must be prepared to welcome young people from other countries. This means that some courses will gradually be taught in foreign languages, probably English.
At a time when multilateralism is faltering, Europe is becoming aware of its weaknesses. To regain its strategic autonomy, it must give all of its young people the keys to access to employment. Competitiveness is the result of competence and intelligence in given situations. International mobility is therefore an integral part of vocational training. It gives the opportunity to encounter good practices, compare and innovate. The young person’s career path, beyond mastering professional activities, forms character and develops a “learn-by-doing” personality. Erasmus is undoubtedly one of the most promising programs implemented by the European Union. In the form of scholarships for young people, it facilitates a real cultural and linguistic immersion in another country. Feedback from experience shows that mobility enriches the curriculum in a beneficial way. While there are still legal or academic obstacles to be removed here and there, the dynamic is at work and is a real lever for the employability of young people and the competitiveness of the French economy.
Trust is the key to success. The Copernican revolution to be launched therefore aims to simplify the legislative and regulatory frameworks built over the years by national authorities. Decentralization and flexibility are now essential. Creativity and innovation are cultivated in the field, in contact with the reality of business, human and technological. In this context, having demonstrated that apprenticeships are the key to entering the world of work, it will be time to reform vocational training for adults by facilitating retraining through lifelong learning. In the looming economic war, building skills is the most powerful shield.
Jean ARTHUIS
European Deputy and President of the European
Parliament Committee on Budgets 2014–2019
France
Apprenticeships are now widely accepted by all stakeholders as a means of enabling the development of young people’s skills and ensuring their successful integration into companies. The scope of apprenticeship training has gradually broadened and, since the 1990s, has developed in higher education. In France, the ESSEC Business School introduced apprenticeships in 1993, with a knock-on effect in higher education. At the beginning of 2018, 166,000 apprenticeship contracts concluded in France concerned higher education diplomas, representing 38% of the total, a percentage that has been steadily increasing in recent years.
A large number of executives have thus benefited from apprentice status. Many managers have acted as apprenticeship managers in companies. Many teachers have been involved in the follow-up of the apprenticeship pathway as tutors. Surveys show that the experiences of apprentices, their tutors and apprenticeship managers have made a real contribution to each of these actors and contributed to the development of their respective professional skills.
This book aims to cross-reference the views of each of these stakeholders on the basis of their experiences of learning as apprentices, teacher-tutors or apprenticeship managers. The testimonies of the 48 co-authors highlight how an apprenticeship has enabled them to improve their professional skills and practices and advanced their organization.
The interaction between these three actors in the work/study process has made it possible to develop not only the skills of apprentices, but also those of the people who have supported them, tutors and apprenticeship teachers in companies. The formalization of the support processes has contributed to the enrichment of all the actors involved in an apprenticeship.
The term “all apprentices” reflects the co-development that apprenticeship promotes. The creation of an authentic apprenticeship community – apprentice, apprenticeship manager and tutor – is part of the creation of an apprenticeship ecosystem in which everyone reaps the benefits in terms of developing their skills.
This book is structured in four parts. The first is devoted to the challenges of an apprenticeship in the training system. Thirteen co-authors, teachers and HR managers present the diversity and breadth of apprenticeship issues. Florence Le Fiblec and Michel Gordin underline the need for dedicated pedagogical engineering based on the pioneering experience of the ESSEC Business School.
Can the apprentice become a serial learner? Soufyane Frimousse and Jean-Marie Peretti bring the apprentice’s experience into a perspective of learning and developing the now essential talent of serial learning. The serial learner has the ability to train and learn throughout his or her life. He or she is attentive to developments affecting his or her business and anticipates the development of new skills. He or she becomes an actor in the development of his or her employability. The apprentice’s experience develops this talent. Véronique Billat and Mireille Blaess bring their practitioners’ perspective on the impact of apprenticeship methods on innovation at the heart of a company. Christian Defélix and Pierre-Yves Sanséau are interested in the case of the entrepreneur-director in an apprenticeship position “when managers learn competence”. Béchir Benlahouel and Maria-Giuseppina Bruna underline the promise of work-linked training within the framework of a major management school, IPAG, for agile professionalism and postural learning. Sana Henda studies apprenticeship as a stepping stone to professional integration based on the experience of ESC Amiens. The contribution of Sandrine Ansart and Pierre Yves Sanséau, based on the experience of an apprenticeship within GEM, is devoted to reflexivity in management apprenticeships and concludes this first part.
The second part presents the views of the actors involved in the apprenticeship process, with examples from five higher education institutions. Alain Bernard traces the birth of apprenticeship at ESSEC Business School and its development under his leadership. Nathalie Montargot and Dominic Drillon bring their perspective, as committed actors within ESC La Rochelle, on the key factors for the success of an apprenticeship pathway. Based on the experience of nearly 25 years of ESC Pau, Fernando Cuevas and Arnaud Gimenez present the beneficiaries of apprenticeships.
The apprentice’s point of view on the interest of the role for his or her business school training is developed by Mirella Blaise and Sophie Rivière. Bruno Bouniol brings the thoughts of the head of a higher education institution engaged in apprenticeships. Wolfgang Dick gives his testimonial as a teacher-tutor of many apprentices in a leading French business school. Christophe Storai and Soufyane Frimousse, who are tutors and in charge of an apprenticeship training center, present their experience of apprenticeships in higher education in an island territory, Corsica. Gilles Lambert, Dominique Siegel and Lovanirina Ramboarison-Lalao study the added value of apprenticeships for a company based on the experience of the Master’s Degree in Entrepreneurship at EM Strasbourg.
The third part discusses the experiences of work-linked training on three continents in countries with very diverse practices. Éric Davoine and Ludger Deitmer present the German practice of dual training through apprenticeships and question the exportable nature of this model, often taken as a reference. Sandra McNally sheds light on apprenticeships in England, with a focus not only on their nature but also on their volume. Mouloud Madoum studies the Indian apprenticeship experience in going beyond meeting the needs of the economy to reconnect work and values. Management apprenticeships in Africa are addressed in two chapters. The case of Madagascar is presented by Lovanirina Ramboarison-Lalao and Landisoa Rabeson. The cases of Congo and the Democratic Republic of Congo are presented by Richard Delaye, Pierre Dinassa-Kilenko, Yvette Ikolo and Gabriel Bernerd, pioneers of its introduction in Central Africa to train African managers and fight against the “talent drain”. The Chinese and Japanese models are also presented. Junko Takagi studies Japanese apprenticeships – learning-by-doing – a concept that is still new in management. Kate-Yue Zhang and Jean-Luc Cerdin highlight the craftsmanship spirit of the Chinese apprenticeship model.
The fourth part is devoted to apprenticeship perspectives, reforms to be implemented and research to be carried out to ensure that an apprenticeship contributes to sustainable employability. Sylvie Brunet, President of the Labor and Employment Section of the Conseil économique, social et environnemental (CESE) and author of the summary report of consultations for the development of apprenticeships, presented the orientations of apprenticeship reform, an asset that can renew the French social model. Corinne Forasacco and Sylvie Chartier-Gueudet question the ecology of apprenticeships, from individuals to organizations, to promote the creation of a personal apprenticeship ecosystem. Olivier Fourcadet presents an apprenticeship as a lever for conversation. For Marie Peretti-Ndiaye and François Silva, a paradigm shift is needed so that everyone can become learners. For Abdelwahad Ait Razouk and Anne Herveou, the quality of employment is a challenge to the effectiveness of higher education apprenticeships. Laurent Bibard, in the chapter entitled “All Apprentices”, underlines this need for a permanent apprenticeship dynamic. In the conclusion, Kushal Sharma and Jean-Luc Cerdin advocate research on apprenticeships and propose a research agenda that includes the different stakeholders in apprenticeships, with a particular focus on apprenticeships in an international context.
In the context of profound organizational transformation and the constant renewal of the skills needed to be employable and successful throughout a longer working life, the experience of the apprentice is an asset. The development of apprenticeships at all levels, especially in higher education, is seen as a major necessity.
Introduction written by Jean-Luc CERDIN and Jean-Marie PERETTI.
Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.
– Confucius
All educational programs are driven by the same desire: to advance their students by transmitting knowledge, ways of reasoning, know-how, interpersonal skills and behaviors. Many studies have been carried out as the social sciences have developed and the pedagogical processes have been analyzed, revisited, modified and periodically renewed. Today, they are complemented and enriched by discoveries about how the brain works. Neuroscience now contributes to the personal development of the individual. However, when the objective of a training course is to legitimize participants in their exercise of a function or a job, the most appropriate modes of transmission and assimilation are questioned.
What pedagogy should be applied to ensure that the beneficiaries are best trained in the requirements of their future activities? How can the possible dissolutions of the impacts of transmission modes be limited? How can we satisfy everyone’s thirst for learning? How can we promote an individual’s talent in regard to an envisaged function or a profession? The pedagogy of work-linked training, the one, which brings together knowledge, doing and being, and is rooted in the evolution of humanity, is a topical subject1 and a major concern for economic, educational and political actors. Apprenticeships appear to be a solution to the unemployment of young people when it stands as an obvious way of supporting the development of a society.
The decision to offer an apprenticeship is strongly linked not only to the role or career path for which it prepares a person, but also to the nomenclature of qualifications and diplomas to which it belongs. Apprenticeships are therefore commonly integrated into the training curricula of craft trades. The latter are legitimately recognized as requiring the transfer of the expertise of an experienced person, a legacy of the companionship of past centuries.
However, when the ESSEC Business School decided in 1993 to offer apprenticeships to all its students (admitted on a competitive basis or by M2 equivalence) in its Grande École program, higher education was disconcerted. ESSEC, a highly selective management school, explains that all the professions of excellence require not only a transfer of knowledge, but also a long-term experience that is not possible to acquire through a succession of internships of variable duration in different worlds and on heterogeneous themes.
As a result, health professions (physician, surgeon, pharmacist), legal professions (lawyer, notary, accountant), airline pilots and musicians impose years of “apprenticeship or companionship” alongside a peer or manager, where only the legal status and vocation of the novice differ (intern, employee, clerk) and the daily reality is identical. The pedagogical approach is based on several components. It articulates specific and regular theoretical teachings that allow the apprentice to understand the environment in which he will evolve, the rules of the art that he will have to apply and those of the teachings in professional situations, allowing him to familiarize himself, with the help and supervision of an apprenticeship manager, with the complexity of the practice. Work-linked training thus constitutes the keystone of the knowledge-assimilation process.
Apprenticeship arrangements are based on the activities of the profession in question and the expected level of autonomy, as described very precisely in the certification standards for the relevant qualifications and diplomas. It is therefore necessary to precisely determine the time required to acquire all the skills needed to pass the tests for obtaining the diploma that recognizes the ability to perform the relevant function. The rate of work-linked training must be based on the rise in expected and acquired competences. The mission in the company chosen by the apprentice and proposed by the company must be perfectly aligned with the pedagogical objectives of the program. Indeed, the apprenticeship contract is the basis for obtaining the diploma or qualification.
Each profession is part of an environment that develops its own specificity and rules. Marketing professions in the cosmetics sector therefore have more intense periods of activity than others during the calendar year (budget period, business review, product launch, etc.), like audit functions but with a different seasonal structure (fiscal year). It is therefore essential to establish a pace of work-linked training that takes into account functional and sectoral specificities as well as the size of the economic entity welcoming the apprentice, while optimizing and adjusting academic constraints (size of promotions, content layout, educational mix). It is necessary to build a balance that aggregates the duration of the contract in number of months, the terms of the apprentice’s presence in the company whether full-time (semester, trimester, weekly) or part-time (number of days per week shared or time in the shared day), favoring observation, support, management, repetition, task control and mastering while maintaining the apprentice’s availability for highly satisfactory cognitive functions in acquiring the fundamental theoretical knowledge.
Consequently, of the 353 apprentices in the Grande École program in 2018, 47% are working on a semester basis, 43% on a weekly basis and 10% on a quarterly basis. In addition, 77% of apprentices in consulting positions and 86% of auditing apprentices have a half-yearly work/study schedule.
The ESSEC Business School prepares its students for practicing their job on a worldwide basis. Living for six months in a foreign country, either for an academic exchange or for professional experience, is a major component of the diploma. Students who choose an apprenticeship can include their international experience in this course. However, it is easier for them to benefit from an academic exchange than from an assignment to a foreign subsidiary of their French host company. (Under French law, apprenticeship contracts must be signed with a French corporation). To date, many administrative (social security coverage, costs, barriers to entry into a country) and organizational (new apprenticeship manager, work–study balance) obstacles make this alternative complicated and risky and often force the apprentice to fulfill this condition at the end of his apprenticeship contract and, in fact, to extend his schooling. The aforementioned law of September 5, 2018 reaffirms, in its article 24, the need for simplified access to long-term international mobility.
Apprenticeship pedagogy must also open up and adapt to the wishes and projects of young people to enable them to succeed, i.e. to achieve the personal and professional project of their choice, (for the authors, success in this context means achieving one’s project). Successive generations (baby boomers, generation X, generation Y or millennials, etc.) and their increasingly rapid evolution have destroyed the idea of a standard model and a pedagogical model. There is no longer a single accepted model of success. Everyone develops their own personal and professional project.
An apprenticeship and its pedagogy must therefore also meet these requirements. Thanks to the organization of studies by term, ESSEC is able to offer its apprentices a personalized course: each term, the apprentice chooses the courses he will follow, as well as his work/study schedule.
A pillar of apprenticeship pedagogy, the tutoring system provides each apprentice with two-fold support:
Ensuring that the apprentice has acquired during his experience the expected competences is essential to obtaining the diploma, as well as gaining the self-confidence that is crucial for the apprentice to legitimately claim his future position and obtain the corresponding salary recognition. Verification and validation methods are variable. They frequently take the form of an evaluation showing the level reached by the apprentice according to the breakdown of the activities assigned to him. The nature of the tasks evaluated must match the skills sought. It is important to take into consideration the achievement of the objective, as well as the means used, the obstacles encountered and overcome, and the personal qualities developed by the apprentice.
Throughout their apprenticeship experience, apprentices will be trained and supervised by their manager in the company, as well as by their school tutor who will support them and advise them in their professional and/or academic choices.
The apprenticeship manager plays a decisive role in the success of the apprentice’s progression. Indeed, he must have technical, managerial and human qualities. First of all, he must be a professional recognized by his peers for his professionalism, his experience and his expertise in the chosen function. In addition, he must combine human qualities that make him a caring individual who loves to transmit knowledge and who knows how to adapt to others from different generations in order to encourage their motivation and desire for achievement. Finally, for our students, future managers, he must demonstrate leadership and teambuilding skills, among other things. In this way, he takes a real responsibility for the training, and therefore, the graduation.
The manager and the apprentice must form a relationship based on listening and mutual respect. For the apprentice, this knowledgeable professional can play a major role in his career, both positively and negatively. He can either be a role model promoting exemplarity or divert the apprentice from a clear path, with the aversion to the function being confused with that of the apprenticeship manager. But the latter can also assume the role of mentor and, over the years, maintain a non-judgmental and benevolent relationship with his former apprentice as a guide and advisor.
The CFA must therefore monitor the involvement of its apprentices’ supervisors in order to ensure that pedagogical objectives and values of the program are well shared.
Through the tripartite (manager, tutor, apprentice) meetings, privileged moments of exchange and tripartite sharing, the CFA will occasionally have an appreciation of the situation experienced by the apprentice. As the guarantor of the objectives to be achieved, the tutor will have the vocation to support the apprentice in making a success of his course and to allow him to maintain distance and objectivity in relation to the professional and academic situations encountered in order to promote his development (Ikigai). The nature of this function is therefore hybrid because it is based on a strict pedagogical framework, while at the same time laying the foundations for a serene future.
In France, an apprenticeship has a very specific financial model. Any student who opts for an apprenticeship benefits from a totally free education; while an employee of the host company, he receives a monthly salary, regardless of the number of days he is in the company. Moreover, the tuition fee is paid by the corporation using a French tax (see below). In other words, the apprenticeship system allows all students, regardless of their level of resources, to train for high-level careers.
Table 1.1. Social origins of apprentices in the “Grande École” program (ESSEC-2018)
| Parents’ socio-professional categories | Apprentices | Non-apprentices | Total |
| Farmer-operators | 23% | 77% | 46.5 |
| Craftspeople and traders | 10% | 90% | 424.5 |
| Executives, professionals and business leaders | 11% | 89% | 3320.5 |
| Intermediate professions | 13% | 87% | 599 |
| Employees | 16% | 84% | 347 |
| Manual workers | 24% | 76% | 66.5 |
| Retired people | 13% | 87% | 264 |
| Others | 14% | 86% | 302 |
The financing of CFAs then becomes essential and vital to the sustainability of the system. As a result, companies are subject to a tax on their payroll known as the “taxe d’apprentissage” (apprenticeship tax), which is intended, in part, to support the development of apprenticeships. The reform of September 5, 2018 reviews the collection procedures and the eligible funding bodies. To date, we do not have any certainty about the levels of coverage of contract costs by skills operators, nor do we know the levels of equalization that France Compétence could pay for inter-branch apprenticeship training in higher education, but this reform is in itself already beneficial. Indeed, the funding methods based on the old texts had the effect of masking the richness of work–study teaching methods and focusing discourse on apprenticeships in higher education, rather than the methods of financing the CFAs, the commitments obtained by companies and the disputes over the subsidies awarded. The reform aims to bring together the needs of the different professional sectors identified by the professional branches and the training proposed by the CFAs. At ESSEC, we can only welcome these guidelines becoming official because they confirm our vision of an apprenticeship and its interdependence with the developments of economic actors.
The creation of an apprenticeship program often refers to the virtuous circle. Indeed, as we have seen previously, the contents are provided in such a way as to support the apprentice’s empowerment in increasing autonomy and responsibility within the profession for which he is preparing. The attractiveness of graduates trained by apprenticeships on the targeted labor market is a strong indicator of the quality and relevance of the training provided, but also of the CFA’s ability to identify, understand and anticipate changes in the skills and competences sought by the labor market.
The creation of steering committees or advisory boards for each program, in addition to the improvement council (legally required by law in the French system), makes it possible to adapt the programs on an annual basis. Ideally composed of the program’s professors, CFA representatives, apprenticeship managers from the main corporate partners and tutors, this committee reviews the past year’s results on the profiles sought and the missions proposed. It encourages exchanges and discussions of new emerging needs, and developments aimed at changing or eliminating certain practices, so that these signals are immediately integrated into the following year’s educational models. Apprenticeship in a program is therefore an essential tool for steering and the Justice of the Peace is the reason for its existence.
Yet, while apprenticeships have been around for more than a millennium, many challenges remain.
We will begin with this cultural challenge by considering its image. Even today, for many, the word “apprenticeship” still conveys an image that is not very rewarding, as the collective unconscious equates it with failure, poverty and lack of intelligence. This vision is wrong; it is based on an absurd opposition between manual activities and intellectual activities, mediated by irresponsible people. No profession can be carried out without observation, active listening, progressive practice or repetition to achieve total mastery, whether we work in finance, marketing, project management or consultancy.
The challenge is of innovation in a constantly changing world. Dell Technologies’ Institute for the Future predicts that 85% of jobs that will exist in the United States by 2030 do not exist today. Similarly, Céreq studies predict that, by 2025, 45% of the current jobs in France will disappear. New programs will therefore have to be created with agility and flexibility.
The challenge of digitalization will allow there to be a new relationship between the apprentice and the educational community. Consequently, Openclassroom offers, as of today, 100% online training courses that make it possible for everyone to become an apprentice in their field of expertise.
The challenge is then of internationalization with European apprenticeships and, as a first step, the definition of a common framework.
“I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand”, said Confucius.
Chapter written by Florence LE FIBLEC and Michel GORDIN.