Michelin: Pioneering the future of learning

The Michelin Man, also known as Bibendum, is a man of many talents. Since becoming the face of the Michelin brand in 1898, he’s taken on the role of gladiator, kick-boxer and ballroom dancer. He’s been spotted cycling and running and was once a regular contributor to an Italian travel guide. Oh, and he’s even inspired furniture design. 

Bibendum’s CV is a rich and varied one, as you might expect from someone who’s been employed for well over 125 years, lived through many periods of significant change and reinvented himself more times than Madonna.       

For many, Michelin is synonymous with tyres, and today, the company produces them in more than 120 factories around the world. However, just like its iconic brand mascot, Michelin’s sweet spot is much more than just its tyres. In recent years, it’s expanded into new markets as the world of mobility continues to change, requiring Michelin to manage and acquire new competencies and skills across its workforce.

Navigating complexity and finding the right skills

So, how does such a large organisation reinvent the wheel when it comes to finding the right skills to shift into new markets?

When Jean-Claude Loiseau joined the company as Process Engineer for Learning, all employees’ career paths were managed centrally by the company. “This meant the HR manager proposed what my next position would be [...] this was focused on my current position and skillset.” His development and learning were based on initial training, he says, which mostly took place when he started in his role.

It was also complex. Michelin’s worldwide learning development organisation reflects the global nature of its business and also its complexity, says Loiseau. It’s based on a worldwide competency manager network, with each activity domain – finance, quality, industry, for example – in charge of its own learning offer in order to develop the competency needed to reach the performance the company expects. 

Local competency managers will then translate the group learning programme to make it available for employees in their region or country, adding cultural, legal or tutorial aspects in order to enrich the training programme.

At the regional level, production site training managers and their teams deploy the training programme, scheduling and facilitating as many as 20 sessions for frontline employees in the plants. They will also manage all the follow-up training needed to maintain the qualification. 

Follow your own road

In 2017, Michelin began to transform the employee experience for its 132,000 people around the world, selecting and deploying Workday Human Capital Management (HCM) in 14 months. Recognising it also needed to rethink its approach to career development, a year later it added Workday Learning and decided to open up its entire learning catalogue to employees to give them more control over their careers.

Laura Naftan, Global Process Engineer for Training Administration at Michelin, oversees the employee experience and has been helping to standardise how training is delivered across the business. “60 percent of our offer is a digital one and it's formed in two parts: we have a digital offer that’s created internally by our digital learning factory teams and the rest is hosted on external platforms like Udemy.” The biggest part of Michelin’s training requirement is for its frontline workers, because, as Laura explains, “they have mandatory training, they have long-term training, they have tutoring and they have qualifications that they have to do.”

The first challenge Naftan and her team faced was the inflexibility of employee schedules, particularly when it came to frontline workers. “So what we did was to create shorter digital content in order for them to be able to consume training in their free time at work and not be forced to consume longer training,” she says. The training catalogue was accessible on employees’ personal devices and managers were able to see all the information related to their teams, including the training hours and completed courses for their employees.

The path to personalisation

Employees now have a personalised learning path that they follow. It also provides them with recommendations directing them to similar content based on the training they’re following, “so if you want to consume more, to see more courses and more training, you are free to do so and you have all the information there,” says Naftan. 

Career development looks very different now, compared to when Loiseau first joined the company. Now, he has autonomy. “I have access to all of my own information, as well as that shared by my manager or HR department. I can express in the tool what my interests are in my career path.” When it comes to personal development, he can see what competencies are required in his current position, but also the direction he could go in if he added new skills and competencies. He can also access mentoring and ensure learning programmes and courses are based on the journey he wants to take.

Switching to this new approach to skills has resulted in an abundance of choice, and so the team is now focused on helping employees understand everything on offer.  

But the positives far outweigh the negatives. Since rolling out the new approach to learning, employee satisfaction has increased by 12 percent globally. And it’s not only transformed the future prospects of Loiseau, Naftan and their colleagues. By delivering the best possible digital experience for all of its employees, Michelin has also put itself in the driving seat to chase down new opportunities and continue its acceleration into new markets.