Grupo Alfa and the digital transformation of a training program in times of pandemic

Authors: Geovana Moura, Tatiane Paschoal, Yara Moura

Also available at Mobi and Epub

Summary

This case reflects on the changes made by the Alfa Consultoria Group to continue its purpose. Attention is focused on the C3PO call action, developed by the company with the aim of creating a connection between young people and the market. It will be discussed in such a way that an intensive training program can be adapted to the dynamics of remote work. In the debate, the student will participate in the paths that Aurora and her team will create to structure this innovative program in the face of a changing scenario.

Keywords: digital transformation; Training; pandemic; people management.

Abstract

This case study invites us to reflect on the impacts of the pandemic on training actions offered by Grupo Alfa Consultoria, which sought to adapt and seek new ways to continue its purpose. The case focuses on the action called C3PO, developed by the company with the aim of creating a connection between young people and the market. It will be discussed how an intensive training program can adapt to the dynamics of remote work and teaching. In the debate, the student will participate in the paths that Aurora and her team still need to create to structure this innovative program in the face of a changing scenario.

Keywords : digital transformation; trainning, pandemic; human resources management.

History

Grupo Alfa is a Brazilian company that has been operating in the global consulting market since 2005. Currently, the Alfa Group is present in 10 countries around the world and, in Brazil, in 8 cities: Brasília, São Paulo, João Pessoa, Belo Horizonte, Porto Alegre, Recife and Rio de Janeiro. The consultancy aims to contribute to the sustainable growth of organizations and bring effective results, positively impacting everyone involved, with a focus on society. The company's main differential is the performance not only in management consulting, but on market fronts such as: Analytics (analytical intelligence), technology, innovation, process and organization, operations and Supply (supply chain). One of its purposes is to bring continuous transformation and innovation to its customers.

The company was created by students of administration, economics and production engineering at the University of Brasília who met in the subject of Project Management, thus giving rise to the desire to generate disruption in the entrepreneurship market, in a practical and deconstructed way. Since its inception, Grupo Alfa had the intention of bridging the gap between students and the market.

With 16 years of existence, the organization has already carried out 1900 consulting projects for various sectors in both the public and private sectors, in addition to having experience with various areas of the industry such as: education, transport and logistics, retail, food and beverage, financial services and insurance. Currently, Grupo Alfa has already impacted 250 clients with a team of more than 400 consultants.

In 2019, the company won recognition Great Place to Work (Annex 01). More than 80% of its employees indicated that it was an excellent company to work for, which revealed a percentage much higher than the average of the Latin American market. People management was a priority for the Group.

Aurora, who has been working in Grupo Alfa's human resources team for 4 years, collaborated as part of the team that structured a high-impact training program, focused on young people. She contributed to two editions of the program. At this moment, she was invited to take over the coordination of this program and is very excited about the challenge. For Aurora, C3PO was a great learning experience and came at a very challenging time. She remembers well when the idea came up: it was a tumultuous period with so many adaptations in the universe of work, family, people's routines, all caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. Aurora recalls the uncertainties of that period, a context in which Grupo Alfa was motivated to share its knowledge with young people and organize a large-scale online training program.

As an administrator, Aurora began to think about the steps she will need to take to make this program better and better. Quickly, she began to raise possible names within the company that want to work on this front, as well as to define the themes and outline the planning and organization of the initiative. One of her challenges was to build a program that was remarkable for the participants and that could strengthen the Branding of the company in the long term.

The birth of C3PO during the pandemic

C3PO was the first major exhibition event of the Grupo Alfa brand within the consulting market. The company's goal with the initiative, created shortly before the pandemic, was to connect university students and recent graduates from various courses with institutions from all over Brazil, enhancing the opportunities for Networking and to stimulate the contact of participants with market specialists.

Seeking to bring transformation and knowledge to people who were stuck in their studies, Grupo Alfa sought to offer a completely free program for the entire country. Thus, C3PO aimed to bring more knowledge and training to students and young professionals, in addition to providing networking, a skill that is so important in today's market. The program combined theory, consulting methodologies and market practices, exposing cases and situations of real companies. The main topics covered throughout the program were: digital transformation and new management models.

The pilot edition lasted 5 weeks and was offered from May to June 2020, that is, already during the pandemic. The members of the consultancy who collaborated with the construction of the program were divided into functions. Each group was responsible for a stage of the program such as registration, mentoring, speaker, management cases. With the support of partner companies and networking, it was possible to assemble a team of reference speakers on the topic of innovation. For the composition of the first edition, the candidates went through a selection that resulted in 350 participants. They were divided into 50 groups each with 7 people, from the most diverse places in Brazil and had to solve challenges throughout the program, making a Pitch that addressed the contents seen in classes and lectures.

During the Covid-19 pandemic period, companies had to adapt to the great global change that occurred as a result of the need for social isolation. Many migrated to remote work and needed to incorporate transformations in the way they manage their teams for telework and carry out their people management processes, as revealed by the news and media headlines.

Certainly, the implementation of flexible work arrangements, such as telework, requires interventions and adaptations towards a more autonomous and decentralized management, which permeate the organizational structure, work layout, management practices and organizational behavior at its different levels, generating a challenge for many managers. These evolutionary changes in work and management practices, made possible by technological advances, promote greater organizational agility and meet the new expectations and motivations of economically active professionals. However, a simple implementation of new forms of work organization may not achieve the desired results when they do not consider the national culture, the organizational culture and structure, and the usual set of management practices.

In the educational sphere, schools have come to be considered a space at risk of coronavirus transmission, which has led numerous countries to adopt emergency remote education actions. Surveys on emergency responses in the education sector point to challenges mainly associated with the characteristics of students, such as socioeconomic conditions, access to the internet and equipment, and the ability of schools to adapt to the different demands and realities of their target audience around the world. In terms of learning, remote teaching has impacted the way of learning and sharing knowledge.

C3PO, as it was a program started in the middle of the pandemic context, faced some obstacles. One of them was the adaptation of everyone, both course participants and Alfa employees, to the remote format of work and teaching . The conciliation of the agenda of the employees involved, 160 people, was also a challenge that the consultancy faced for the best planning and development of the program. In addition, it was the first time that Grupo Alfa offered a training program of this nature and magnitude.

The numbers of C3PO were grandiose: 900 enrolled, 350 approved and 160 employees involved with its construction. In addition, the 1st edition of the program had 200 mentorships and involved 150 institutions and 89.4% completed the proposed program.

To support all participants, the groups had mentoring provided with company consultants in which they sought to extract the best from the group to solve the challenges. In addition, a group was created on Telegram (messaging application) to give any kind of help that any member needed, thus generating a closer contact, even if it was completely virtual.

The result of the program was seen as positive by the company, since more than 15% of the program's graduates were hired later in internal selection processes and there was wide acceptance for a second edition of the program. Some returns were recorded by the participants:

"Very rich classes in content! Lectures with inspiring people! And, a sensational group with people out of the curve, who taught me a lot in a short time. We managed to create a bond of partnership and friendship that undoubtedly made this experience incredible!" (Aline, student of the first edition of C3PO).

"It was wonderful! Congratulations to everyone in the organization for all the work, for the energy put in and for every detail. I have enormous gratitude for you. Simply amazing. And I'm already watching to know when the next one will be hahaha." (Lucas, student of the first edition of C3PO).

C3PO.2: A new, even bigger round

With the success of the first edition and the strong dissemination of the program, the second edition took place from August to October 2020, lasting 9 weeks, and included more than 1,000 participants.

In this second edition, the focus was on digital transformation and there were two modalities of the challenge: one involved the solution for the case of one of the client companies (the members had access to interviews and meeting moments to ask questions with customers); the other consisted of the registration of teams (company, junior enterprise, athletic) and, finally, the work on the proposed solution to the problems.

Having more than three times as many participants as in the previous edition, the company sought to apply the good practices learned during the first edition, networking for the construction of the schedule and the formulation of the entire C3PO.2 planning. One of the good practices involved the control of support for the participants. With the large number of participants, an engagement robot was created, which directed questions to a specific member of the consultancy, who was available to help.

Despite the success of both editions of C3PO, Aurora gathered the team to reflect and raise the difficulties they faced so that they could think of improvements. At the meeting, the following points emerged:

1. Conciliation of the participants' schedule: the program's schedule had foreseen the end between the middle and the end of the academic semester, which led to a clash of schedules between the C3PO/C3PO.2 events and curricular and extracurricular activities of the colleges, such as tests, research, assignments, internships, etc. As a result, some participants had to prioritize what to deliver at the end of the semester.
2. Volunteer group for the construction of C3PO: for the preparation of the program, managers, consultants, interns and analysts from Grupo Alfa volunteered to get their hands dirty and put the training program plans into practice. These employees value the opportunity to participate, since there is meaningful engagement and a culture that transmits the knowledge learned. Despite this, because it involves people with different agendas and positions, the availability and turnover of members significantly affect the functioning of the program's organization team, generating overload for some members and the need for constant negotiation.
3. Transmit all the knowledge that the consultancy has: C3PO tries to reach the maximum number of students from the most varied university courses. Therefore, not everyone has the same set of prior knowledge. The team ends up having to filter the content offered so that it is according to schedule and is complete and thought-provoking, thus transmitting the knowledge that the company has. Another difficulty is the measurement and evaluation of this learning. Studies on corporate training at work highlight the importance of evaluating participants' reaction, learning, and impact at the individual and organizational level. For learning assessment, situational tests can be built with items that require participants to put into practice the technical skills acquired in training, which requires analysis and problem solving. These tests are usually designed by the instructors of the trainings based on instructional objectives.
4. Express the Branding brand: Currently, C3PO is the company's biggest move to the market in order to connect with young talent. Within this whole context, the team has to think about how to transmit its culture and, more specifically, its values to the participants of the training program.
5. Undefined budget: the C3PO organization team has no knowledge about how much of the budget is allocated to the development of the training. This makes it difficult to make decisions and the paths that the team could follow.
6. Speakers' schedule and unforeseen events: although there is a coordinator and several people responsible for the entire organization of the program, there are chances that speakers and guests will cancel the invitation at the last minute due to unforeseen events and personal reasons. Often, they are people invited by the consultancy's CEO himself The team needs to deal with these unexpected events and maintain the quality of what was planned. It is clear that there is a need for coordination and integration of professionals with different profiles, backgrounds, and responsibilities who are working outside the organization. Studies have shown that flexible work arrangements, such as telecommuting, depend on changes based on cultural and behavioral changes, requiring the organization to invest in training new managerial skills. The key needs of the market in which the organization is inserted must be established, goals for teams must be defined, individual work plans must be agreed upon, and priorities must be defined.

Challenges of digital inclusion in a continental country: an issue to be faced

The editions of the program brought great training and learning for students and professionals during the pandemic, as well as for the professionals involved. Based on this finding, Grupo Alfa intends to make more editions of C3PO, including students who do not have technological conditions. However, as it is a program that involves the whole country, there are problems with logistics and the shipment of materials and resources.

The materials could be collected from the consultancy's partners, through Alfa's good relationship with them. Aurora realized, from the experience of previous editions, that the provision of internet (for participants who do not have financial conditions or who live far from big cities) becomes an obstacle. The consultancy does not have the structure to offer internet and make the connection reach all points, entering a structural issue in the country. For Aurora and her team, this is an external issue, but one that greatly limits the impact of their training program.

In addition, the issue of the movement of students who lived in the city due to their studies and who returned to the interior due to the pandemic, makes it difficult to reach this other audience and greater social inclusion. Despite the success of the program, there are still some points to make the proposal more accessible and bring training and opportunities to all students and professionals in the country.

Now, Aurora and its team are facing reflection on what the next steps of C3PO will be like and you have been hired to be part of this team, which will seek to make the training program grow, seeking to solidify itself over the next few years.

Discussion Questions

1. Thinking about the work of the team that plans, coordinates, and executes C3PO, what management practices could help overcome the challenges generated by remote work and the heterogeneity of its members?
2. Suggest how Aurora could monitor and evaluate the learning and impact of the C3PO capacity building program.
3. How could C3PO foster the digital and social inclusion of university students in different parts of Brazil interested in participating in the program?
4. How can a training program like C3PO impact the Branding of the Alfa Group brand?
5. As part of the Aurora team, draw a scheme of the improvements to be implemented in the 3rd edition of the program.

References

Xiao, C., & Li, Y. (2020). Analysis on the influence of epidemic on education in china. In, In V. Das, & N. Khan (Eds.), Covid-19 and student focused concerns: threats and possibilities.

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About the Authors

1. Geovana Moura is a student of Administration at the University of Brasilia. Member of the ADM Casoteca team. Former member of AD&M Consultoria. Email: geovanamouradesouza@gmail.com
2. Tatiane Paschoal is a professor at the Department of Administration at the University of Brasilia. Psychologist, with a PhD in Organizational Psychology. He teaches subjects related to People Management. Email: paschoal@unb.br
3. Yara M. Lima is a student of Administration at the University of Brasilia. Member of the ADM Casoteca team. Email: mouralimayara@gmail.com

This is a work of fiction, any resemblance to names, people, facts or real-life situations will have been purely coincidental. This text is intended exclusively for academic study and discussion, and its use or reproduction in any other form is prohibited. Copyright infringement will subject the offender to the penalties of Law No. 9,610/1998.