Răzvan Popescu, Edenred Digital Center: 2021 will bring us more on the arena of agile learning and will move from consumer learning to contributor learner

We all are living impressive times of sudden changes and, as business professionals, the ability and agility to address the pressing challenges is high. However, the sustainable way of doing business is at the core of the modern world as we know it.

Learning and development (L&D) programs and initiatives have been headlines of corporate agendas in 2020  and continue to do so in 2021 as well, as businesses adapt to the ways and needs to learn of their employees and business partners. Also, studies of this year showed that improving L&D is a critical initiative to 86% of companies.

This is why, for the end of this year, Outsourcing Today started a editorial project “MOVING THE BUSINESS FORWARD” consisting in a series of interviews of the high-leveled professionals, CEOs, GMs and leaders of different departments of companies acting in local industry. By the end of this year, you will find them on our online platforms, OUTSOURCING TODAY, THE DIPLOMAT-BUCHAREST and AUTOMOTIVE TODAY.

Hence, we recently talked with Răzvan Popescu, HR Director & Site Leader at Edenred Digital Center in order to find out the inner perspective on the L&D evolution these days and in the year to come.

The new focus on capabilities and skills in 2020 and what to expect in 2021

In 2020 we focused a lot in ramping up and building the culture in newly formed Edenred Digital Center, the international IT hub of the Edenred group, operating in Bucharest, and jumping into lock down showed us that bringing fresh colleagues in the organization during that time and working remote for a long period adds new ways of interacting and enhanced empathy.

Our team is growing at a fast pace – we have already exceeded 100 employees and we are approaching 130, it allows us to meet the group’s accelerated digitization needs.

I’m sure 2021 will bring us more on the arena of agile learning and will move from consumer learning to contributor learner, basically each of us will both learn and share learning within the team and outwits. All the more so some members of our Edenred Digital Center team hold key positions within the group.

The current tendencies in delivering L&D programs and L&D management 

We noticed a lot of enthusiasm around virtual activities via Teams, Zoom etc., which gradually moved towards a fatigue, yet I think blending the virtual with short face to face interactions will be the way forward. The great thing is that lots of platforms can really help us to share learning and even create engagement and brainstorm virtually. The richness is also linked with the fact that learning will not be confined to your working circle, but will open widely to all global organization and not stopping here as virtually you can interact with as many sources and colleagues instantly.

 L&D programs run in 2020 and the expectations in 2021  

There are three main directions where we’ll keep on investing: tech pathways, organizational culture and inspiration for innovation. We blended the technical trainings with soft skills courses and internal events for knowledge sharing, to cover our teams needs for development and interaction.

The main focus for 2021 is to encourage our colleagues to use the platforms and the tools we have, to learn and then to share their learning with the team, finding new and innovative solutions to implement within their projects.

Which are the main challenges right now in reaching the best outcomes of L&D programs?

Properly blending the virtual sharing and learning with human interaction.