Atos

Atos finds a winning formula for its academies

Leading international IT services company Atos wanted an accredited academy model that could be replicated across the business, and that would retain talent and grow skills. It chose us as its long-term partner.

Their brief

Atos’ Information Management Practice team contained highly skilled and sought-after staff who were crucial to the success of the business. Atos wanted to ensure it retained these talented people, grew skills and reduced the costs of using external training.

To do this, it set up an Information Management Academy – a thorough programme which trained participants to be information management consultants. 

Atos recognised that the value of this Academy could be improved if it was accredited, and its impact could be increased if the model could be replicated across the business.

Our solution

We worked with Atos to develop its Information Management Academy in a number of ways.

By establishing the academic rigour of the programme and adding appropriate assessments, we were able to accredit the programme as a Level 6 university qualification. We also advised on workshop structure and delivery.

The final, accredited programme had a broad 2-module structure, so within these 2 modules, there was freedom to organise the content in different ways.

This meant that the model could be used to create other academies, maintaining a consistent learning framework across the organisation.

For this Academy, Atos chose to structure the face-to-face teaching element as three week-long residential sessions, but subsequent academies might organise it differently.

Although Atos’ tutors were already highly skilled and experienced, their delivery approach had to meet university standards, including enabling people to apply learning to their job. Therefore, Atos’ tutors took our Supporting Work-Based Learning programme.

This programme enables in-company trainers to understand:

• the context of supporting learners in higher education
• the underlying principles of design, delivery, assessment and quality assurance in a work based context.

The results

Atos tells us that the Information Management Academy has increased the attractiveness of the organisation to potential employees and clients alike. Existing clients have also welcomed this investment.

Atos is now planning to set up 4 more academies based on this model, and a long-term partnership between Atos and the University of Derby Corporate has been formed.

“Through our partnership with UDC, we are able to offer our employees a business focused programme and access to a university degree level qualification while working.”

Paul Bagley, Head of Learning and Development, Atos

“At the start of my career, I was working on different parts of the project and didn’t have a clear idea how all those parts fit together. The Academy has explained the whole process and given me the ‘big picture’. It’s been extremely useful.”

Dimitar Danchev, Graduate Business Intelligence Analyst, Atos