Roche: Investing in apprentice’s socio-emotional skills

Encouraging students to develop their socio-emotional skills

#vocationaleducation #self-responsibility #TrainTheTrainer #mindfulness 

Problem

Apprentices must navigate the balancing act of going to school and getting a professional education. In the midst of this, personal development often gets neglected.

Finding an apprenticeship, integrating into a new environment, passing the probationary period and getting good grades in vocational school: In just a short time, apprentices have to evolve from adolescents to independent adults. Especially an apprenticeship at a large corporation like Roche demands a lot. Most of them were the students at the top of their class for years and are now the youngest members of large, well-coordinated teams. 

It is essential to give them space and time to develop social and emotional skills. Roche has recognized this and has developed a solution together with us.

Solution

We help the apprentices to develop social and emotional skills in a playful way. 

We developed a program with which Roche apprentices actively train social as well as emotional skills throughout their first year of their apprenticeship. The space mission was chosen as the theme for the program. The program consists of four analogies: moon landing (immersing oneself in a new situation), expedition (asserting oneself in a new environment), base camp (processing the experience together) and homecoming (arriving in the new everyday life).

Following the principle of “train the trainer”, the instructors are also deliberately involved in the process. Step by step, they are equipped with the skills they need to better support their students in their personal and professional development

Result

We run a 1-year prototype with physical on-site workshops as with regular digital challenges.

Each of the four phases above consists of a physical on-site workshop, a digital challenge, and two hybrid exchange formats on the respective topics. The learning is centered around our app VUC^it*. With it, participants develop relevant skills such as confidence, building relationships, collaborating, and dealing with stress in a fun and interactive way.

Initially, the prototype will be executed with two vocational groups and will later ideally be extended to other groups.

* VUC^it – an app by artsnext! The name of our app refers to the abbreviation VUCA. The acronym stands for the 4 central challenges of today’s world: Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity. Our app helps to cope with these challenges.