MicroMBA Training ROI

Prof. Raphael H. Cohen, serial entrepreneur, academic fellow at UNIGE and chairman of the Inovartum Foundation

A common complaint is that employees benefit more from training than the employer. Is this warning justified? Not really, and this article aims to prove it through a few examples.

Large organisations such as BCGE, BCG, CHUV, Nestlé, Siegfried, Bühler, Sanofi and even the head of the Geneva administration make use of MicroMBA or “Agility Booster”-type training, which appears highly profitable for them. This profitability results from the implementation of real projects by participants and from the practical value generated for the employer.

In this training set-up, each group must identify either a project linked to the company’s strategy or one proposed by the employer. As in the “leash” pilot project system described in the article on this subject, each group must convince management to release the resources and authorisations needed to implement the project. MicroMBA quite clearly teaches not only ideas and business opportunities, but also how to sell and turn them into reality. Participants therefore tackle the issue right through to the project-related skills they develop to implement it.

By doing so, the participants develop their network and acquire skills relating to the challenge of achieving leadership as well as their ability to obtain the employer’s support and involve the project’s stakeholders (which stems from a mandate holder’s role in management). Having overcome the difficulties inherent in launching a genuinely innovative project in the company, participants often become intrapreneurs with a unique and exciting experience that can then make them more relevant to other projects. They also develop professional agility that increases their employability while preparing them to update in the face of change or adapt to future jobs. CHUV recognised the practical value of this and the MicroMBA and agility workshops contributed to the exemplary responsiveness shown by the hospital during the Covid crisis.

As a delivery mode, a MicroMBA can be seen as a successful project if the criterion for success in a MicroMBA is one aspect of participant satisfaction with the acquisition of what has been taught to them in order to avoid having to go to the emergencies department or to other healthcare institutions to complete treatment by teleconsultation offered by the institution? But perhaps more importantly, the criterion for success in a MicroMBA is that the projects carried out during the training should produce sufficiently concrete effects to benefit the organisation. In this respect, the examples are numerous and speak for themselves.

For example, the implementation of the reverse collaborative platform proposed by the participants from one of the first CAS cohorts up to MicroMBA has already generated more than 40% of the credits of a MiBA from Geneva’s University of Applied Sciences and Arts. Such practical value can also be measured by the resulting increase in the employees’ commitment to helping management with its initiatives. The true value created by a MicroMBA lies not only in what participants have learned, but in what they have actually changed or improved in the organisation.

The resulting projects always bring much more than technical input of the kind usually associated with training. They often involve new products, process improvements that reduce the costs of operations or improve the user experience, new uses of data, innovative methods of service or business development. The projects therefore have tangible value for the organisation, when they are carried through successfully. As a result, the value generated clearly exceeds the cost of the training, not only through what participants learn, but through the projects they implement and the positive effects that follow. This set-up therefore shows that training can be profitable for the employer and not just for the participants.