L’Oréal’s ‘Fit Culture App’ to enhance onboarding

Designed by the L’Oréal Culture team, in co-creation with 50 newcomers in more than 30 countries around the world, this one-of-its-kind mobile app is loaded with all kinds of content. It helps new employees to decode, understand and master the company culture.

The first few days in college get engraved in people’s memory life-long. Whether good or bad, the experience is hard to forget. Most people will remember the butterflies in the stomach in anticipation.

Similarly, it’s difficult to forget the first few days in a new organisation. People feel the same butterflies of anticipation about the new set of co-workers and the company.

The least that organisations can do to ease the pressure is to make the onboarding process an enjoyable one.

Beauty product company L’Oréal has developed a new mobile app – the Fit Culture App – which promises to ease the onboarding process for new employees.

Designed by the L’Oréal Culture team, in co-creation with 50 newcomers in more than 30 countries around the world, this one-of-its-kind mobile app claims to help new employees in decoding, understanding and mastering the company culture.

L’Oreal follows a six-month strategic onboarding programme, which helps the new employee to imbibe the 100-year old company culture.
How the app works

•    There are capsules of content on topics such as entrepreneurship, agility, networking and cooperation.
•    Each capsule contains a mixture of text, photos, videos, testimonials, quizzes and mini-games •    Gamified, newcomers play and earn points to ultimately become a #CultureGuru •    Newcomers complete real-life “missions” linked to the capsules in order to put their learning into practice on-the-job •    As they progress, newcomers win “Insider Secrets” (an interesting fact, story, myth or legend about L’Oréal which is only known by those “on the inside”

The app takes newcomers on a fun and simple discovery journey through bite-sized capsules on topics such as entrepreneurship, agility, networking and collaboration.

Laurent Reich, director, International Learning Practice, Loreal, shares, “Our objective with the Fit Culture App is to take our onboarding practices to the next level and to give each and every employee, from the moment they arrive, the keys to succeed in full alignment with company values such as multiculturalism, diversity and inclusion.”

The app is loaded with texts, videos, employee testimonials as well as quizzes, games and real-life missions. The engaging content familiarises the newbie with L’Oréal’s culture.

The app also promotes appointment viewing at ease, with five-10 minutes daily capsules for 30 days. This helps the new employees discover ‘Insider Secrets (key events, anecdotes, company myths and legends) to earn points and eventually become true #CultureGurus.The app, which has been specifically created keeping the younger newcomers in mind, is available in 11 languages – English, French, Spanish, Arabic, Portuguese, Mandarin, Turkish, Russian, Indonesian and Italian.

It is the first mobile application to be developed and custom-made by a company to help employees better understand and live the company culture.

The app was co-developed by the French start-up Regards Klaxoon, which specializes in the creation of fixed and mobile interactive applications and was winner at the CES Innovation Awards in Las Vegas in 2016 and 2017.

The Fit Culture App is available for free download for L’Oréal employees on Apple Store and Play Store from June 1.

While an app alone cannot possibly capture the full complexity of a company culture, it is a bold start, not to mention a big leap forward in the world of digital learning. The power of the app is only further amplified when it is paired with other initiatives within the company’s learning eco-system, such as culture-decoding seminars, e-learnings, MOOCs, learning games, mentoring and buddying programs. The application is a progress to better support and on-board new employees all across the globe.