Training at the service of the employer brand at Etam: attracting and retaining through apprenticeship

“Each employee has the freedom to do the training she wants. In fact, some of them have completed more than 50 courses!”

The challenge

Recruiting in the retail industry has never been easy. And today, it is even less so. Candidates are no longer satisfied with a name or a logo, they are looking for a company that has meaning, a vision, but above all a clear promise.

With an exploding turnover and a lack of talent retention, having a strong employer brand has become essential.

And the Etam group understood this well. In fact, this is what Mariana Machado — Head of People and Culture explains: “Before at Etam, the employer brand was just the product. We wanted to push the concept further and understand why it's worth working for us.”

On top of that, the retail world has not been the same since Covid. Distance sales have exploded and customer challenges have evolved. It's not easy to stay in the competition against Internet giants.

Mariana asked herself about the subject:”How can we transmit this new way of understanding customer issues to our field teams but also to headquarters?”

The answer is simple: It involves training !

The deployment of Beedeez

At Etam, Mariana wanted to break the rules. Here, each employee is seen as a person in their own right, with their strengths, their potential and a real role to play in the customer experience:

”First, the collaborator must understand that she is not a number. He is a person who is talented, who listens, who understands and who can evolve.”, she explains.

Thanks to Beedeez, Etam has set up tailor-made training, designed to adapt to the pace of the field. Result? Each employee has access to a personalized journey, directly on her mobile phone. The message is clear: saleswoman today, why not at the head office in three years?

Launched under the name “Push Up Academy”, the platform combines fun and convenience. Mobile first training, short content, challenges, challenges, quizzes, battles — everything is designed to make you want to learn.

To engage as many learners as possible and promote the platform, Mariana focused on a challenge designed to reward regions where more than 70% of employees connect to the application. Result: several regions reached 100% participation. Proof that when training becomes fun, everyone wins.

There is no question of launching the platform blindly. The success is also based on the support provided by the Beedeez Customer Success team, which co-built the project with Etam. By analysing the needs in the field and adapting to concrete use cases — each employee feels involved from day one.

The results

For several months, the Etam and Beedeez teams worked hand in hand to design and deploy a platform designed to last. Today, the effects are there, visible even in the employer brand.

With Beedeez, corporate culture takes on a new dimension, stronger, more lively.

At Etam, innovation is part of the DNA, and this culture is nourished by the desire to learn, to share, to sometimes make mistakes, but above all to evolve. We no longer only train for a product or an operation: we train to grow. The state of mind is spreading, managers are taking over and good reflexes are rooted in daily life.

And when you ask Mariana what she thinks about it, the message is clear:” It seems to be utopian but it works! ”. Each employee can choose her training courses, according to her desires, her pace, her needs. Some have followed more than 50.

Proof that a committed employee starts with a free collaborator. The result: the employer brand is strengthened, loyalty increases, and the effect is felt in the teams.

The deployment, first launched in France, is now taking on a new scale. After validating the technical aspects and ensuring the proofreading of the automatic translations made on Beedeez, the Group is preparing to open the platform in several countries: Poland, Spain, Czech Republic, Czech Republic,, Switzerland, Switzerland, Switzerland, Switzerland, Belgium, Luxembourg. A new stage, but always with the same ambition: to make training a lever of commitment.