The National Navy is a historic French military institution, responsible for ensuring the protection and security of the country's maritime interests. Recognized for the excellence of its training and the diversity of its missions, it offers more than 80 different jobs, ranging from naval operations to defense systems, including the recruitment and support of committed young people. Present throughout the country with its 62 CIRFA centers, it trains and mobilizes thousands of seafarers every year. Committed to innovation and the continuous modernization of its practices, the French Navy is establishing itself as a key player in French maritime defense and influence.
Optimizing recruitment: the experience of the French Navy
“Before, we spent 10 days full of training. Today on Beedeez, advisors spend an average of 5 hours on the e-learning part. So it's still a significant optimization, where we manage to transmit information that is even clearer than in person and especially more useful.”
The challenge
In the French Navy, mobility is an integral part of careers. Military personnel are subject to an annual transfer plan, and over the course of their career, they change jobs on average every three years. With more than 80 different jobs, each change involves new missions, sometimes in a completely new field.
Recruiters illustrate this reality perfectly: coming from the armed forces, they come with the expertise of their original profession, but become recruiters overnight. Of the 62 CIRFAs (Armed Forces Information and Recruitment Centers) spread across France and mainland France, nearly 250 recruiters need to be trained, a third to a quarter of whom are renewed each year.
Until then, initial training took place in two weeks in person, supplemented by several months of mentoring in the field. It thus took 8 to 9 months for an advisor to become completely autonomous — a period that is not compatible with the average duration of the position, set at three years. For the Navy, it was essential to have recruiters up and running quickly in order to reach their recruiting goals more effectively.
The main challenges that the French Navy had to respond to in this project were therefore:
➡️ Drastically reduce the time needed to make recruiters autonomous
➡️ Digitize theoretical training to optimize face-to-face training
➡️ Train a large number of new recruiters every year
➡️ Promote gradual and continuous skills development, even after integration
➡️ Offer a simple, engaging and easily accessible solution
The deployment of Beedeez
To meet these challenges, the French Navy called on Insign, which immediately offered a field trip to Brest with the new recruiters. The initial training, which until now was dense and very theoretical, brought together around 60 people over a short period of time, making it difficult to fully assimilate the concepts before arriving on the job.
The idea therefore emerged to digitize the entire theoretical part thanks to Beedeez, to focus the face-to-face on practice, simulations and exchanges between peers. Now, as soon as the new counsellors are identified, they access the application during the summer and can be trained before the start of the school year in September. When they arrive, they already master the vocabulary, know the software and can focus on operational matters and the support of candidates and their families — an essential aspect of the job.
This digitization made it possible to gain an entire week of face-to-face training, by transferring all theoretical content to Beedeez. The project, carried out in only 3 months, enjoyed a real advantage: the Navy already had PowerPoint content that could easily be transformed into digital capsules. Insign supported educational creation by diversifying formats (quizzes, videos, scratch cards, images, etc.), making the experience more fun and engaging for all profiles.
Today, all recruiters — new and old alike — use the app. It allows them not only to train before taking up a job, but also to do revision sessions before each start of the school year, and to ensure a more fluid transfer of skills between current recruiters and newcomers.
Beedeez therefore allowed the French Navy to set up:
✔️ A platform accessible to everyone, even without connection, from mobile, tablet or PC
✔️ Short, varied and interactive content to permanently anchor theoretical notions
✔️ A significant reduction in face-to-face training time, from 10 days to 5 hours on average
✔️ Reinforced educational support, thanks to statistics and quizzes to monitor learners' attendance and understanding
✔️ A living and sustainable training ecosystem, promoting the sharing of knowledge between old and new recruiters.
The results
The results are indisputable: the duration of training went from 10 days of face-to-face training to around 5 hours digitally for the same quantity of content. In addition to optimized time, the quality of learning has improved thanks to varied and engaging formats, promoting the anchoring and assimilation of concepts.
Another major advance: the possibility of measuring learners' attendance and understanding via the statistics and quizzes integrated into Beedeez. A follow-up that was impossible before, which now makes it possible to adapt and continuously enrich the courses.
Despite the diversity of profiles, including recruiters less comfortable with digital technology, joining the platform was immediate. The ease of access from a smartphone has largely contributed to its rapid adoption, making training more accessible, more fluid and better integrated into daily life.
