The coronavirus crisis has had a major impact on Belgium’s National Employment Office (Office national de l’emploi – ONEM). On the one hand, the measures taken at a government level have triggered a high volume of work relating to unemployment benefits, among others. On the other, ONEM’s staff were forced, virtually overnight, to rethink how they work in order to be able to continue to fulfil the institution’s remit and provide insured people with the same quality of service.
By accelerating the complete digital transformation of the recruitment and training process, the ONEM was able to stabilize its workforce and maintain the quality of its services. To deal with this crisis, 317 new ONEM’s agents were recruited and trained online. The training unit reacted rapidly by reworking its entire training package in order to train all new employees to carry out those processes most in demand as a result of the crisis. It also arranged a train-the-trainer course, “Providing online training”, for its in-house trainers.