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Company
Profile
Infolangues is a French Private Limited
Company specialised in industrial training in languages, translations and other
business-related language services. Its head office is situated in Lyon with offices
in Aix-en-Provence, Marseille, Grenoble, Saint-Etienne and Oyonnax.
The company was created at the beginning of 1985 from the existing
clienteles of its founders, Tessa Wisely and Peter Wheeler, who both already had
ten years' teaching experience. The company bought its own large and comfortable
premises for its Head Office in June 1991 and is now located in a three storey
house with private car park and small garden in the residential area of west Lyons. In
1995 Infolangues went into partnership with John Allison who had followed a similar
professional path in the Rhone-Alps Region to that of Tessa and Peter and within
a year the Grenoble training centre became a subsidiary of the Infolangues Group.
In August 2001, Infolangues acquired another subsidiary in Aix-en-Provence, near
Marseille. This training centre is the first in the Provence Alpes Côte
d'Azur region. The company's dynamic and professional approach to analysing
and understanding the language needs of French-based companies, backed by an enthusiastic
team, led to its rapid expansion in the Rhone-Alps Region. In 2004 Infolangues
had an annual consolidated turnover of approximately 2.5 million euros. About
seventy people work for the group (mostly on a full-time basis). Infolangues now
has eight training centres situated in Lyon, St Exupéry and Bron, (to the
east of Lyon) St. Etienne, Grenoble, Oyonnax (situated between Lyon and Geneva)
and Aix en Provence and Marseille in the south of France. Infolangues works with
a network of language training companies in Paris and other areas of France and
Europe on the development of different projects including e-learning and management
training.
Languages
taught
Although English remains by far the most
sought after language, Infolangues also teaches German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese,
together with Eastern European and Asian languages and also French as a foreign
language.
Our
customers
Infolangues presently has more than
eight hundred customer company references which range from large nationalised
enterprises to the small and medium-sized companies that make up the bulk of our
clientele. Our customers are involved in a wide range of activities : international
transport, chemicals, plastics, atomic energy, engineering, consultancy, information
technology, textiles, pharmaceuticals, research, foodstuffs, wine, banking, electronics,
plastics, advertising, petroleum, etc.
Types
of training
The diversity of our customers businesses
supposes a large flexibility and the possibility of adapting our services to the
needs of the customer. However, most of the training carried out falls into one
of the following categories :
Your profile
A position is currently open for a T.E.F.L. teacher, preferably with
English as his/her mother tongue. The profile of the ideal candidate is the following
:
Staff
are generally required to use their own cars to travel to customer locations within
the local area covering their work, and are paid travelling expenses on a kilometre
basis.
Trainee Profile
The teachers mainly work with business people, often of executive level who
need training in English in order to carry out their daily work more effectively.
The lesson content varies according to the student's profession and as most people
start training with a level of false beginner or lower intermediate to intermediate,
we always work according to their specific language needs and professional objectives.
Our approach
Students' needs and aims are determined in detail through a training audit
carried out on our customers' premises by Infolangues' directors or training consultants
working with training and personnel managers and through oral and written tests
carried out individually with prospective students.
Infolangues offers a
complete service to its customers including a diagnosis of the quality and effectiveness
of employees' communication. This generally concerns large companies where Infolangues'
training consultants work with the human resources staff in evaluation of job
profiles and language competence, together with an in-depth study of the organisational
chart, and staffing policy of the different departments with a view to optimising
international communication and limiting the risk of misunderstanding. With
all customers, either an individual or a company language audit report is drawn
up which serves both as part of the formal offer made to the client and the basis
upon which teachers organise their lesson content. Teaching staff are autonomous
with regard to lesson content to a greater or lesser extent depending on their
experience and capabilities.
Support
for trainers
We use a very extensive selection
of EFL teaching material together with a large range of multimedia tools and some
executive training packages originally destined for native speakers. Our training
quality manager, educational advisors and project managers help and advise further
and when necessary meet teachers on a regular basis and thus carefully follow
up lesson content, students' progress and the general running of classes. Six-weekly
general teachers' meetings, organised for teachers from different Infolangues
training centres, deal with specific pedagogical themes, new material, methods
and so on. The company runs an independent training scheme which also enables
staff to follow training courses outside when necessary.
One
to one / small groups Teaching is carried out in
small groups or on a one-to-one basis depending on needs and objectives both in
terms of time and content. Sessions can vary from periods of one and a half hours
to full 7 to 8-hour days with teaching shared between different teachers; trainees
also study in our multimedia workshops.
Teaching
modules Teaching programmes are generally organised
on a modular basis. Modules are of different duration and each has its aims and
objectives in terms of language development and content. Great effort is made
to encourage trainees to play a very active role in their training which is often
interspersed with periods of consolidation and self-study in order to balance
out the responsibility for learning and vary the types of training, support materials
and content, and trainers with different styles, accents and approaches.
Evaluation
Testing and evaluation of operational competence is carried out in a continuous
way and at the end of each module, sometimes adding an external benchmarking system
such as the TOEIC test from time to time on long term training programmes or for
trainees who are looking for employment. Reports are drawn up and feed-back is
provided for trainees and training or human resources managers. Teaching takes
place either in our centres or on customers' premises. At some customer locations,
we work with fifty to two hundred trainees and are involved in organising and
monitoring the development of competence over a period of years.
Hours
of work
Our training centres are open from 8 o'clock
in the morning to 8 o'clock in the evening Monday to Friday and occasionally on
Saturday mornings. Full-time teaching staff are required to work a 35 hour week
on average over the year, which includes direct teaching contact time, lesson
preparation, research and training, teachers' meetings, report writing and travelling
where necessary.
Salaries
& holidays
Teachers' salaries are fixed in
accordance with the French National Collective Agreement for training institutions.
In
Conclusion
We view Infolangues in terms of a service
industry working in partnership with our clients. Teachers therefore work very
much more in a business and industrial context than in the atmosphere of a school.
This naturally supposes not only that teachers work in a more business oriented
culture but also that they must have a business and professional attitude both
in their work and presentation. In a highly competitive business such as language
training, the notions of customer service, quality and carefully meeting trainees'
needs go together to explain Infolangues' success to date and will also be the
criteria which will ensure a professional future and development for both the
Company and its staff. Tessa WISELY Director September 2006
for more information, or to send an application, contact us by email.
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