How EVA Pharma embraced LinkedIn Learning

George Saadan, People Operations Director at EVA Pharma, has worked at the growing pharmaceutical firm for more than 20 years. He has witnessed considerable change over that time and now works to ensure that more than 3,000 EVA Pharma employees achieve their personal development goals. However, in a year in which businesses faced fresh challenges on a daily basis, it was vital that EVA Pharma’s biggest asset – its people – experienced minimal disruption. EVA Pharma had to ensure that its employees had the skills they needed to perform and work in a more agile way.

“Learning is one of our main pillars,” explained George. “Once we faced COVID-19, we knew that we could not disrupt our people development and training programmes. Therefore, it was important that we acted rapidly. We invested in our people, upscaling their learning, and switched all of our training from the classroom to online.”

EVA Pharma already had an established relationship with LinkedIn and had been utilising a number of its recruitment solutions. EVA Pharma’s key account manager at LinkedIn supported the business by demonstrating the positive impact that could be achieved through the expansion of the LinkedIn relationship to include LinkedIn Learning. As a result, EVA Pharma now has 1,000 LinkedIn Learning licenses.

According to George, the platform’s well-organised dashboard, with its rich functions and easy admin, appealed to the business. Every aspect of online training could be tracked, and this meant that the EVA Pharma team could develop future training strategies and ensure employees could access the best content, and could do so at a time that suited their busy schedules.

What’s more, the benefits of adopting LinkedIn Learning were made even clearer by the enthusiasm of EVA Pharma’s CEO.

George said: “Learning is a major pillar in EVA Pharma and is endorsed by our senior executives. Our CEO – Dr. Riad Armanious – has promoted the use of LinkedIn Learning ever since its adoption. He has endorsed LinkedIn Learning and has revealed his great personal experience of the platform. This has helped with employee engagement levels.”

EVA Pharma’s Learning HUB has been particularly successful. By sharing knowledge with their peers, employees feel empowered. The impact is visible: when employees learn new skills and strategies, their performance improves, positively impacting both their department and the company overall.

Furthermore, a recent learning path that focused on project management facilitated the successful implementation of cross-functional teamwork. The learning path encouraged employees to collaborate. As a result, projects were approached in a more agile way, and several products were launched by employees using skills acquired through collaborative working and training.

The enthusiasm for LinkedIn Learning among employees has been unrivalled, and as a result, 113% of LinkedIn Learning licenses are occupied.

George concluded: “The take-up has been phenomenal. Our employees love to learn. For instance, we have reached an average time of 15h 6m per viewer, which is impressive for an organisation that is highly eager for learning and development. Furthermore, in the 10 months since the start of our partnership, our learners have completed 17,865 courses and our employees have watched 18,692 hours of content since the start of our partnership. This is really remarkable. I am looking forward to seeing even greater success in the future.”

The Results

The challenge
● Pivot – transform all classroom-training and move to 100% online learning

● Create learning paths that help employees adapt to the “new normal”

● Enable employees to access flexible online training that adapts to busy work schedules

The solution
● 1,000 LinkedIn Learning licenses

● Encourage learners to collaborate and promote cross-function working to increase positive impact

● Ensure time is used wisely by offering flexible solutions

The results
● More than 17,800 courses completed

● More than 300,000 videos watched

● 23,900 hours of learning

About EVA Pharma

EVA Pharma works to save and improve millions of lives by offering accessible, high value medicines and health care solutions that address patients’ needs. Established in 1997, the firm is built on the heritage of Les Laboratories Delta, Egypt’s second-oldest pharmaceutical company, and is now one of the leading branded generic pharmaceutical manufacturers in the EMEA region. With a CAGR of 30% over the past seven years, it has earned the title of fastest growing pharmaceutical company in the region.

INDUSTRY: Pharmaceuticals

NO. OF EMPLOYEES: 1,001-5,000

HQ LOCATION: Giza, Egypt

View Company Page

In their own words:

Dr. Riad Armanious

CEO at EVA Phama

“I firmly believe that making an impact starts with how we do things, how we work with integrity and how we empower and inspire each other to bring our best selves to work. For an industry embedded in science and research, I believe in the quality of learning. We are building lifelong assets. LinkedIn Learning is the best solution, offering diversified experiences and rich content.”

Madonna Hany

People Operations Section Head at EVA Pharma

“LinkedIn Learning is the solution for readymade e-learning content and self-paced learning. Deploying a well-developed learning platform with accuracy and at breakneck speed was a challenge, but LinkedIn Learning exceeded all our expectations.”

George Saadan

People Operations Director at EVA Pharma

“The take-up has been phenomenal. Our employees love to learn. For instance, we have reached an average time of 15h 6m per viewer, which is impressive for an organisation that is highly eager for learning and development.”

Mina Emad Amir

NPD Manager at EVA Pharma

“The decision to partner with LinkedIn learning was based on its unmatched library of content. It has more than 14,000 courses taught by real-world experts and a dashboard that helps us to identify the skills that our employees need to succeed and evolve.”

What the learners say:

Dr Abram Wagih

Head of Marketing & Medical Affairs at EVA Pharma

“EVA Pharma invests in its teams by providing professional learning opportunities, giving all of its employees free access to various LinkedIn Learning courses. This adds real value and provides an enriching experience that increases the team’s overall knowledge.”

Dr. Nicolas Böge

Commercial Director at EVA Phama

“I really like this platform, as you get many choices and lectures given by experienced people in their respective fields – learning from experts to become an expert. Especially in the current tough times, it allows everyone to deal with the most relevant topics, such as remote working.”

Dr Mohamed Abd El Gawad

SFE and Data Mining Manager at EVA Phama

“Learning is fundamental to our existence, just like food for nourishing our bodies. EVA Pharma recognises this and has adopted a lifelong learning culture. Recently, we were all granted full access to the valuable courses and learning paths on the LinkedIn Learning platform. We feel excited about this learning opportunity, which will help us stay competitive in today’s ever-changing marketplace.”

Marina Saied

People Operations Specialist at EVA Phama

“I use LinkedIn Learning a lot. The courses are very rich and variable, as well as being easy to follow, short and to the point.”

How EVA Pharma embraced LinkedIn Learning and used the platform to develop future learning and development strategies

From the classroom to online

Enthusiasm and experience = engagement

Collaborative learning

The Results

More than 14,000 courses completed

More than 300,000 videos watched

23,900 hours of learning