History


85 years of innovation and sharing

The last 85 years of Cegos are testimony to its enthusiasm, its spirit of innovation and the courage of the men and women who have taken part, are taking part and will take part in future in this adventure.

    1926

    Creation of CGOST, (Commission Générale de l’Organisation Scientifique du Travail [General Commission on the Scientific Organisation of Labour]), within the Employers’ Confederation the CGPF (Confédération Générale de la Production Française), founded in the post-war period. Its mission: to disseminate the ideas and methods of the OST. Its General Secretary was a young graduate of the Ecole Polytechnique called Jean Milhaud. He began the task of giving life to this new type of research laboratory, at the crossroads of political, employer-based, industrial and international thinking.

    1930

    Opening of the first research section at CGOST. These would really take off after 1934 with the creation of 7 sections corresponding to the various departments existing in a company.

    1936

    Jean Milhaud said “Cegos” instead of CGOS during an interview on TSF. Cegos was born.

    1937

    Rimailho’s study, “A uniform method of calculating cost prices” was published, with a preface by Auguste Detoeuf (founder of Alsthom and President of Cegos). Faced with a barrage of requests for consultations the Cost Price Section developed a consultancy proposal for all companies. This is how Cegos entered this business.

    1948

    Cegos gained its status of legal association in 1901. This was the heyday of TWI (Training Within Industry): a method of instructing, ordering and improving methods. Cegos gained accreditation to teach using this method. The work on TWI was the beginning of the “intra”[in-company] training at Cegos.

    1951

    After running TWI courses in the building workshops of Charleroi and following a session organised at Peugeot-Sochaux the first training courses were born. The topics addressed were techniques of management control and commercial management.

    1956

    Start of the “Art of management” course launched by Octave Gélinier. More than 2,000 directors would attend this seminar over about 50 years.

    1958

    In Spain the directors of TEA (Tecnicos Especialitas Asociados) formed a relationship with Cegos which became a majority shareholder in 1960. Birth of the first group subsidiary abroad. This would be followed in 1962 by the Portuguese subsidiary.

    1968

    Publication of the first CEGOS survey on salaries which marked the beginning of a long series of studies. This survey is still ongoing.

    1975

    Octave Gélinier took part in drawing up the Sudreau Report. Ordered by Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, this report on corporate reform warned about the need to rethink hierarchical relationships and the organisation of tasks after the social upheaval of 1968.

    1976

    Pierre Leboulleux became Director of Cegos which refocused on its two main professions: consultancy and training.

    1985

    Yves Cannac succeeded Octave Gélinier as President of the Cegos Association sharing the group’s general management with Pierre Leboulleux.

    1992

    Start o f missions in Eastern Europe particularly in Rumania and then in Slovenia.

    1994

    Cegos is one of the first French consultancy and training companies to obtain ISO 9001 certification for its training activity.

    1995

    First site in Eastern European countries with the creation of Cegos-Kft in Hungary.

    1997

    Cegos greatly increases the number of foreign sites by creating new subsidiaries in Germany, England, China and the Czech Republic.

    1998

    Jacques Coquerel is appointed President of the Cegos Group.

    Together with Entreprise & Carrières, Cegos launches “The Golden Intranet” awards [Intranets d’Or] (today the “Intranet Prizes”, the first professional awards dedicated to Intranets.

    1999

    Cegos, “accelerator of success”, a vocational phrase which follows the development of the Group. The new logo is used for all French and foreign subsidiaries.

    Through its shareholding in IB Formation (leader in technical IT training), Cegos becomes the first operator in the IT training market.

    2001

    Methods combining e-learning and face-to-face are implemented within open courses and during rollout of large-scale training projects, a new Cegos development arm.

    2002

    Partnership with the association Planète Urgence which allows Cegos’ employees to become involved in a humanitarian mission during their paid holidays with the financial support of their company.

    2003

    The European Commission selects Cegos to train its top management.

    Creation of a subsidiary in Switzerland furthers the development of the international network.

    2006

    An original LMBO-type shareholding scheme is set up bringing together group managers and all employees.

    Signing of the Diversity Charter

    2008

    Cegos launches Global Learning by Cegos®, the first fully integrated “blended” solution (combining face-to-face and e-learning) on the market, and e-Learning Solutions by Cegos®, a catalogue of 250 online training modules. These new products can be used internationally and support localisation. These new courses clearly show Cegos’s ambition to develop internationally.

    2009

    Cegos continues to develop its partnership policy by forming alliances with Seminarium - (leader in training in Chile) - and ENI (leader in online office-related training). The following year Cegos also becomes a partner to CornerstoneOnDemand (publisher of integrated management training solutions), Vergouwen Overduin (training specialist in the Netherlands), Sum Total (training management software) and digital publishing (e-learning language training).

    L’Ecole Centrale Paris offers a specialist Masters in “Management and Project Management” in collaboration with Cegos.