Siemens AG is a German multinational conglomerate headquartered in Berlin and Munich with over 379,000 employees worldwide and a turnover of more than €83 billion. It is the largest industrial manufacturing company in Europe. Siemens is setting a course for long-term value creation through accelerated growth and stronger profitability with a simplified and leaner company structure.
The main aim of the Vision 2020+ company strategy is to give Siemens’ individual businesses significantly more entrepreneurial freedom under the strong Siemens brand in order to sharpen their focus on their respective markets. Plans also call for strengthening the company’s growth portfolio through investments in new growth fields such as IoT (Internet of Things) integration services, distributed energy management and infrastructure solutions for electric mobility. The concentrated expansion of industrial digitalisation, in which Siemens is already the world leader, will make a further contribution.
Below group level, there are three “operating companies” and three “strategic companies”. The three “operating companies” include Gas and Power, Smart Infrastructure and Digital Industries. The CEOs of the newly established “operating companies” continue to be members of the Siemens AG’s managing board. The three “strategic companies” include Siemens Healthineers and Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy, two fully consolidated companies in which Siemens holds a majority stake. They also include Siemens’ Mobility business.
Recently announced, Siemens is spinning off its Gas and Power business helping the company to strongly focus on its Digital Industries and Smart Infrastructure businesses The new firm will be a major player in energy with revenues of €27 billion and more than 80,000 employees. The Gas and Power business, which includes its oil and gas, conventional power generation, power transmission and related services businesses, will be set up as a standalone company with the aim of a public listing by September 2020. Siemens also plans to include its 59 percent stake in wind energy company Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy in Gas and Power. Siemens will remain an anchor shareholder in Gas and Power with between 25 and 50 percent.
As an in-house service provider, Global Learning Campus is the partner for business learning at Siemens. It helps to develop the specific competencies and skills that individuals, teams or organisations need to succeed in a volatile and changing business environment. The range of training courses Global Learning Campus offers is geared to meeting the challenges Siemens is facing as well as the specific needs of the individual businesses and regions. It reaches out to all target groups: helping employees develop their personal skills; supporting managers as they work to develop their teams; and assisting those responsible for entire organisational areas as they seek to implement strategic steps and change processes.
Cutting-edge learning methods paired with experienced educational experts ensure that Siemens-specific expertise is available at short notice. Siemens’ fundamental learning philosophy is to create an ecosystem that places the learner at the centre of everything the company does. The Global Learning Campus comprises Siemensspecific learning that can be via a classroom, e-learning or blended; approved external learning offerings are again via classroom, e-learning or blended together with community-based learning and user-generated content.
The aim is to make learning an integral part of everyday life that is relevant to the individual and available anytime and anywhere it is needed. The company also has a policy of embracing social learning so that knowledge can be shared, and staff can learn from each other.
A critical focus for the Siemens’ Global Learning Campus is to deliver business impact. Therefore, its entire evaluation of learning is based around impact metrics and improved business performance. There is as much emphasis on business targets as there is on learning competence. All of the learning targets that form the basis for programme development are derived directly from business targets and are measured in terms of improved team, individual and company performance.
If you include the participants in partner programmes there have been over a million students in the Global Learning Campus across all 30 Siemens regions. Those numbers refer to both standard classroom training and e-learning. The number includes participation in the Siemens Core Learning Programs as well as tailor-made and specific Siemens e-learning modules, and modules developed, designed and delivered by their key learning partners.
Siemens Core Learning Programs provide employees and managers with competencies and skills that are critical to their role at Siemens and help them achieve outstanding performance. The programmes address specialist functions and key roles as well as cross-functional topics focussed on by the company and of high relevance for business success. With innovative learning methods they ensure immediate application of the knowledge in the job and thus maximum impact on the business. Thanks to uniform availability worldwide, Core Learning Programs provide all employees with access to knowledge that is critical to success. With a cosmos of micro e-learning related to the programs, they also offer opportunities for learning on-demand.
Leadership learning is part of the Global Learning Campus and is tailored to the needs of Siemens managers – from first-time managers to those who manage other managers. The concept includes a mixture of prework assignments, in-class modules, e-learnings and coached practical phases during which the newly acquired skills are put into practice. This is rolled out at three levels covering everyone from supervisor to senior manager. Executive development is handled separately.
The focus for leaders is, first and foremost, on leading yourself; then leading others; and finally managing and leading the business. The spectrum of leadership and management topics ranges from self-management, social competencies, coaching, business management, strategy, innovation, change and project management to financial acumen. There is also a strong emphasis on the digital transformation of the business and the need to lead that transformation. Everyone is expected to participate in this if they have any kind of leadership role.
The Global Learning Campus is building and implementing new, community-based, user centric and state of the art learning innovations to help its leaders and individual contributors to cope with these changes.
For example:
1. Learning Experience Platforms (LXP)
LXP presents content in a “Netflix-like” interface, with recommendations, panels, mobile interfaces, and AI-driven recommendations. It accommodates any form of content, including articles, podcasts, blogs, micro-learning, videos and courses.
2. Three-dimensional learning environments
They allow participants to represent themselves with an avatar to interact with other avatars and offer opportunities to create authentic learning contexts. This technology-driven approach will boost the virtual learning experience almost as onsite learning.
3. Core Learning Paths
Core Learning Programs will be further developed to Core Learning Paths by modularisation and flexibilisation. This allows a much more individual, self-paced learning experience by simply providing mandatory and optional learning nuggets.
See more articles from Vol.13 Issue 03 – ’19 – Innovation in Leadership.
- The Siemens Global Learning Campus - November 20, 2019
