Professional development and training for all employees

For employees to progress personally as individuals within the Company, they have to be supported and given the opportunity to demonstrate their capabilities and develop them further. Volkswagen offers the opportunity for training to all employees within the various vocational groups. A vocational group includes all employees who perform activities based on similar technical skills and work together across experience and development levels. Learning and teaching happens by involving the vocational group’s own internal specialists using both tested and new forms of skills development.

Volkswagen is continuously extending and enhancing its mutual learning approach: more and more areas of the Company have vocational group academies in which they organize skills development. The Volkswagen Group Academy was formed in January 2013 as an umbrella organization for all of the Group’s academies. It is the result of the reintegration of Volkswagen Coaching GmbH and a merger with the AutoUni. The new structure is an integrated qualification platform that leverages synergies and ensures high quality and expertise levels throughout the Group. It covers everything from vocational training up to and including academic professional development.

The Volkswagen Group is also driving forward uniform global training and professional development standards for master craftsmen and future executives and managers. These standards were rolled out at additional Group locations in Germany and abroad. Overall, 322 master craftsmen qualified at Volkswagen in the reporting period, including 84 abroad.

There are also many tailored training opportunities for other professions in the Group. First and foremost is Volkswagen AG’s Volkswagen Group Academy, which offers a broad range of courses. These include personal development programs, interdisciplinary seminars and courses, and specialized training options designed for the particular needs of individual vocational groups. In the reporting period, 86,316 participants received further training at the 10,060 seminars held by Volkswagen Group Academy lasting a total of 213,678 participant days. In the area of specialist skills development (e.g. factory automation, robotics, applications engineering and business), 56,554 participants took part in 7,591 seminars lasting for 126,976 participant days. In the field of “crossfunctional skills development” (which includes leadership skills and personal development), 29,762 participants attended 2,469 training courses for a total of 86,702 participant days. To ensure that its range of training options always keeps pace with the Company’s training needs, an additional 369 new training courses were developed in 2013.