Training & Education

Employee development is vital to maintaining and improving the skills of our workforce and the quality of our offering.

Our approach

Today’s dynamic and globalized world requires new competencies. At the same time, many industries face serious skills shortages, especially in the areas of information technology and digitalization. To address this challenge, it is crucial to focus on employee development, as it is vital to maintaining and improving the skills of our workforce and the quality of our products. We want to offer careers instead of jobs and to prepare our employees for the fast-changing world. This improves their motivation and performance on the job and increases their long-term employability. We will continue to invest in the development of both our employees and business leaders.

Our activities

We offer various training and development programs for our employees. While we apply some of these programs on a consistent global basis – particularly leadership development – others are developed at the regional or country level to serve local needs.

We regularly gather and evaluate participant feedback after training sessions in order to maintain and continually adapt the quality of our training and education programs. In addition, our training programs are regularly evaluated as part of external audits for ISO 9001 certification. If a negative trend is identified through this audit process, management meets to review the root cause and determine any potentially required remediation, which may include increased communication and/or modifying the training program.

During FY 22/23 we launched the dormakaba Learning Hub, which restructured our approach to employee development by organizing it into functional academies, while also streamlining regional demand through campus organizations. The Learning Hub has enabled us to establish a network of colleagues focused on employee development, with regular meetings and the exchange of best practices to maximize efficiency and deliver high-quality trainings across the organization.

Our goal is to increase average training hours to 20 hours per employee per year by 2027 (baseline 13 hours/FTE in FY 20/21). To provide our staff with the competencies they require to perform their tasks safely and efficiently, and to support their career advancement, dormakaba focuses on three areas:

1. Leadership development
2. Individual development and career management
3. Vocational and technical training

Leadership development

In line with our strategy and ambition, we aim to have the best leaders in key positions. We have therefore designed and delivered core leadership trainings, like Leading for Success, Leading Leaders, and we support individual executive coaching. Furthermore, we also continued to offer both agile and classical project management trainings as standard curricula. During FY 22/23, 342 employees took part in a leadership development program.

In the past fiscal year, we have prioritized the continuous development of our leadership teams across the Regions Americas, APAC, Europe & Africa by implementing regional leadership development programs. These programs included training sessions, regular campaigns, and bite-sized topics on leadership during times of change. We also updated some of our core leadership materials, including the Leadership Toolbox 2.0, and redesigned our Leading for Success basic leadership training to be delivered in a blended learning approach. This includes incorporating the latest leadership strategies, company vision and behaviors, and a customized leadership tool that caters to our employeesʼ unique needs. Our focus on leadership development reflects our commitment to cultivating strong, effective leaders who can help drive our company’s success in the long term.

Individual development and career management

As part of our commitment to promoting individual development and career management, we have significantly increased our LinkedIn Learning licenses, providing more flexible training opportunities to a wider audience across various topics. This has enabled us to offer our employees a diverse range of learning opportunities that cater to different learning styles and preferences. This micro-learning format makes it easy for employees to fit training into their busy schedules. Within one year we reached 5,300 active users, with 44% monthly returning learners. This yielded a total number of 7,297 training hours through LinkedIn Learning. With the help of LinkedIn Learning, we are fostering a culture of continuous learning and development and aiming for a more engaged and committed workforce.

Our combined performance and succession management process known as Perform & Grow provides a common framework for measuring and managing performance and potential. The objective-setting is based on the principle of Objectives and Key Results (OKRs).

In FY 22/23, we extended the number of users of Perform & Grow to 4,470 employees (approx. 100 more compared to the previous financial year) and will continue with further rollouts in the coming years. In addition, performance assessments through Perform & Grow are now also linked to our new Behaviors. 

Vocational and technical training

In today’s rapidly changing world of work, the importance of lifelong learning is steadily increasing. For our business success, it is essential that our employees have the relevant skills for their work. The training we provide covers topics such as lean management, health and safety, and product offerings. Additionally, the increasing digitalization of our products and services also requires new competencies – for example, related to big data analytics and artificial intelligence. To ensure that our employees have the relevant skills in the long term, we continue to invest in their vocational development and in promoting their talents. For example, in FY 22/23 we continued our Sales Excellence Program in the Regions Asia Pacific, Europe & Africa, and more than 230 sales employees participated in sales trainings.

Strengthening our sustainability mindset

During FY 22/23 we introduced several trainingsessions for our employees that raise awareness of sustainability-related topics. Two sustainability eLearning modules were launched to make employees aware of key ESG regulations, global challenges, and trends, as well as our ESG targets, actions, and sustainability governance. To encourage engagement and more exploration of the content, we have incorporated a gamification factor into the training, where learners could decorate their garden or schoolhouse and share the image on our social network Yammer, motivating others to also complete the training. By the end of FY 22/23, 1,207 employees had completed the sustainability learning modules.

On World Environmental Day, dormakaba France organized a two-day event dedicated to Sustainability and Quality of Life at Work. More than 75 employees participated in a series of conferences, thought-provoking workshops, and enriching discussions, led by renowned guest speakers and dormakaba experts. The topics included carbon footprint reduction, promotion of equal opportunities, inclusion and disability, improvement of working conditions, and health and well-being. “We were inspired by the passion and commitment shown by our employees throughout the event. Their willingness to actively contribute to preserving the environment and improving our workplace proves their dedication to our shared values,” said Christel Grall, Head of Marketing at dormakaba France.

To foster a more inclusive and diverse culture, we have launched a Diversity, Equity & Inclusion trainingmodule, that was completed by over 90% of our managers and HR business partners within five months of its launch. In the future, we will develop additional training programs that focus on incorporating DE&I principles into key areas of our operations, such as recruitment. Furthermore, we launched a series of bite-size videos on Information Security to our largest target group, consisting of over 10,000 employees. Thanks to these awareness campaigns, we have seen a marked increase in employee alertness regarding phishing emails, which we measure through simulated phishing campaigns.

We have also prioritized compliance-related trainings, and identified relevant target groups for mandatory antitrust and anti-corruption trainings, especially in the Regions Americas and APAC. Overall, more than 10,400 employees participated in the compliance-related trainings, covering topics including information security. Our focus on Compliance and Information Security reflects our commitment to maintaining the highest standards of corporate governance and data protection, and we remain committed to upholding these principles in all aspects of our business operations.

Our performance

Besides the initiatives already mentioned, during FY 22/23, we also developed a suite of eLearning resources to support our employees during the change process associated with our corporate strategy, Shape4Growth. These resources have been specifically designed to help our workforce adapt to new ways of working, stay informed about the latest developments, and ensure that they are equipped with the knowledge and skills they need to succeed in this new environment.

Below you can find the key results of our Learning and Development programs for FY 22/23:

• The average training hours per employee was 12.4 hours (versus 12 hours/FTE in FY 21/22). This is a marginal improvement due to an increase of almost 17,000 hours of online training and blended learning. However, the positive impact was diluted by the increase in the number of employees due to recent acquisitions.
• Over 12,500 employees have access to our Learning Management System (LMS). In total, 88% (11,131 employees) of the users who have access to the system completed at least one eLearning module in the past fiscal year, compared to 87% in FY 21/22. While there was a slight decrease of distinct individuals who completed eLearning modules, there was a significant increase in the number of completed courses recorded and carried out in our Learning Management System. The number of completed courses rose from approximately 20,300 to 79,000 this year.
• 298 new eLearning modules were added, and 537 classroom courses and 456 webinar sessions were offered on the platform. These were held both virtually and face to face. This reflects a slight decrease in new eLearning courses (-8.3%), but an increase in both classroom (+10.62%) and webinar sessions (+69%) in comparison with the previous fiscal year. Of the 837 new training courses provided, 503 (60%) were product related, similar to the last financial year.
• Combined, the compliance-related training activities (including those on the Code of Conduct, antitrust, anti-corruption, and information security) had over 10,400 participants, and over 66,000 training completions, making up 71.2% of all training completions. This is a significant increase (+50%) versus the last financial year. Many of these topics were introduced in the past and continue to be assigned to new employees.

Outlook

At dormakaba, we believe that learning and development are essential components of our organizational growth and success, therefore we continue to invest in and strengthen our efforts in this area. During the next financial year, we are planning to roll out our basic leadership program, Leading for Success, to further target groups. In addition, we are prioritizing talent development and succession planning programs such as the Advanced Management Program and Talent Development Program, to help identify and support future leaders within the company. These programs provide our employees with the necessary skills, knowledge, and experiences to take on more challenging roles and responsibilities and to lead our organization into the future.

Another priority will be training to accompany the transformation program, which will assist dormakaba through organizational changes. 

We will also place strong emphasis on strengthening the companyʼs behaviors, values, and culture, which are all key factors in promoting growth and employee satisfaction. By creating a positive and inclusive work environment, we can foster a culture of innovation, collaboration, and creativity.