Objective 4 - Learning & development employees
| All sites must develop and implement a local plan to encourage learning and development of our employees. |
In 2006, a large majority of Umicore sites had already implemented or were implementing, a local plan for learning and development. This trend continued in 2007 (figure 4). Also the average number of training hours rose significantly from an average of 33.92 hours (4.2 days per person) to 52.92 hours (6.6 days per person). A significant amount of this increase is due to a better capturing of “on-the-job training”. The expectation is that if all sites systemically capture this information, average training hours may still increase further at the level of the Group.
Besides on-the-job training, Umicore organises a large number of classroom training sessions which make use of professional trainers. Most of these are organised at site level, but a significant number is also organised at national or regional level, allowing participants from different sites to share their learning experiences. At Corporate level, training is organised for a worldwide audience.
The following examples illustrate the variety of training experiences offered by Umicore. At the Olen site in Belgium a “safety week” was organised in April. All employees, contractors and a number of guests (1,000 people in all) were invited for a half day plant visit. While touring in groups of 25, actors and consultants demonstrated real-life situations illustrating (un)safe working conditions. During debriefing discussions, participants were motivated to make sure working conditions at their own working place were safe. At the Hoboken site in Belgium training programmes were set up to raise security awareness when working with precious metals and a coaching programme was launched for 120 first line managers.
In Germany, FIT was launched. This is a leadership training programme to help-non managers acquire and improve skills to lead teams. In France, an agreement was signed with the five unions to implement a forecasting system to align future needs in terms of manpower, competences and individual and collective training requirements.
Umicore on the way to sustainability