“For all employees who want to make constructive use of the capacities freed up by the coronavirus crisis by pursuing their personal development, we are expanding our range of online learning courses and scholarships.” In mid-March, Thomas Rabe launched a Group-wide in-house education initiative and appealed to employees to step up their training efforts during this of all times, not least with a view to the time after the crisis. His initiative spoke to the interest and needs of many colleagues. Since the start of the initiative – and until today’s registration deadline of April 30 – there have been 400 registrations for the coveted Nanodegree courses at the online university Udacity alone: 232 participants signed up for a “Digital Marketing” Nanodegree and another 168 for a Nanodegree in “Product Management.” They come from all eight divisions and a total of 25 countries; most hail from Germany, the U.S., Britain, Spain, France, Hungary, and Australia.
Originally, Bertelsmann University and its partner Udacity had announced scholarships as part of the education initiative, but from the outset, Chief HR Officer Immanuel Hermreck had provided assurance that the Group would respond to increased demand. “We are naturally very pleased that the demand and interest were even greater than expected,” says Hermreck. “On the one hand, this is impressive proof that our employees want to actively pursue further training and even see such these challenging times as an opportunity for themselves personally. On the other hand, it shows that we have chosen the right topics for our further training program to support our employees during the coronavirus crisis.”
In this connection, the CHRO pointed out that the Nanodegree scholarships are only a comparatively small part of the wide range of further training opportunities that Bertelsmann offers its employees. Steven Moran, Bertelsmann’s Chief Learning Officer, adds: “Besides the announced scholarships, we also provide free “LinkedIn Learning” curricula for product management and online marketing for all employees on Peoplenet. And there is also a huge number of free digital training courses for many other areas of knowledge and interest. Just drop in and take a look around!” All information about the LinkedIn Learning digital services or the other – albeit fee-based – Udacity services can be found on the Bertelsmann University homepage. (benet)