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People & culture → The four pillars of employee education and development
The Four Pillars of Learning and Development in MTX Group
Text: Jana Zimová, Vice-Chairwoman of the Board of Directors, Chief Human Resources Officer at MTX Group
The group’s strategy for employee learning and development follows the overall business strategy. Both require capable people. It helps us develop the skills and abilities of our employees, which helps us grow successfully and sustainably as a whole.
Learning isn’t new for our companies. In addition to the large number of formal training courses, our employees naturally learn in their workplace. Even if we didn’t want to grow, the pace and everchanging nature of modern manufacturing requires us to adapt and move forward.
Corporate Academy
This year, the MTX Group decided to systematize development and education and launch a unified network of so-called corporate academies. We approach training and development beyond just sitting through a lecture that we can then report and feel good about. We felt a better idea was to reflect the concept of a corporate academy in its logo. Each company has the same logo, but in different colors and with their own brand. It depicts an academy building built on solid foundations, just like our business. The academy has four pillars, each representing a part of the learning and development process.
Job market
The first pillar is the job market. If we want our companies to prosper in the long run, we need educated and professional employees. That’s obvious. But to have someone to educate and develop, we need to first make sure we have people when we expand, when someone retires, or to cover natural fluctuations. Therefore, the first pillar deals with potential future employees. My colleagues and I call them “those in front of the gates”. Our task on the job market begins in schools, at all levels. We consider working with schools extremely important. This year, we have achieved a lot in this regard. The group has started or renewed cooperation with almost thirty schools. We managed to sign ten memoranda of cooperation with several high schools and universities. For example, the Technical University of Ostrava and Czech Technical University in Prague, several high schools in Bruntál, Rýmařov, Benešov, and Vlašim, plus an elementary school in Břidličná. We want to connect schools with real-world experience as much as possible and introduce elements of dual teaching. Pupils and students can try out field trips, internships, and summer jobs. Also, they can finish their final theses here or get help with them. After graduating, they can start working with us. Cooperation with schools has also brought a number of interesting educational activities for our employees. For example, AL INVEST and METALIMEX organized a forming, printing and milling workshop in cooperation with the Technical University of Ostrava. We also have a number of business projects in which we partner with universities, and they help us with research and development. In addition to working with schools, the first pillar of the academy also includes subjects such as brand building, cooperation with employment agencies, job centers or other government institutions. The aim is to gain visibility on the job market. To be well established and to cooperate with different cities.
Adaptation
The second pillar is adaptation and it builds on the first pillar. It concerns those who have passed through our “gates” – new recruits or colleagues who have transferred from a different department. We devote more and more time to preparing well-developed onboarding programs and to improving them. We are building towards each new employee getting a custom-made onboarding plan and useful information for newcomers in the form of a brochure, email, or an app that we use in several companies. An integral part of the adaptation process involves what we call “internal lecturers”, i.e., people who have useful experience to pass it on, which can significantly accelerate the learning process. For example, this year, we launched a pilot forging training project in STROJMETAL. It combines theory and hands-on practice with an experienced teacher. Another company with a robust onboarding program is ICE Industrial Services, where each newcomer is guided through the entire onboarding process by the so-called “godfather”. An important part of the adaptation process is regular feedback and an evaluation of the fulfillment of the adaptation and plan and probationary period.
Training
The third pillar is about developing professional expertise and increasing the skill level of our already integrated workers over the course of their entire employment cycle. This includes a wide range of activities from courses, workshops, work evaluations, constructive feedback, coaching, participation in projects, and professional association membership. At MTX Group, we have established several principles of personal development. One of the main principles is that each of us is personally responsible for our own growth. In our experience, if someone wants to grow and develop, nothing can stop them. If we don’t give people space, opportunities, and resources, they will leave and develop elsewhere. Managers play a key role in preventing this. We encourage them and teach them to regularly ask their team if they’re happy, what they enjoy and what they want to develop. At the same time, they should be critical in assessing if a certain development is viable for the company. Without the dialogue between managers and their team, the opposite can happen. The company might invest resources into someone who is not interested in developing, which is meaningless. Another general principle that we apply to learning is the 70:20:10 learning model. 70% of all activities are best learned by doing the job, 20% of new knowledge can be acquired from other people (coaching, mentoring, feedback etc.), and only the last 10% is learned through formal education such as training courses. There are many examples of specific educational activities which we have carried out this year, both offline and online. METALIMEX has trained all their managers in leadership and started the Sales and Soft Skills Academy, for which around 60 employees have already enrolled. AL INVEST, in addition to the aforementioned technical education, offer organized language and IT courses. Plus, they support their employees in completing their high-school or university education. Another example of our development activities is the implementation of the assessment center for more than 20 employees in Povrly Copper Industries, sending several colleagues from OKK Koksovny to a yearly Coke Oven Academy, and organizing process optimization workshops at STROJMETAL. We put considerable resources into development and education, but this investment is successful only when the newly acquired knowledge is put into practice. Developing and educating someone without it having a useful benefit for the company is just not worth it. Using internal talent is another big area in the third pillar. Proven work results, the right mindset, healthy ambition, and loyalty
are prerequisites for a good outcome when promoting someone. We have a number of examples of internal candidates moving into often very senior roles, and the ratio of their success compared to external candidates is clearly above average. To develop such people with high potential, we have chosen a combination of feedback, coaching, mentoring, and training, and trying out the job with no strings attached.
Succession
If you follow the life cycle of an employee, you get to the fourth pillar of our academy, which is succession. It’s important to have a plan B in case an important employee departs unexpectedly. If an employee is temporarily absent, we call it subbing. Subbing is usually natural – we go on vacation and business trips or we can get sick. In that case, one or more colleagues can replace us temporarily so that production doesn’t halt. If a key employee leaves permanently, we call it succession. The process is simple. We identify the posts we can’t afford to leave open; we identify suitable successors and we systematically prepare them for the transition. But anyone who has experienced succession will tell you that the reality is far more complicated than these short sentences describing how the process is supposed to work. For many industrial companies like ours, succession is an essential tool for transferring unique expertise from generations of experienced craftsmen to new ones. People who have studied a specific craft or have mastered it over the years are getting old. Our duty is to ensure they pass their knowledge onto newcomers. It’s a large and complex task, but we have to do it to maintain continuity. This year, we plan to define the whole succession process, identify critical positions, verify suitable candidates, and prepare their development plan which we will fill in the upcoming years. The purpose of the HR Academy
The purpose of the HR Academy
The strategic task of HR at MTX Group is to ensure that there’s a sufficient number of qualified people that meet our business goals. The corporate academy program provides a comprehensive framework for making our brands more attractive on the job market, adapting properly to the position, increasing the competence level, knowledge, and skills of our employees and passing on knowledge from generation to generation.
