With so much changing in the working world, the senior executives at global tech company Siemens knew they had to change the way they trained. Having implemented a revised program for new managers, increased offerings available to a wider audience and provided greater support on personal development, Lisa Lang and the HR leadership of the company are expecting a new style of management to prevail in the near future.
“We’re looking at leadership in a completely different way. In the past, we had more rigid frameworks around What is a manager? What is a leader? Now it’s much more flexible,” Lang, VP of talent and organization, Americas, told Newsweek. “We wanted to take a different look from a people perspective, but also we wanted to consider things have changed a lot in the last few years.”
Lang noted the pandemic, changes in how people collaborate and that Siemens has a highly distributed workforce in multiple sectors that also saw a number of acquisitions over the last few years. Her organization includes 45,000 people across the United States, and she has counterparts in China and India reporting to the global head of HR based at the company’s headquarters in Germany.
In addition to revised and expanded training opportunities, Siemens launched a mentorship program, a personal development suite and a system for tracking learning goals that employees see as soon as they log in to their computers.
“It’s important to take a fresh look and then also see what it takes to bring everybody on board, especially those groups that may be new to the organization,” Lang said.
Siemens also aligned learning opportunities and goals around a few emerging corporate initiatives, including transformational leadership, organizational impact and development of life skills. Lang shared that within the HR organization, this has played out with an emphasis on technology and reshaping leaders for the HR team, with increased buy-in from the CEO on talent matters.
Siemens Global
Rebuilding L&D
Lang said that the previous leadership development program was well-regarded internally, but the company made the decision to revamp it in order to reach more people and provide more course content.
“We disrupted our own highly successful model,” she said. “We had a more traditional learning and development model. Very high-quality content, a lot of investment and support across the organization. However, we couldn’t reach all of the employees that we wanted to, and part of the barrier was cost.”
Siemens rolled out an initiative called Learning of the Future. The company outsourced some parts of its learning organization, offering a learning portal called My Learning World to all employees through a managed service provider and external content providers, such as LinkedIn Learning and Coursera, with thousands of course offerings.
“Today’s pace of change means leaders are constantly reprioritizing, doing more with less and making high-stakes decisions,” Trena Miduri, chief learning officer at Coursera, told Newsweek via email. “Leadership isn’t just about managing tasks; it’s about guiding people through uncertainty with clarity, context and conviction. … By investing in leadership training on Coursera, Siemens is equipping its people to make smart decisions, collaborate effectively and unlock their full potential.”
Siemens made its own training material but also leaned into the help available from external providers.
“We thought that there was a way we could do it more efficiently and more cost effectively,” Lang said. “We have some content that is developed internally, some externally, all different modalities, everything from e-learning to virtual to in-person. But we really increased the number of resources we have that are self-paced and centrally available.”
With further focus on accessibility, Siemens’ thousands of factory and manufacturing workers also have access to these courses through computer labs in the facilities where they work.
“We’ve been working very closely with the factories to make sure [that] if they may not have their own laptop, there are centers within the factory where they can go and take some of the online learning that to them is entirely free,” Lang said.
Siemens Global
Promoting Learning
As always, it can be tough for employees to find time for learning and for goal-oriented managers to allow time for personal development. This difficulty is why Siemens implemented a few support measures, including learning tracking, reminders on employees’ home screens and the opportunity to have coaching support.
The company offers a portal called MyGrowth, partially supported by BetterUp, a coaching software provider, that is also meant to provide a more informed and continuous dialogue around performance management and career planning, Lang said. She pointed to the scalable nature of the BetterUp offering as a benefit that democratizes access to coaching for emerging leaders.
“Siemens has partnered with BetterUp for the last five years,” Angelika Elzahhar, RVP account management EMEA at BetterUp, told Newsweek via email. “Through the partnership, Siemens has substantially improved employee retention and increased productivity and performance.”
Siemens also launched a program called Mentor Pod Marketplace, where senior leaders can guide virtual mentoring groups and host meetings with their global mentees through an online forum. The U.S. CEO and CFO of Siemens provide mentorships through this offering.
“We have people from countries all around the world that are using this technology,” Lang said. “Anyone in the company can create a pod where they, as an expert or even as a leader, can have a cohort.” She added that this was an offline program that they scaled using new software.
Because of Siemens’ matrixed organization, its strategy for people support includes a few layers as well. The learning programs are delivered on a global level, but mentoring, growth and other forms of support are localized. Lang said that she and her counterparts in India and China are in constant contact, sharing ideas on how to manage their complex, increasingly global and distributed workforce.
“This structure provides a great opportunity to really look at this from an international perspective: each of us, knowing the strategy for each of these countries and regions, finding the right mix, finding the best way to really implement strategy for a huge workforce population,” Lang said. “It’s kind of like the best of both worlds, bringing the global strategy into the country but also finding ways to best serve the market.”
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Editor’s Note: On April 10, the CEO of rail infrastructure at Siemens Mobility, Agustín Escobar, died in a helicopter crash while on vacation with his family in New York City. Newsweek began reporting this article before the tragic event but did request a statement from Siemens on any additional support provided to leadership and employees in this difficult time. The following addendum is from a company spokesperson:
“All our Siemens people worldwide have access to so-called Employee Assistance Programs to receive support, i.e., counseling services from mental health professionals. Especially in the context of tragic events, we organize specific psychological support—24/7, including weekends.”