Madrid (E), December 2014 - With the growing need for foreign-language skills across Gestamp's worldwide subsidiaries, the group has signed a global agreement with leading online language-training provider Speexx. The contract encompasses twenty countries, split into five divisions: Southern and Northern Europe, Nafta, Mercosur, Asia, as well as three business units: Chassis, Mecanismos and BiW.
Gestamp is an international group dedicated to the design, development, and manufacture of metal automotive components. The group specialises in developing innovatively designed products to achieve increasingly safer and lighter vehicles, thereby reducing energy consumption and environmental impact. In recent years, the corporation has experienced strong growth, with 93 manufacturing plants and twelve R&D centers across twenty countries and three continents. This expansion has created a need for a tool that will cover foreign-language and communication-skills training across the group’s global subsidiaries.
Gestamp’s training department started by collaborating with its HR departments to analyse the different types of student profiles and then planning the most appropriate training program. The main target language is English, but German, French, Italian, and Spanish courses are also available. For Gestamp, it is crucial to be able to meet the demands of all students in each country. Therefore, a variety of courses has been made available, most of which include self-paced online solutions, virtual classroom sessions, and language training via telephone.
The launch of the training solution required the integration of the Speexx solution into Gestamp’s Corporate University. For this, the key points were the coordination of teams (client and supplier) and an excellent support system in several interface languages. Additional fundamental elements include the flexibility and adaptability offered by the solution and a dedicated Speexx project manager who takes care of the service and coordination.
Itziar Gómez, who is responsible for managing the project on a global level, comments: "With this project, Gestamp aims to achieve a more uniform language-training strategy that adapts to each professional’s needs at the same time. Given our global presence, strong language skills are key to effective business-communication skills, both internally as well as externally with clients and other interest groups. A language-training strategy is something that will bring us closer to our company’s overall strategic goals."
