Continued development of employees

Our goal is to promote lifelong learning among our staff as a way of responding to current and future challenges in the retail and wholesale industry. The House of Learning business unit provides customised personnel development measures, learning solutions and services for the management holding company METRO AG as well as the METRO Cash & Carry sales line. The focus is on employees and executives from the sales, field service, delivery, purchasing and finance departments. The training contents are geared to the implementation of METRO Cash & Carry’s corporate strategy and guiding principles, as well as the advancement of decision-making skills and personal development. Thanks to a sophisticated cascading process, all training programmes can be translated, adapted to local circumstances and – in the case of seminars and on-the-job training courses – delivered by internal full-time and part-time trainers.

At Real, a total of 28,811 participants were trained using e-learning modules during the reporting period. This corresponds to 15,610 hours of study. Furthermore, a total of 4,575 employees, excluding trainees, were trained over a total of 60,164 programme hours delivered in the form of seminars.

By digitising our learning arrangements and the administrative side of our training measures, we offer access to digital study content for all employees in the METRO Cash & Carry sales line and the management holding company METRO AG. The open learning platform on the social intranet offers e-learning modules, moderated expert and study groups, thematically arranged online-learning sources, a digital library for abstracts of business literature and internally developed online courses on company-specific topics. This allows us to actively promote self-directed learning, independent of time and place, as well as an exchange of information between our employees. The global learning management system SAP Learning Solution supports the training administration and the associated operative and strategic reporting system in the planning and evaluation of our internal training measures. To deliver an efficient implementation of digital learning modules and a lean process for the SAP Learning Solution, the House of Learning cooperates closely with a team at METRO Global Business Services in Pune, India.

Financial year 2016/17 also saw METRO opening new training facilities at our site at the Albertus Lake in Düsseldorf. The facilities provide training measures that are unsuitable for digital delivery. This varied, informal and flexible facility promotes the exchange among seminar attendees from across the world.

In financial year 2016/17, professional development programmes for group strategy were designed and implemented for METRO Cash & Carry. They include qualification initiatives on the topics related to food service delivery and HoReCa customer service as well as the interdisciplinary understanding of financial context. A central focus for advanced training in all sales lines is the digitisation of the workplace. As an example, METRO Cash & Carry Germany has revised its apprenticeship curricula. The “apprentice training events 2.0” teach important learning content in the area of merchandise management in an initial online learning phase with an assessment, followed by attendance phases – both in virtual space by way of online meetings and physically by way of workshops. The promotion of proactive work methods is another key focal area at METRO Cash & Carry Germany. Suitable methods, such as design thinking, are successively and consistently instilled in the organisation by the executives. This process started with the top-level executives in the reporting year.

Employee commitment

Our global employee survey METRO Voice is an important tool used to determine the commitment of the workforce and their loyalty to the company. We conduct the survey regularly in all countries with METRO Cash & Carry operations, in the service companies and at METRO AG. Under the slogan “Your opinion. Our dialogue.”, about 104,000 employees were invited to participate in the survey during the reporting period. 89% of employees at the surveyed business units took part in the survey. The level of commitment, which indicates the degree of connection, pride in the company, loyalty and motivation, increased by 1% to 76% during the reporting period. It far exceeds the score of Aon Hewitt’s Global Retail Benchmark (64%) and continues the positive trend of previous years (see illustration).

Development of the engagement score

in %

This positive development can be attributed to an intensive follow-up process. Managers receive detailed insight into the survey results and discuss them together with their teams. The aim is to develop suitable measures that can effectively raise the level of commitment. We have also established group-wide initiatives that we use to increasingly promote a focus on innovative ideas and encourage the appreciation and recognition of our staff.