Background
Hirschmann Automotive is a leading automotive supplier headquartered in Austria. Their 2,000+ employees are spread across 10 countries, eight production sites, and five sales offices.
The company heavily relies on English communication skills to provide top individual customer care worldwide.
Challenge
Improving internal collaboration with new Chinese hires
Founded in 2013, the Chinese branch of Hirschmann Automotive is located in the Jiangsu province. It currently employs 380 people and develops and produces the whole product range for the Chinese market.
In a country where less than 1% of the population speaks English, Hirschmann Automotive faces three main challenges:
- The talent shortage in China is further compounded by Hirschmann’s efforts to recruit English speakers to ensure international collaboration. However, new hires often come from local competitors that do not have such proficiency requirements and English skills upscaling becomes essential to new employees.
- Employees with the expertise and experience need to improve their English skills to better pass on their knowledge within the company.
- Team leaders also need to improve their English level to better perform in this international working environment.
Solution
Piloting a BU-wide Business English blended solution
In 2021, Hirschmann Automotive asked Learnship to help them quickly improve the Business English skills of their Chinese employees, with a focus on both written and oral skills.
With Learnship Solo Premium, employees got access to a range of features that allowed them to improve their communication in English:
- A personalized daily routine to scale up their Business English vocabulary and grammar.
- Open access to a range of productivity tools, including email templates to improve productivity, and accents and dialects to work on one’s pronunciation.
- Exceptionally, Solo came with unlimited Talk with the Teacher sessions. Each learner could take part in group sessions with a professional trainer to improve their oral skills discussing a business topic – as many times a week as they wanted to
- A personal coach regularly touched base with them to support and motivate them.
Results
High engagement, improved proficiency, and collaboration
As a result of Learnship’s unique product design and coaching, each learner used Solo 6.5 hours/month on average.
Healthy competition within the workforce has produced very successful results:
- Over a short period of 6 months, 60% of the learners achieved one level up, and 10% upgraded two levels or more!
- Managers and program owners at Hirschmann Automotive noticed improved internal communication efficiency and improved working atmosphere.
- Overall, learners enjoyed learning with Solo, finding the platform very flexible and business-relevant.
