LEARNING ORGANIZATION – Carlsberg

Learning month for everyone

Change, fear and uncertainty are words that for the vast majority could be used to describe the year behind us. Both from the perspective of the individual and from the position of employers.

With an awareness of the ever-changing circumstances, the potential challenges that these changes brought with them, but also an understanding that during and after a turbulent period it is necessary to keep employees functional and motivated, Carlsberg decided to empower its people in a way that who believed that it would enable them to do so. They found support in this in the innovative format “Month of Learning”, which facilitated the implementation of training for a large number of employees.

Learning Month is a format that brings companies all the benefits of open training programs in an in-house environment, while HR also receives additional support in logistics and coordination, with the aim of more successful project implementation.

Through the “Month of Learning”, individuals have the opportunity to attend a number of trainings during the month aimed at empowerment in various aspects of life – whether through understanding the challenges of parenthood, more effective stress management, building healthy habits or other topics of interest and needs.

With the desire to demonstrate the care of employees, give them the opportunity to choose topics that are relevant to them, as well as to maximize the effects of learning through shorter forms of training, Carlsberg has opted for this type of in-house open training, and for this occasion online version.

To better understand the reasons for this move, we spoke with Branka Radojicic, HR BP at the company, who singled out several key benefits for employees that they have recognized during the cooperation so far:

1. Interesting and relevant topics are available to employees, with the opportunity to create their own combination of trainings and apply for them,
2. The trainings are not time consuming and enable individuals to acquire new knowledge during the training lasting 90-120 minutes and learn techniques and tools that will strengthen them in a particular area,
3. Connecting employees who are in different locations and are not referred to each other through these trainings have the opportunity to get to know each other, as well as exchange different experiences and perspectives,
4. Field work is not a limiting factor for attending trainings, on the contrary, over 100 colleagues who are in the position of commercialists have passed the “Month of Learning” training,
5. Employee development despite the COVID-19 pandemic must not stop and it was one of the key drivers that contributed to the implementation of this program, among other training initiatives in the company.

In addition to the mentioned benefits, the flexibility in creating the right package of training topics was especially significant. Regardless of the pre-defined packages with their topics, there was a possibility of additional harmonization and adjustment in accordance with the current needs of employees. Also, the online realization of trainings and shorter forms of duration, enabled trainings to be held for employees who would not otherwise be in the plan for soft skills topics.

The company recognized the opportunity to adequately, by providing employees with what they really need, show additional care for employees, organizing online trainings, and this proved to be an extremely good move, as shown by the results of the employee satisfaction survey in 2021 where the level of satisfaction and all other dimensions has further increased despite the difficult year and extraordinary circumstances.

In addition to the fact that this project is another example of very successful cooperation between Carlsberg and Tack TMI team, it might be more important to point out that this is an indicator that in our region there are companies that care for their employees, respect, accept and value them with everything that they as special individuals are: parents, colleagues, leaders and one of us – people with different skills, worries and roles.

Branka Radojicic, HR Business Partner:
“Just like people, good companies are also recognized in difficult times. That is why we have organized an online Learning Month for our employees in cooperation with Tack TMI with an emphasis on topics related to the well-being of our employees. Business results are always important, but the most important thing we have and what we try to nurture are our employees. That is why we have dedicated Wellbeing Learning Month to those topics that are now particularly current and important, and I would especially highlight the workshop on parenting. In this reversed time when working from home and working at home are constantly intertwined, when at the same time many working parents are trying to juggle their many responsibilities, the workshop “Parenting Challenges” helped us to look at things from an objective angle, to understand that It’s okay to be worried and scared of the uncertainty we are in, but at the same time it has encouraged us to be good at all of our roles, especially parenting. “