New Learning at Deutsche Bahn

How DB Fernverkehr AG uses imc Express to easily turn thousands of Word pages into attractive and multilingual learning content.

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DB Fernverkehr AG is a subsidiary of Deutsche Bahn AG and offers its passengers fast, comfortable and environmentally friendly travel within Germany and to 14 European countries. With over 500 ICE and Intercity trains, it transports more than 400,000 passengers to their destination every day.

With more than 19,000 employees, it operates a dense network of over 800 daily long-distance rail services and connects many regions of Germany. In addition to its national services, it also offers around 250 cross-border connections to over 80 European cities every day.

Ten maintenance workshops and around 170 locations for the provision of trains throughout Germany ensure that DB Fernverkehr AG's fleet is always ready for use.

A shortage of skilled workers and employee fluctuation are impacting many companies and often require new training for the workforce. Deutsche Bahn is no exception. A particular challenge is that face-to-face training is expensive and blocks trains that are needed to transport passengers.

Nicole Szabo, on-board service qualification officer and her team therefore wanted to focus more on digital learning formats. But where should they start? The existing training materials comprised 3,000 to 4,000 pages of Word documents and were sometimes written in a complex way. A problem for learners whose native language is not German, which is particularly common in the on-board catering sector.

Ms Szabo was therefore looking for a solution that would enable their training developers to create digital learning content quickly and easily.

"We wanted a way or tool for leaders to simulate challenging conversations anytime and anywhere," says Corinna Jaron-Theiler, Organisational Development Specialist at Festo. "Ideally, the person should also receive feedback on their behaviour."

In addition to scalability, internationalisation was an important factor. It was almost impossible to offer standardised, practice-oriented training for leaders worldwide.

For Manuel Schmidt, Learning Innovation at Festo, it was particularly important to provide a safe space for communication training. "Comparable to a dojo in karate or sparring in boxing, allowing you to practise and improve," he explains.

With imc Express, Nicole Szabo and her colleagues were able to upload numerous Word documents and transform them into interactive learning content for employees with minimal effort. The user-friendly interface considerably simplifies the creation and administration of learning content, and the ease of sharing facilitates the feedback process. Automated templates which are CI-compliant also ensure a consistent quality standard.

Employees from all backgrounds now benefit from the automatic translation function and consume the content in their native language, for example in Turkish, Arabic, Ukrainian, French and Spanish. This increases understanding and acceptance.

Nicole Szabo describes another advantage of imc Express for DB Fernverkehr AG: "Our training developers don't create elearning courses full-time, they are practical trainers. These are the people who know the most about the topics. That's why we needed an easy-to-use tool that already gives them a basis for the structure of the elearning courses. This means they don't have to start from scratch."

With imc Express, Szabo and her team were able to provide a wide range of digital learning content in a short space of time. In doing so, they are positioning Deutsche Bahn as an attractive employer, as younger employees in particular want to use digital media. The finished elearning courses can be easily integrated into the Group's own learning management system.

In view of the large number of training developers, the team was particularly pleased with the tool's ease of collaboration, which facilitates coordination and checks. In addition, the number of people who can create training courses is unlimited.

The content is available on-demand via employees' tablets or smartphones when it is needed. They also create a shared knowledge base that can be built-on in classroom training sessions.

Szabo summarizes: "Our training developers enjoy using imc Express very much and frequently. One of them has even created over a hundred smaller training units. We can also provide specific content for smaller target groups where it would not be worth investing in our own elearning."

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