“Audi has earmarked a further education and training budget of up to EUR 500 million.”

Ros: At Audi, we have created a very modern and forward­-looking approach that gives our employees maximum flexibility. The focus here is on striking a balance between working together face-to-face and collaborating digitally. We rely on the responsibility of our employees and do not impose any fixed rules regarding on-site presence, as long as this is compatible with their duties. For us, hybrid working also means that we can make more flexible use of office space, with a gradual introduction of desk-sharing models in the coming years. Moreover, we offer equipment packages to support ergonomic mobile working from home and efficient collaboration in hybrid teams. All of this is set out in our “Hybrid Working” works agreement.

Flexible working models at Audi are not limited to office workplaces, by the way. We are also currently developing more flexible working models for employees performing time-sequenced tasks on the production line. As part of this, we are making it easier to access digital offerings from Audi and improving the quality of time spent at the company for our employees in production.

We are cooperating with the scientific community to gain an even better understanding of the future needs of employees in the hybrid working world. Together with the University of St. Gallen, we conducted an extensive study. In more than 50 workshops, 1,500 participants looked into the question of how to best organize and shape the new working world. The result: a high degree of self-organization and personal responsibility is the basis for leveraging efficiency potential in hybrid forms of work. Jointly defined rules at the team level thus improve everyone’s success.

Ros: With Audi.Zukunft, we created the basis in 2019 for necessary personnel adjustments. The majority of the socially acceptable job cuts agreed at that time have been made. Now we are turning our attention to internal restructuring and personnel expansion. We are recruiting externally again, above all in future-oriented areas such as electric mobility, digitalization, automation and corporate IT.

With our HR transformation program, we are also training our workforce to become sought-after specialists. Our goal is to secure the key skills that Audi needs for its future areas of business by means of upskilling (i.e., learning more advanced skills) and reskilling (i.e., learning new skills). And it is working. In the last two years, there were around 8,000 participants in tailor-made training programs in areas of future significance such as electric mobility and IT. This means, for example, that former combustion-engine engineers are now developing the electric drives of the future, former automotive mechatronics technicians are ensuring that batteries work properly and former production staff are active in the field of IT. Audi has earmarked a further education and training budget of up to EUR 500 million for the period up to 2025 – in my opinion, an extremely important investment in the future of the Four Rings.