The automotive industry is one of the most complex, competitive and quickly developing sectors in today’s economy. With that in mind, we can confidently say that a highly-skilled workforce is essential to securing a top market position in our field. People may think that specialized skills are necessarily associated with an University degree or management roles. At Renault Group Romania, also blue collar employees sometimes undergo extensive training in order to be able to effectively perform their jobs. Stamping dice technicians, for example, require around 5 years of development in order to reach the peak performance in their roles. Moreover, in our line of business, new roles emerge constantly, frequently requiring innovative combinations of technical and generic skills.
In order to find the skills we need, we can look within Renault or outside our organization. Being part of a global company can be very helpful when dealing with skills shortages. We have the possibility to resort to our internal mobility programs, and transfer these skills from one Renault site to another. These experts later help disseminate new expertise among the staff.
Specialization wanted
There are also certain highly specialized roles at Renault Group Romania that are different from any other jobs on the Romanian market. In such cases, relevant experience or education on the domestic market is understandably inexistent. An option is to re-train our staff, using internal or external experts.
Frequently, we are recruiting for specialized jobs for which the most reasonable approach is to search for talent on the Romanian labour market. Sometimes, we were confronted with notable gaps between our expectations and what the labour market offered, and this is something that we are rather concerned with at present. We have high expectations of the Romanian vocational and higher education systems, particularly of the technical one. We are looking closely at the developments in the education area, and we are happy to collaborate with authorities, educational institutions and other stakeholders to support the alignment of the Romanian schooling system to today’s and tomorrow’s business needs.
Having the right person in the right job is not the end of the story. Specialization is also linked to life-long learning.
5.5 million hours of learning
What is today a golden piece of knowledge, may be obsolete tomorrow. We provide complex technical and soft-skills development programs to all our employees, as a rule. We value flexibility, the ability to manage ambiguity and novelty as well as the ability to learn in our staff. We are committed to continuous personal and professional development, and have invested significantly in technical and generic competencies development programs, across all levels of the organization. During the past 11 years, Renault invested 35 million euros in development programmes in Romania, and we have delivered 5.5 million hours of training.
