Domaine de Villepreux: EADS opens its international Corporate Business Academy, near Bordeaux in France
On 24 November 2004, Philippe Camus and Rainer Hertrich, co-CEOs of EADS, opened the EADS Corporate Business Academy (CBA), the management training centre for executives from all Group entities worldwide. Starting in 2005, some 2,000 members of staff will be attending management courses there and eventually, the EADS Corporate Business Academy will be open to executives from outside the Group.
Villepreux, 24 November 2004
The EADS Corporate Business Academy is opening its doors to all EADS group executives. Located on the Domaine de Villepreux near Bordeaux, it was born out of the observation made by EADS that building a strong corporate culture shared by all the sites around the world is essential to perpetuate the Group in its current scope. A single culture is also vital to the Group’s global development and competitiveness.
On the topic, Philippe Camus and Rainer Hertrich, co-CEOs of EADS, declare “Education and training are priorities to us and they are a good illustration of the changes taking place in our industry and our European firms. They are the symbols of new forms that our companies, economies and societies are taking on: our success is increasingly dependent on knowledge, which means it is based on education”.
Aware of these issues, the EADS Group has created a centre where all of its employees can develop their management skills.
Starting in 2005, the EADS Corporate Business Academy will be attended by 1,500 to 2,000 executives and senior executives, from the Group’s different establishments around the globe. They will have access to the entire catalogue of training courses currently on offer: career development, developing methods (experts, HR, purchases), increasing development strategies. The CBA has also initiated research programmes into ‘the European way of doing business and the way international companies must use this competitive advantage over their rivals’.
Most participants will be recently promoted managers or those about to be promoted. Thus, the EADS Corporate Business Academy has devised a specific course, called “FAST”, focusing on the transition to a management position. To consolidate their knowledge and progress in management, the Academy offers the very same executives another course, called “EXPAND”, to be attended 3 to 5 years later so as to develop their competence.
By its very structure as a European group, EADS is a multicultural group. And this is a feature that EADS has passed on to its CBA by allowing those who come to train to enhance their experience through inter-staff exchanges.
About this, Philippe Camus and Rainer Hertrich, co-CEOs of EADS add “The diversity of our teams is our strength because joint goals, a will to learn and a yearning for success have become driving forces and cement EADS’ corporate culture and the Group’s employees. A new corporate spirit has emerged and employees are now proud to belong to a group in which people of different nationalities work side by side. Our European experience has taught us to really take advantage of our diversity. Only a company that manages to understand the value of diversity can become truly global”.
The Domaine de Villepreux, inherited from the Aérospatiale Group, is in a 14-hectare park near Bordeaux, at the centre of Europe and within easy reach of Paris, Munich, Madrid, Marignane, Toulouse, London and Hamburg. It provides the members of the Group’s staff with state-of-the-art training technology and facilities, rooms that can seat 120-strong groups, as well as communal areas so they can socialize outside the classroom.
Training: a priority at EADS
The Group invests some 4.3% of its wage bill in training, the equivalent of 0.8% of turnover. In 2003, approximately 65,000 of the Group’s 110,000 salaried employees received training, which is more than half of the Group’s staff and amounts to 170,000 days, or 1.2 million hours, of training each year.
At EADS, a considerable part of training is dedicated to health and safety (1/3 of the courses or 5% of the hours of training). The rest encompasses adaptation and development courses including leadership training. However, training in the Group is not only for executives and is equitably shared between engineers and senior managers (30%), middle managers and technicians (33%) and workers and employees (37%).
Technical courses account for 80% of total investment in training. It has to be said that the Group, whose high-tech business requires a considerable standard of technological qualification, employs more than 1,000 technical experts. Furthermore, the Group’s human resources division has just introduced a new course for technical experts on career and training recognition, etc.
About EADS
EADS is a global leader in aerospace, defence and related services. In 2003, EADS generated revenues of € 30.1 billion and employed a workforce of about 109,000. The EADS Group includes the aircraft manufacturer Airbus, the world’s largest helicopter supplier Eurocopter and the joint venture MBDA, the second largest missile producer in the global market. EADS is the major partner in the Eurofighter consortium, is the prime contractor for the Ariane launcher, develops the A400M military transport aircraft and is the largest industrial partner for the European satellite navigation system Galileo.
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