Only a few hundred meters away from the group’s main administration for its European long carbon business and R&D centre, as well as located in the same city as the Luxembourg University, ArcelorMittal underlines the image of Esch as a place for research and development in the country.

The building is well suited to host the global programmes of the corporate university. The main campus in Esch is connected with regional campuses around the world. These are in South-Africa, Canada, Spain and Czech Republic, moreover the ArcelorMittal University disposes of a series of training centres at major sites in various countries. “For 2014, we are planning to enlarge the network of regional campuses in Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Brazil”, says Christian Standaert, General Manager at the ArcelorMittal University.

Connecting people in virtual trainings
The state-of-the-art facilities in Esch-sur-Alzette have three main classrooms and five so called “break out” or project rooms. Through latest conferencing technology, the campus in Esch can connect up to six sites or 50 individual participants simultaneously, so they can participate in a training that takes place at the main campus. “This allows us to reach more people, without increasing travel and logistics costs”, Christian Standaert explains.

In 2013 more than 60% of the participants in the group’s advanced steel programmes have followed the sessions in a virtual mode. The university counted about 3400 participants in classroom training and 17500 who had registered for online learning.

The main campus hosts the corporate team, which consists of 12 people. The team is in charge of the design and delivery of the global programmes, which also include talent pipeline programmes to grow ArcelorMittal’s own leaders. There are specific programmes to support women in their career development and programmes of general management suitable for all levels within the group. These shorter modules are also being locally delivered in the local language, with over 1,200 modules delivered in more than 30 countries so far.

A think tank for company needs
The university acts as a global design centre for bespoke learning and development programmes, which the corporate team develops on request of the business units. Likewise a think tank like this allows space to provide an experiential centre for new learning methodologies and technologies, including the latest developments such as collaborative learning and massive open online courses.
The quality of the ArcelorMittal University programmes and activities has been confirmed by the official accreditation for Corporate Learning Improvement Process (CLIP), which was implemented by the European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD) earlier this year.