As a global group, diversity is not an option at Audi – it is a must. Companies can only hope to be sustainably successful when the different mindsets, skills, cultural characters, and competencies of their employees work together. Audi relies on this, particularly on the way to all-electric and fully connected mobility, and is consciously promoting a diverse corporate culture, from networks such as dads@audi and internationals@audi to a strong LGBTQIA+ community and the Audi Philharmonic Wind Orchestra. In this way, Audi provides space for different perspectives.

The brand with the four rings takes the needs of its employees seriously and supports them in their individual life plans by offering extended breaks such as sabbaticals. Various programs such as remote work, flexible working-time models, or childcare slots for employees’ children in partnered childcare centers all help Audi employees to balance their professional and private lives. Employees can also work part-time or take a leave of absence to provide care for a close relative. Taking a holistic approach to occupational health and safety at the workplace, the company cares about the physical and mental health of its employees and managers. In times of transformation, the demands on each individual are especially great. This makes it all the more important to get all employees involved in helping shape a sustainably successful future together.

The automotive industry is in the midst of its greatest transformation to date. The entire environment is changing: Not just legislation, technologies, products, and processes, but customers and their needs as well. This demands new competencies and perspectives as well as calls proven structures and functions into question. The workforce is the decisive factor for success here. In its personnel transformation, Audi is following a socially sustainable path that enables every employee to play an active role in shaping the company’s future. In 2022 alone, AUDI AG invested around 150 million euros in employee training and development.

Individually tailored advanced training programs will qualify employees for the jobs of tomorrow. The company’s employment guarantee up through 2029 ensures employees have the security they need to focus on their personal development. By 2025, up to 2,000 new jobs are to be created in the areas of digitalization and electric mobility. Audi is also focusing on the internal development and qualification of employees for new tasks. For the start-up of the Q6 e-tron series, for example, Audi has qualified around 8,300 employees from Production, Technical Development and Sales in Ingolstadt by mid-2023.

In order to remove hurdles for employees who want to reorientate professionally, many company projects have been launched that provide employees with an individual learning experience. The successful pilot project “Digital Shift” in the production area at the Neckarsulm site lets employees undergo advanced training for a job in software development or IT infrastructure. A similar program called “Digital Future” is ongoing at the Ingolstadt site. The 6- to 18-month advanced training programs are designed to build IT skills within the company to help strengthen strategic future jobs and support the company’s digital transformation. Each advanced training program is tailored to the individual employee, depending on the level of prior knowledge, individual learning speed, and requirements of the future job. The recruiting concept leans primarily on individual interests or even hobbies and skills, rather than degrees.

Audi is also constantly adapting its training programs to this change, focusing on future jobs there as well. From the very beginning, Audi promotes the necessary skills that are crucial for the future, offering young people the chance to shape the mobility of tomorrow.

Audi’s transformation is having a particularly strong impact on the company’s Technical Development Department. It is not just the work itself that is becoming more complex. Development must be ongoing, because today’s customers expect their cars to receive both software and hardware updates. All the company’s processes, qualifications, and mindsets need to be aligned with this expectation. The new approach prioritizes continuous development instead of thinking in cycles. Here, too, the early decision to switch to all-electric vehicles provides the certainty necessary for planning.

So that Audi can fully focus on battery technologies from 2026, the Neckarsulm site will act as a competence center for the development of high-voltage batteries. Employees in the Neckarsulm Technical Development unit who wish to specialize in this field will continue to benefit from Audi’s individual training opportunities in the coming years. Additionally, a battery center for testing high-voltage storage technologies will go into operation – and employees are already being trained to run it.