Success Story KWS

Globally standardised onboarding — 13 training videos for every business area, product and process.

Video ProductionEmployer BrandingOnboarding

About the company

KWS is one of the leading plant breeding companies worldwide. With more than 5,000 employees in over 70 countries, KWS generated revenues of around €1.5 billion in fiscal year 2021/2022. For more than 165 years, KWS has been run independently as a family-led company.

The company focuses on plant breeding and the production and sale of corn, sugar beet, cereal, vegetable, rapeseed and sunflower seeds. KWS uses state-of-the-art plant-breeding methods to increase farmers’ yields and to further improve plants’ resilience against diseases, pests and abiotic stress. To achieve this goal, the company invested more than €285 million in research and development in the past fiscal year.

KWS Logo

Globally standardised onboarding

KWS data visualisation

KWS operates in more than 70 countries worldwide. Processes previously handled at the individual regional sites had become an increasing challenge for the steadily growing organisation — both in terms of quality management and in communicating with the more than 5,000 employees worldwide today.

As a result, KWS initiated the move to a central service centre that delivers administrative services in a uniform, company-wide manner across the globe. As part of this, processes were adapted and standardised wherever possible. Onboarding in particular was to be standardised and made accessible worldwide.

The KWS workforce is heterogeneous. Not every new employee comes from an agricultural background, so the industry-specific topics at KWS initially require explanation. To convey all relevant information efficiently, in a resource-saving way and at consistent quality, a digital onboarding tool was developed as a self-learning instrument. Employees can use it independently to refresh or acquire the necessary knowledge.

KWS isometric site visualisation
KWS sugar-beet scene

For this, videos were to be produced that introduce the company and its various divisions in a clear, memorable and easy-to-understand way. The goal was to create a unique onboarding experience that would also strengthen KWS’s employer branding in times of a general talent shortage.

A successful partnership for audiovisual communication

13 training videos were produced covering every business area, product and process. In addition, a bespoke video identity matching the KWS corporate design was developed, including exclusive character sets to depict customers and stakeholders. The KWS visual world was expanded by many new elements, including icons and illustrations for internal and external communication.

KWS Custom-Icon-Library

In this way, vjsual helped to cover onboarding holistically and to offer new employees a strong experience. Thanks to the videos produced by vjsual, relevant content is now available flexibly and independently of location, at consistent quality and depth.

The onboarding video series is integrated into KWS’s internal learning platform SuccessFactors and has also become a valuable information source for existing employees.

Sang-Kyun Park

“We particularly value the attentive communication as well as the reliability and flexibility in the implementation. Because we were so satisfied, we have already initiated further joint video projects.”

Sang-Kyun ParkGlobal Employer Branding & Talent Attraction Expert, KWS

Ready for communication that creates impact?

Let us clarify how your communication can become structurally and measurably better.