Learning has long been a key element of our people strategy at Deutsche Bank. It is important for us to help our employees get better at getting better. We strive to do this by creating an engaging, personalized and varied learner experience accessible to all employees, at every stage of their career.

In this context, the launch of our digital learning platform, Connect2Learn, in 2017 and our digitalization work in 2018 laid the foundation for transforming our employees’ learning experience – an essential step in building a learning culture at Deutsche Bank.

Empowering our employees is an integral part of our leadership agenda. We have invested in new technology to support learning and in 2021 we piloted a new learning experience platform, making that experience even easier and more personalized. With the help of artificial intelligence, every employee, everywhere in the world, will be able to access even more rich, varied and relevant learning at their fingertips. This new home of learning will be launched globally in 2022.

No longer is learning about completing courses, now it is about finding the knowledge and information you need, fast – and putting it into practice. Our technology roadmap is designed to enable this for our employees.

The #1 reason people leave an organization is due to “lack of growth or learning”.

(Deloitte/Linked In, 2019)

Considering the ever-changing needs of our employees, our offering is constantly evolving.  With the continuing impact of the pandemic and our focus on the Future of Work, we adopted three key themes in 2021.  These were resilience and wellbeing; empowering employees to be fit for a hybrid future; and supporting an open and inclusive culture. 

In 2021, 15,000 leaders also went through a workshop to support them to create a psychologically safe environment where colleagues feel able to speak up.

Mystery Coffee – Facilitating networking in the bank by matching staff for an in-person or virtual coffee using smart algorithms.

Building on what we achieved over the last few years, Mystery Coffee, totally global and virtual, continued to be one of our most successful informal learning initiatives. Matching employees across the organization for an informal ‘coffee’ enabled people to stay connected, learn about other areas of the business and appreciate difference.

Mystery Coffee

Who will you connect with next?


34,575 successful matches

To help employees build skills on how to be productive in a hybrid world, we created a series of learning playlists made of virtual classrooms, articles, videos or podcasts, giving tips and advice on key Future of Work topics. There for employees to dip in and out as needed, they aimed to help them develop skills to be inclusive, inspire trust and openness, and deliver value and innovation.

4,000 colleagues also registered to the 'Future of Work one-minute learning' series - Once a week for 12 weeks, they received an email that included a short summary of a featured article, video or podcast, giving tips and advice, along with additional links to further resources for a deeper dive.