Speexx Customer SBB Receives 2020 Oertli Prize

Speexx is thrilled to congratulate one of its customers, Swiss Federal Railways (Schweizerische Bundesbahnen), otherwise known as SBB, for winning the prestigious Prix Oertli (Oertli prize) this year. The Oertli Foundation recognizes leading activities that promote and facilitate multilingual language interaction in everyday Swiss life.

Founded in 1967, the Swiss foundation was created with the goal of strengthening the internal communication within Switzerland through a better mutual understanding between all four national languages (German, French, Italian and Romansch) spoken within the country.

This goal is achieved through building constant communication between the different parts of the country. In this spirit, the Oertli Foundation promotes the exchange of in-depth information about the country’s various language and cultural groups, as well as the recognition and celebration of multilingualism in the country.

The Foundation aims to build bridges between the language regions of Switzerland, SBB, with some collaboration with Speexx, has achieved exactly that. By winning this award, SBB can continue to promote and represent successful multilingualism in digital form.

As the national railway of Switzerland, SBB’s business revolves heavily around rail transport and logistics, moving around one million passengers a day. As such, it is vital that all SBB employees can communicate and exchange information effortlessly and in his or her preferred language – as well as the preferred languages of customers, partners and other stakeholders.

With four official languages in the country, it is inevitable that the SBB employees would encounter situations where they will be communicating in one of the four languages. Not only would this be a frequent occurrence for SBB employees, depending on job function, staff involved need to be able to speak those languages at certain levels (Sprachengesetz).

Working together, SBB and Speexx moved the Swiss Railway’s entire workforce from face-to-face language training to digital learning almost overnight by designing a flexible training plan that was ready to go digital immediately.

Thanks to dedicated cross-team collaboration, Speexx and SBB produced industry- specific multilanguage learning concepts that allowed for a large portion of SBB’s workforce to assess and improve language skills digitally specific to their individual job functions.

Speexx is especially honored this year to partner with SBB and to be included in the Prix Oertli award because traditionally the award is presented to individuals. SBB’s recognition marks the first time that the prize has been awarded to an entire organization.

“It’s an honor to receive this award from the Oertli Foundation,” says Sandra Hutterli, Head of Corporate Training and Digital Transformation at SBB. “We were able to move all our face-to-face training, as well as our assessment and certification to Speexx. Our work together was an example of successful digital transformation, especially as it’s become possible for SBB employees to now learn independently of time and place, better combing work and learning.”

SBB’s collaboration with Speexx demonstrates the importance of continuing work in the new normal, “especially during these remote working times, we’re thrilled to be empowering communication and helping organizations go all-virtual with their work and learning,” says Armin Hopp, President and Co-founder at Speexx. “As an international company ourselves, with offices throughout the world, we’ve had many years of experience working remotely and also entirely digitally. We look forward to helping other organizations ease into this new normal of all-remote work and learning transformation.”

Interested in learning more about driving digital transformation in the new normal?

Contact Speexx today: www.speexx.com