ArcelorMittal: From training culture to a world of curious learners 

ArcelorMittal is the world's leading steel producer, with over 125,000 employees spanning plants, offices, and operations and customers in 129 countries. Like many large manufacturers, learning had long meant one thing: mandatory compliance training. Something done to people, not with them. 

ArcelorMittal University – the internal corporate university – saw an opportunity to change that. Stacey Guney and her lean L&D team wanted to give employees content they would find useful and applicable beyond the required compliance modules, built around the topics that mattered to the business. They needed a platform that could flex to their strategy, not just fill a catalogue. 

ArcelorMittal began their journey with Access Learning Content, then known as Bookboon, in 2019. But what set them apart from the start wasn't just having the platform. It was how they used it. 

Rather than simply making content available and hoping employees would find it, Stacey’s team built a deliberate communications engine around it. Every month, they sent themed newsletters curated around the company’s strategic priorities for that period:

• Performance management
• AI literacy
• Employee development
• Finance fundamentals

The content didn't sit in a library waiting to be discovered; it landed in inboxes, tied to something employees were already thinking about. 

Access Learning Content's Customer Success Manager, Dan, was a consistent partner throughout. Working alongside Stacey and the team, Dan helped shape the newsletters, provided platform analytics to track what was resonating, and ensured the content offering stayed aligned to ArcelorMittal's evolving priorities. Over five years, that relationship became part of the engine itself. 

The newsletter approach 

Monthly themed communications, co-created with Dan, curated the right content at the right moment. Usage data consistently showed spikes that tracked directly with send dates. 

Content tied to company moments 

From Learning Week to Finance Academy programmes to company-wide awareness campaigns, Access Learning Content was embedded into the moments that already had employees' attention. 

Building a curiosity culture 

“Be curious” became ArcelorMittal’s learning tagline and Stacey Guney reports it now appears in the corporate vernacular far more often. A platform benefit became a cultural shift. 

After five years of building one of the most engaged learning communities in the business, Stacey has clear advice for organisations just starting out with Access Learning Content. 

Don't just put it out there and hope.

The biggest mistake organisations make is treating a content platform as a field of dreams: buy it, launch it, and expect people to come. They won’t. You have to communicate consistently and relevantly and make access as seamless as possible. 

Link content to what already matters.

The highest-performing content at ArcelorMittal is always the content that's been paired with an active initiative or company theme. If people are already thinking about performance reviews, send them a great resource on performance management. Meet them where they are. 

Think about community, not compliance.

The goal isn’t to tick a box. It’s to build a group of people who are curious together, who hold each other accountable, and who start to share knowledge of their own. That’s where the real return on learning investment shows up. 

Dan has been ArcelorMittal’s Customer Success Manager throughout their Access Learning Content journey and Stacey Guney is clear that the relationship has been central to their results. 

Working together on every monthly newsletter, Dan helped shape the themes, select the right content, and review the analytics to understand what was landing. When usage spiked, they knew why. When something wasn't working, they adapted.