Working for a global company such as MDA affords employees opportunities to travel around the world to meet with international customers and work with subcontractors. Some of our positions involve relocations to other countries for periods of six months to a couple of years, thereby exposing employees to international experience.
With its breadth of customer markets and wide range of systems and services, MDA promotes from within, offering employees opportunities to grow their responsibilities over a variety of programs and projects. We have employees growing their careers in engineering, IT, commercial services, finance, operations management, business development, and general management.
Employees are encouraged to keep current with the latest advances in their respective fields. MDA enables this by providing resources that include tuition reimbursement programs for external courses and professional memberships, as well as in-house training programs to help grow proficiencies in key competencies vital to MDA's business. These resources are in addition to training provided by projects and departments to ensure their employees learn the tools and processes they need to excel at their jobs.
In-house Training Programs
MDA University (MDAu) is an internal training program with a comprehensive set of technical and non-technical courses for key business competencies. Courses are developed and delivered by either professional trainers, or employees who are subject matter experts.
Human Relations Training
Due to recent large contract awards in Russia and Ukraine, MDA Montreal provided Russian language courses and training on Russian culture to all employees involved on the project. MDA believes that it is important to promote effective communication to enhance performance and organizational success. Soon to come are Japanese courses!
The reverse is just as true. With a skilled workforce from all parts of the world, MDA Montreal also provides English and French courses to ensure the smooth integration in the Montreal culture and the aerospace industry.
Health and Safety
MDA places a high degree of emphasis on the health and safety of its employees. Whether an employee is a member of the engineering, manufacturing, financial or Human Resources department, MDA provides the necessary tools, equipment, workspace, training, and support services to be able to perform their jobs safely.
TechWatch
TechWatch is an ongoing program that delivers information sessions on a variety of topics to improve employee knowledge and assess current and emerging technologies that may benefit MDA and/or individual employee career development.
Professional Development Dollars
The Professional Development Dollars (PD$) program provides training dollars allocated to all permanent employees, to be spent at their own discretion on their career development. Along with a yearly allocation of dollars, MDA managers can also award additional dollars to employees for merit, and employees can earn PD$ for delivering MDAu courses or TechWatch sessions.
Central Training Fund
MDA's Human Resources department holds a Central Training Fund that is made available to employees in all departments and business areas to fund training that benefits employee career growth and professional development.
Book Club
From time to time, specific books are made available from the MDA Book Club for employees at 50% off the listed price.
Reading Clubs
Every quarter, books are chosen by the Book Clubs, and employees can choose to attend book club meetings to discuss books and learn from content and from colleagues.
MDA Scholarship Program
MDA values continuous learning. Each year, funding is made available to assist employees in the development of their skills to further their career aspirations through post-secondary and post-graduate studies.
Other Training
MDA encourages informal mentoring. Through its service agreement, the IT department makes a host of online training programs for using these software tools available to interested employees free of charge.
