Workshop on the trainee programme of the future
Take lots of mentoring, a dash of experience abroad and a large portion of independent project work, round this off with some regular feedback, an unlimited employment contract and opportunities for further internal training – that’s how Julia-Carolin Schmid, budding economist at the University of Witten/Herdecke, described the ideal trainee programme. Along with around 30 other students from all over Germany, she took up Haniel’s invitation to attend the 2011 Innovation Day on 18 March in Duisburg, which gave participants the opportunity to develop visions of the trainee programme of tomorrow. “In the workshop, we slipped into the role of cooks and thought about what ingredients would make the ideal trainee programme”, explains Schmid.
Bringing everyone together
HR employees and academics also took part in the event. “Not all opportunities that claim to be trainee programmes necessarily offer much in the way of actual training. Many companies develop their programmes without taking into account the needs of the graduates they’re aimed at. This is why it’s high time that all those involved get together to discuss the future of traineeships”, says Dr Michael Prochaska, HR manager at Haniel, explaining the idea behind this event. And around 60 people took up the offer to attend. In three creative workshops, students, HR employees and academics rated the existing programmes from their respective points of view. While the team headed by student Julia-Carolin Schmid retreated to the “ideas kitchen” in a quest for the ideal recipe, the HR employees spent their workshop constructing towers from oversized Lego bricks. “The first thing we did was to look at the details about our colleagues’ trainee programmes. We then thought about which elements belong in a traineeship, such as which are mandatory and which are luxury”, explains Martin Vomstein, personnel officer at the REWE Group in Cologne. “I believe that networking events and meetings with management can really enhance existing programmes.”
Self-management of training budgets
Unbound by existing approaches, a mixed team of students, HR employees and academics developed ideas about trainee programmes of the future. Peter Sticksel, head of Management Development at Haniel, led the workshop. “Graduates should be able to put their entrepreneurial thinking and action to the test. This requires them to control projects independently and manage their own time and training budget.” Professor Norbert Thom, the keynote speaker at the Haniel Innovation Day and head of the Institute of Organisation and Human Resource Management at the University of Bern, considers there to be another very important aspect: “Projects give trainees the opportunity to get to know different departments within a company and so expand their network. Many companies have plenty of room for improvement in this regard.”
Individualisation is key
At the end of the day, the participants presented the results of all their workshops on an interactive marketplace in the foyer of the Haniel Academie. “There is broad agreement among graduates and companies about the requirements for a good trainee programme”, sums up Jochen Mai, head of Management & Knowledge for WirtschaftsWoche magazine and host of the event. Discussions concerning individual responsibility and flexibility proved to be especially challenging. “I would like to see a tailored programme that I can have a hand in structuring according to my own preferences and skills”, says Thomas Heber, a student at the Frankfurt School of Finance & Management. As yet, very few companies allow trainees to do this, as one look at the traineeship fact sheets on display in the foyer shows.
No patent recipe
Not least due to the numerous recommendations and opinions, the outcome of the day was that there is no such thing as an “optimum” trainee programme. After all, such a diverse range of applicants leads to an equally diverse range of expectations. Take student Julia-Carolin Schmid, for example: “I’d like to work in a company that I can identify with. When I look at potential employers, reputation and values are every bit as important as the content of the trainee programme.”
