Shaping our future and building our skilled team of tomorrow

Last year POLYGONVATRO in Germany intensified the “Young Talents” project with 43 promising young people. This proved to be a success, so this year an additional 37 new young people started their training programme at POLYGONVATRO.

“All in all we have currently 76 young talents in Germany. 31 branches have at least one young talent. They have been trained up on the following apprenticeships: Tiler, Painter, Office Administrator and ‘Office Administrator for Dialogue Marketing’ (new for 2020),” says Cornelia Czenkusch HR Manager at POLYGONVATRO in Germany that has been working hard on this together with her team.

The precise skills and theory taught are strictly regulated and defined by national standards. For example: An Office Administrator has always acquired the same skills and taken the same courses in accounting and controlling, marketing, HR management, trade laws, etc. When a student starts an apprenticeship at POLYGONVATRO, they have a specific employee as an instructor, who guides them through their three-year program in the company and at school.

“As in many other countries we have a recruitment problem. In Germany we lack skilled workers, especially in manual professions such as carpentry or tileing. So the decision to set up the apprenticeship programme and grow from inside the company has been a success. We get skilled crafts people out of it, which can be very hard to find. By doing this, we can also introduce young people to the company at the start of their careers and secure tomorrow’s qualified employees, today”, says Cornelia.

One important area of the programme is learning to connect with other people within the company and create contacts internally. A teambuilding camp has previously been an important part of the programme, but unfortunately this hasn´t been possible this year due to Covid. Despite this, the main takeaway from the trainees has been the great spirit they have encountered within Polygon and being made to feel as one of the family.

There´s no doubt that the Young Talent project has been successful. When getting to know Polygon, people want to stay. Three of the young talents have already finished their three-year training programme successfully and are now a part of the German team, having started their training as a part of a pilot project prior to 2019.

“We are shaping our future and building our skilled team of tomorrow by ourselves. Added to this, the work with young people creates another atmosphere and brings us new perspectives to what we do. We can teach them from the ground up and we can be more successful in the future,” says Cornelia.