Strengthening team spirit – SWAN starts the training year

Augsburg, 10.09.2024 – SWAN GmbH kicks off the 2024/25 training and study year with three new apprentices and two dual students. SWAN is currently training 14 young professionals – five dual students and nine apprentices. During a joint onboarding week, the future specialists get to know the SAP logistics project house and their colleagues. Training its own SAP logistics experts is a key pillar for SWAN to address the industry’s skilled labor shortage.

For the three apprentices in IT specialist training for application development and the two dual students pursuing a Bachelor of Science in International Management for Business and Information Technology (IMBIT), training and studies began with visits to SWAN’s three largest locations: Augsburg, Giebelstadt, and Nuremberg. Joining the tour were also four interns and three juniors from SAP consulting and sales, who had started at SWAN at the same time. In addition to networking with existing colleagues, a comprehensive program was planned. Table football sessions at the locations, a bowling evening, and shared lunches and dinners helped strengthen the sense of unity among the young professionals.

“It’s important to us that our young professionals meet as many of their colleagues as possible in person from the start,” says Sahin Aydin, trainer and coach at SWAN. “This breaks down barriers for later collaboration and quickly creates a sense of belonging to the SWAN team.”

SWAN Onboarding Week: By Young Professionals, For Young Professionals

The program for the introductory week was designed by the apprentices and students in their first year of training or study. The project was developed in line with SWAN’s project methodology, with two project leaders. Tasks were identified and distributed independently and responsibly, tracked via the project management tool, and communication with other departments such as management, business administration, marketing, or human resources was managed.
“By allowing them to plan the week independently, we deliberately push our apprentices and students out of their comfort zone,” says Günter Eckert, Head of the SWAN Academy. “It’s always exciting to see how they flourish in their roles and grow through this project. We believe it’s essential to provide them with a secure environment with a culture of open feedback and support to prepare them for everyday project business.”

Soft Skills Development for Tomorrow’s Professionals

In addition to solid and practice-oriented technical training in the SWAN Academy, SWAN places great emphasis on developing and promoting soft skills. In several workshops, the young professionals received a personal toolkit of methods to help ease their workday. This included training on time and self-management, tips and tricks on self-care, and the basics of successful meeting and feedback culture.
The foundation for communication and collaboration at SWAN is based on the four company values: “Respect and Appreciation,” “Flexibility,” “Trust and Transparency,” and “Team Spirit.” SWAN dedicates a workshop to these values to familiarize apprentices and students with the company’s code of conduct and give them the opportunity to help shape SWAN’s spirit from the very beginning.

Developing Young Talent to Combat the Skills Shortage

SWAN places great emphasis on sustainable training to optimally foster its own specialists from the outset. A key goal is to retain apprentices and students as experts within the company after graduation. At the end of the last academic semester and training year, SWAN successfully transitioned three students and one apprentice into permanent positions.

“Skilled professionals in the SAP logistics field are scarce,” emphasizes Alexander Bernhard, Managing Director of SWAN GmbH. “That’s why we place great importance on being an attractive employer at all career levels. We lay the foundation with our hands-on training approach. We’re proud to have established ourselves as a respected and popular training company and that we can fill our training and study positions early each year with truly great young people. Combined with a higher-than-average retention rate, this makes me optimistic about our future as an SAP consulting firm.”