Why carving out a career for yourself is now so much more than typical leadership responsibilities.
Larissa Förster: Collaboration within businesses is changing with flatter hierarchies, employees working in different teams depending on where their expertise is needed, and fewer people wanting to take on responsibility for staff. The relentless desire to grow professionally and be appreciated remains unchanged, however—a key reason why qualified employees change companies. In order to keep hold of these talents, we need alternative, equitable career paths.
How is Bechtle responding to these changes?
In addition to our JuMP Leader programme, we’ve now launched JuMP Expert which gives participants the opportunity to enhance and expand their personal and methodical skills. This is linked with taking on more responsibility, often in a specialised field and while this doesn’t mean assuming disciplinary responsibility, it does recognise employees’ specialist knowledge. As an IT company, enthusiasm and in-depth expertise are just as important to us as taking on leadership responsibilities. We need a combination of both to ensure our continuing success.
What can we expect from the JuMP Expert programme and how is it structured?
This programme is aimed at experienced employees who already have extensive expertise in their field, which is valuable to the department and the company. Over a period of eight months, the participants cover three modules, each entailing three days of in-person attendance, plus a kick-off and wrap-up event. Topics include lateral leadership, Bechtle-specific tools and methods as well as self-efficacy and consultation. There are also regular reflective discussions between the participants and their respective leaders as well as consultation sessions between colleagues. Over the entire eight months, participants will also be mentored by experienced colleagues.
We have JuMP Leader and JuMP Expert, but what other opportunities for advancement are offered at Bechtle?
We offer a whole range of options for every step of the career ladder. The latest is our Career Jumpers Programme, which is aimed at people without any knowledge of IT who may be interested in IT sales and specialising in clouds, IT security, the modern workplace and network solutions. Employees have the opportunity to train in-house as a Bechtle IT Business Architect, but there are also other certifications that are on offer. Our leaders can take part in a General Management Programme to broaden their leadership capabilities and then there are our Trainee and Student Retention Programmes as well as a programme to ready our trainees for their future careers at Bechtle.
All employees can also choose from an extensive range of training courses and formats offered by the Bechtle Academy to improve their soft skills, expand their specialist knowledge and gain methodical competencies.
