Getting Better Together – At Zühlke You Never Stop Developing

“We’re a learning company,” says Reto Schmid, Head of Learning & Development at Zühlke. “Personal development is deeply embedded in our culture, a key driver of our continued business success. That means we never stop growing. With us, you just keep on getting better.”  

At Zühlke, we prioritise the strategic development of competencies – technical, methodological and interpersonal – that are highly valued by our client base. This ensures our employees, our value proposition and our portfolio of disciplines and solutions remain adaptable, competitive and successful in the marketplace. We foster – and strongly believe in – development on-the-job, and the diversity of our projects presents ample opportunities for just that. We also offer a range of complementary, Zühlke-tailored training programs and like to leverage the power of coaching and mentoring. “From junior to executive, at every level development of our employees is very important to us,” says Reto.

Getting Better with Help from Your Colleagues

As a Zühlke employee, you’ll have regular development meetings with your line manager – to clarify your personal goals, assess your strong suits, and identify any areas that might need extra work. Building on this, you’ll discuss and agree suitable activities for your personal development.

“We want to make greater use of the mentoring concept in future and integrate it as simply as possible in our everyday work,” says Chantal Büchi, Head of Human Resources at Zühlke. “This will enable us to make even better use of the knowledge and experience available in the company.”

Getting Better Away from the Office

Among our extensive development opportunities is the annual Zühlke Camp. Once a year, everyone takes a break from their day-to-day duties to meet up with their colleagues in an unfamiliar location. “At one camp we built a popcorn machine – it took us three days,” says Stefan Grasmann, Managing Director Competence Center at Zühlke Germany. “You could order from the machine with an app and pay with bitcoin.” Like a ‘real’ Zühlke project, the camp brings together people from a range of professional backgrounds, and they all learn from each other.

In addition to the Zühlke Camps there are numerous other Learning & Development formats, including ‘Zühlke Days’ – local or company-wide event platforms for exchanging expertise, networking, testing new concepts and ideas, and getting first-hand client feedback. In addition, we offer an attractive in-house development curriculum accompanied by conferences and the ‘Market Place’, where individual employees give lectures to their Zühlke peers on topics linked to their specific area of expertise.

Getting Better with Every Single Project

At Zühlke, learning on-the-job is our preferred way of learning and growing – and the most important. “We apply a variety of agile methods in interdisciplinary teams. Constant reflection and exchange with colleagues is part of how we work,” says Romano Roth, Distinguished Consultant at Zühlke Switzerland. “It helps you rise to new challenges – together with great colleagues.”

But learning on-the-job involves more than agility. “With regard to project staffing, we’re looking for a healthy balance – between offering our employees a stretching opportunity to grow and ensuring a high-performance team set-up that solves our clients’ business challenges,” says Reto. “We try to assign our colleagues to projects that allow them to perform to their full potential and at the same time to develop, both personally and professionally.” The sheer variety of clients and projects at Zühlke complements this approach, making it easy to acquire a broad range of experience while continuing to improve your own skills.

Getting Better by Talking Openly About Mistakes

“Zühlke is a company that allows you to make mistakes,” says Romano. “Talk about them and we can all learn from them.” Zühlke strives for constant improvement, so we take an open-minded approach to mistakes and provide direct, constructive feedback.  “This is how you continuously get better at what you love doing,” he explains.