OREANDA-NEWS. September 25, 2014. Nine hundred sales and services locations, 20 production sites, more than 1.2 million units under service worldwide, and now 50,000 people. A tight-knit network ensures that service technicians are quickly available wherever they are needed in the world.

ThyssenKrupp Elevator announces that it has hired its 50,000th employee, a 21 year-old engineer. Chen Haihui has joined the company as a service technician in the 28-million metropolis of Chongqing, a city in China belonging to the group of the world’s largest cities.

China is one of the main drivers of global urbanization, expected to have 22 cities with more than five million inhabitants by 2030. As a result of this increasing urbanization in China in recent years, ThyssenKrupp Elevator has focused on expanding in the region. The number of local branches in the country has grown from 32 in 2010 to over 60 in 2014, and a recruitment programme was deployed to hire skilled people. In addition, ThyssenKrupp implemented training and motivation programmes with the aim of developing a team of dedicated people fully committed to deliver quality solutions and services.

After a three-year apprenticeship at one of the 42 vocational corporate colleges cooperating with ThyssenKrupp, as well as six months of on-board training, Chen Haihui is now starting his career with ThyssenKrupp Elevator. “I can put my skills to targeted use here”, says 21-year-old Chen. “At the same time, the position is a challenging one, which keeps you excited to never stop learning and improving”.

ThyssenKrupp Elevator’s Chinese branches are mainly composed of young people like Chen Haihui, with more than a third below the age of 25. To ensure the company’s people are the most knowledgeable in the market, ThyssenKrupp Elevator cooperates with excellent vocational colleges nationwide. For this, teaching staff and experts connected to the SEED Campus, ThyssenKrupp Elevator’s global learning platform, are made available to the colleges, which in return include company-specific topics in their training courses.

Alongside internships, ThyssenKrupp Elevator also supports potential young employees with grants and offers them positions as service technicians upon successful graduation. This is how Chen Haihui came to work for the elevator company. He says, “ThyssenKrupp has been cooperating with our college for many years, which has given the company a good reputation. Working for ThyssenKrupp in China means job security and the chance to forge my own career”.

Continuous improving by SEED Campus

Haihui will soon be joining the “Levelling Programme”, a ten-stage career path model developed by ThyssenKrupp Elevator especially for service technicians in China. The system offers participants a variety of further training measures and seminars along their career path. The measures were organized by SEED Campus. “SEED Campus brings together all our elevator-specific learning opportunities under one roof. We are constantly developing our training portfolio to address local requirements and thus provide the best possible support to our regional business strategies”, says Gabriele Sons, CHRO and member of the executive board at ThyssenKrupp Elevator. She added, “We offer technical, function-related, and management training around the world to ensure uniform quality standards. Normally, the trainers are members of our own staff or management”.

In addition to the training truck, ThyssenKrupp’s itinerant training facility that visits branches throughout China providing on-site technical training, SEED Campus also has its own fixed training centres, such as the one in Shanghai. An additional programme, called Leadership Excellence, has also been launched to provide advanced training for managers who, like Chen Haihui, wish to achieve a team leader position in the future.

ThyssenKrupp’s advanced training programmes are acknowledged to be amongst the best of their kind. In 2012, ThyssenKrupp Elevator’s Levelling Programme was honoured with the HR Excellence Award for the Best Learning & Development Strategy, bestowed by the German People Management Association (Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Personalfuhrung e.V.).