FROM: MÄRKISCHE ALLGEMEINE | FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 2020
Four young people have completed their training at Spedition Ulrich Rieck & Söhne – the company has now been recognized as a “top training company”.
Großbeeren. Bad-tempered truck drivers are no laughing matter. Viktoria Köhler had to learn this early on in her training. “If something doesn’t work out in the process or customers aren’t there, then it can get loud on the phone,” says the 25-year-old. Köhler completed her training this year at the freight forwarding company Ulrich Rieck & Söhne in Großbeeren and was taken on in the department that coordinates local transport – in other words, exactly where bad-tempered truck drivers shout at you in the morning. She laughs. “I enjoy it, I like the stressful work,” she says. As the only woman in the department, she quickly learned how to assert herself. “Even during my training, I realized: this is mine.” Ensuring that every young employee finds the area in which they feel comfortable is very important to training coordinator Kathrin Vogt. “After all, we want to keep our trainees in the company after they graduate,” she says. And in order to achieve this, the company tries to make the training as good as possible. With success: the Potsdam Chamber of Industry and Commerce (IHK) has now named the Großbeeren site of the Rieck Logistics Group as a “Top Training Company 2020” for the first time.
The company is now one of six to be awarded the title. Celine Wolf, who also started her apprenticeship as a forwarding agent this year, noticed the difference to other apprenticeships early on: “I heard that many people were simply thrown in at the deep end and had to work full-time straight away,” says the 22-year-old. In her company, on the other hand, the training was very structured and she was able to get to know everything without a lot of pressure. “Over time, I was able to get a good idea of what I’m really good at.” The regular feedback meetings after each station were also a great help, says the young employee Viktoria Köhler. This is something that is neglected in many training companies, but is part of the established process at Rieck. There is also time for the young people to get to know each other at the start of their training, and they have the opportunity to do something together at the regular trainee day. 18-year-old Keno Koske, who started his training as a forwarding agent in August, chose Rieck because it is a family business.
“I wanted a really good education.”
“It makes everything a bit more personal,” he says. And his colleague Romina Stützel (19) was also picky, she says. As her father works in the same industry, she knew what she was getting into “I wanted a really good apprenticeship,” she says. The freight forwarding company Ulrich Rieck & Söhne in Großbeeren currently has eleven trainees. The company advertises three positions every six months, but in recent years it has not always been able to fill all of them – in stark contrast to this summer, when the company took on five trainees instead of three. “They were all good, so why should we let them go?” says Vogt. She links the huge rush of applicants to the coronavirus pandemic. “Many companies probably couldn’t take on any trainees,” she says. In addition, many young people have probably realized that jobs in forwarding companies are secure even in times of crisis, says Vogt. “They probably noticed that from the lack of toilet paper.”
The company firmly believes that young people will continue to enjoy working at Rieck in the future. The figures from the past speak for themselves: the retention rate for trainees is currently 95%.
Source: Lisa Neugebauer/MAZ
