How can one employee’s professional development benefit the entire company? At SOBY, we choose courses and training programmes based on our employees’ interests and changing market requirements. But we also look beyond the original purpose of the training, curious to see how new knowledge and perspectives might open up opportunities elsewhere in the company.
Employees at SOBY have different responsibilities, interests and ambitions for their professional development. That is why we do not follow a fixed training programme. Instead, we focus on the individual. Some employees need new skills for their daily tasks, while others are interested in exploring new areas of expertise or developing in a different direction.
"It makes little sense to send everyone on the same courses. We prefer to focus on what each employee needs and what they would like to become better at. Sometimes it is about new requirements or responsibilities. Other times, it is simply an employee who wants to learn something new. We believe there should be room for that too," explains Mette Frantsen, co-owner and Managing Director at SOBY.
New knowledge can often be useful in ways we had not originally anticipated. We experienced this when we began working with the green transition.
Initially, we needed to understand new documentation requirements. But along the way, we became curious about whether our new knowledge could also be applied to material selection, production processes and product development.
This changed the way we work across the company. And by making room for this kind of curiosity, we become better at identifying new opportunities and actively engaging with developments in our market.
New knowledge does not only come from courses and further training. At SOBY, we also help train the next generation of skilled workers. Our apprentices gain hands-on experience in production and learn from colleagues with many years of experience. But we find that learning goes both ways.
"We have many highly skilled employees with extensive experience, and we want to pass that expertise on. But we are also open to the fact that young people bring something new to the table. They often question ways of working that we may have followed for years. And that is something we can learn from too," concludes Morten Frantsen, co-owner and Managing Director at SOBY.
Morten Frantsen and Mette Frantsen became the third generation to lead the family-owned company when they took over SOBY in 2015. Since then, they have carried its culture forward while continuing to develop the business.