SDU is this year’s best apprentice place
In public administration, there’s no one above or beside SDU as an apprentice place. This has just been made official.
‘No matter what age you are when you are employed, you will always feel that you are part of the group. We laugh, cry, eat Friday bread, decorate for birthdays and Christmas, eat a lot of cake and sweets, and discuss matters with each other, both as colleagues and friends’.
This is how the administration and financial trainees at SDU described their workday when they jointly nominated SDU as this year’s best workplace and apprentice place. And SDU took the prize in the ‘Public administration’ category.
Proud of the prize
Although it didn’t turn out to be the overall victory in the ‘Apprentice Place of the Year’ competition, Vibeke Vindahl Hermann, who coordinates the many SDU trainees’ training programme during their two-year apprenticeship, is happy about both the prize and especially the words of praise.
‘I am at least as pleased with the nomination as I am with the prize itself. The fact that it’s our trainees who have nominated us is a huge pat on the back’, she says.
‘We are so proud that our trainees joined to make this nomination. We have a trainee club for office and financial trainees, and they have sat down together to agree on what to write in the nomination’, she continues.
A joint victory
Vibeke Vindahl Hermann emphasises that the people who deserve the greatest honour and praise are the many persons responsible for the training programmes situated all over SDU. Because without them, no quality training for our trainees, she explains.
‘The persons we should really honour are the ones who are responsible for the daily training in the departments. It’s their achievement that we can offer as good an apprenticeship as we can.
During their apprenticeship, the trainees get to know the entire organisation, and they have a lot of influence on how their training is composed. Something that the trainees greatly appreciate.
‘We start our apprenticeship by gaining an insight into how big a workplace this is. You forget about it very quickly, but as time goes on, it becomes easier to find your way around the maze. We are allowed to have an influence on our rotation plan, so if you are very interested in what they do in the bookkeeping department, you talk to the person responsible for your apprenticeship, and he or she will then find out if this is possible’, they write in the nomination.
A broad training programme
‘We place great emphasis on trying to coordinate the two-year apprenticeship they have, so that the two years are pieced together into a broad picture of SDU. They don’t just sit at the same desk for two years, but they get around and gain a broad knowledge of the entire organisation’, says Vibeke Vindahl Hermann, who explains that the trainees typically work in five or six different departments during their apprenticeship.
‘We focus on the fact that they are employed in the Central Administration, but we try to make sure they all have a training period at a faculty or department to let them see how things are done in ‘the real world’.
The breadth of the training programme is also emphasised by the trainees, because it means that they all have an in-depth insight into the daily life of the giant shop that SDU is.
‘And who are lucky enough to be allowed to see many different sides of the same company during their apprenticeship? At SDU, we are! You are even allowed to sit in on salary negotiations if you want to, and as a 2nd year trainee you take part in job interviews when new trainees are being employed, which gives an insight into how the process takes place and what is emphasised when new trainees are being employed’, they write.
Many stay at SDU
This insight into the many different areas and systems we use at SDU is also why the trainees are worth their weight in gold when they have completed their training programme. They can in fact quickly take on most administrative functions at SDU, Vibeke Vindahl Hermann explains.
‘We have given them a great knowledge of administration at SDU, and this means that we can keep many of the ones who get jobs afterwards. They stick around because they like to be at SDU’.
‘I’m kind of a proud mother when they finish in August after two years and it's not a goodbye because we often see them in the corridors afterwards. We train them for work. Of course, it isn’t always a success, but we have pretty good statistics.
FACTS ON THE OFFICE TRAINEES AT SDU
SDU permanently has 12 trainees, which means that we take in six new ones each year starting in August.
They have a two-year training programme where they switch between school periods and time with us.
The trainees are trained in public administration, economics and a general administration programme, respectively.
We have trainees in both Esbjerg and Kolding in Student Services and on Campusvej.
The trainees meet in a network – the Trainee Club – three or four times a year, where they discuss anything and everything. They are in the process of updating the sites on sdu.dk, where we create trainee positions.
The trainees have an Instagram profile where you can follow them in turns. Check out @kontoreleversdu