‘If you have a good idea, tell someone and make it a reality’

“Discover where your heart lies. Do what you’re good at. Keep developing yourself. Those are important values within Capgemini, and to me as well. Twenty-five years ago, I retrained from an electrotechnical engineer to a software developer, because the field appealed to me more. At Capgemini, I went on to work in project coordination and management. I want everyone to be able to develop themselves as they see fit. So I give our people the space to do that as department manager.”

“Around 300 technical specialists work in the four departments I lead. Most of them work for parties in the financial world. It’s a very diverse group: from testers to scrum masters, and from digital business analysts to super-specialists in fields like cloud, full stack or data. That also highlights one of the great things about Capgemini: we have a huge number of disciplines in-house. So our employees can grow professionally in any direction.”

“To me, everything revolves around people: their plans, ideas and motivation. Those are much more important than the inevitable hierarchy and ‘boxes’ in an organization. Plus, Capgemini is a consultancy firm where the employees, not the management, know best what’s going on at the client and in the area of technology. So there’s every reason to give them the chance to start new partnerships and develop new initiatives. That makes us as an organization stronger.”

“Anyone who has an idea can always pitch it to me. We can do it over a cup of coffee – in-person or digitally – or by submitting the proposal during our bi-weekly department meeting where I discuss new initiatives and invite people to join in. That creates smaller groups of colleagues who try things out together. Not every idea turns out to be a success, but that’s not important. The main thing is that we’re constantly in motion and always trying out new opportunities.”

“How can employees strengthen themselves and Capgemini with new ideas? For example by discovering new technologies and training colleagues to use them. Or by developing a new domain where we’re not yet active. One colleague noticed that her client had a need for data experts. So she suggested recruiting people from our department and training them. In just six months, she’d created an entire data group. We’ll soon be presenting it to the rest of the colleagues.”

“Or another example: one of our senior developers suggested the idea of developing and offering our own six-week basic front-end course, as an alternative for the general front-end master class offered to the entire company. I was enthusiastic about the plan, and it resulted in a real win-win situation. The new employees were trained by their future immediate co-workers, so they were able to quickly build up their own internal network. And we can schedule the training courses much more flexibly, because we’re the ones offering them.”

“If you wait until someone tells you how to organize your career for the next 20 years, then Capgemini isn’t the right place for you. But if you look for opportunities to develop yourself, try new things and help yourself and others get ahead, then you’ll feel right at home with us. You’re really the master of your own destiny here. Entrepreneurship and initiative are encouraged and rewarded. The product of that culture is happy employees and constantly improving services for our clients. And that’s what we do it for.”