BE THERE – BUILDING BRIDGES
Temporary exchange
Want to work abroad temporarily? You can with the “Be There – Building Bridge” program.
One of KWS’ principles is to create entrepreneurial freedom and help people unfold their talents. A temporary posting abroad can offer exciting insights. KWS colleagues worldwide took part in the “Be There – Building Bridge” program in fiscal 2020/2021. It gave them the opportunity to work in another part of our global organization for a short time.
The program is aimed at all people at KWS who have a good command of the English language and can reassign their normal work among their team for a period of three to six weeks. The focus should be on gaining new work experience, and so only little time should be spent away from their normal work so that they can keep an eye on it. Another requirement is that our colleagues’ supervisors have to give their consent and that everyone agrees on a learning objective. Free offers at potential hosts can be found on the digital “Be There” platform.
The project’s sponsors are Volker Utesch (Head of the Business Unit Corn and Oilseeds Europe/Asia), Jens Hittmeyer (Head of Global IT/CIO), Jürgen Leitzke (Head of the Business Unit Cereals) and Dirk Augustin (former Head of the Business Unit Corn and Oilseeds Europe/Asia, now retired). They have given the go-ahead for the first phase of the pilot project and provided strong support to the program’s team: In quarterly online conferences, our colleagues discussed how the project was going and talked about current results so as to learn from each other. Especially during the pandemic, it was very important to bring together different cultural and social worlds in one team.
Follow-up report
The experiences of three participants
Elena Averina
Elena Averina (Personal Assistant to the Regional Head of the Business Unit Corn and Oilseeds in Eastern Europe, KWS RUS LLC, Russia) worked on new projects relating to employer branding in the Global Human Resources Employer Branding and Talent Attraction team with Florian Bruhns, Sang-Kyun Park, Sarina Flemnitz and other colleagues. In branding, everything revolves around communication. KWS as an employer communicates externally and internally. Elena Averina not only expanded her personal communication skills, but also acquired new expertise in the field of employer branding. |
Ling Meng
A further result of such collaboration was the KWS Leadership Survey in June 2021. Ling Meng, a cell biology scientist at the KWS Gateway Research Center in the U.S., not only studied the work processes of the Business Unit Corn as part of the project, but also cooperated in a project on sustainable options in cattle, pig and poultry feeding together with Mona Dieckmann and Tobias Huth. Thanks to the project, Ling Meng experienced working in a new area of KWS and learned more about the opportunities and challenges in European corn business from the BU’s perspective. They included topics such as corn breeding activities, developments in corn market share relative to competitors, use, trait requirements, and regulatory and sales structures. She also got to know the various strategies, such as “Go2Market,” and their planning processes, related contract negotiations and licensing systems. |
Aurelie Bak
Aurelie Bak, Scientific Director of Biotic Stress Tolerance at the KWS Gateway Research Center in the U.S., acquired new knowledge in the field of marketing with reference to KWS’ Turkish market by assisting Asli Sila Guerun and her team. Aurelie Bak gained interesting insights and useful information on marketing and CRM data and into various campaigns, such as the initiative #WirSagenDanke and KWS INITIO. She also got to know the digital KWS world with its diverse online media and channels. In addition, she experienced a journey through Salesforce – the cloud-based customer management system used at KWS – and virtual visits to fields. |
Reducing peak workloads, helping team members develop further
Volker Utesch expresses her opinion of the project from her own perspective: “What impresses me about ‘Be There’ is the fact that the idea was the initiative of a small and very diverse international team and is being implemented by that team.” Volker Utesch feels sure that “Be There” offers employees the opportunity to expand their own horizons culturally and across disciplines, build networks and help shape interesting projects. “As a result, supervisors can reduce peak workloads and benefit from the fact that their employees develop themselves further and inject new perspectives due to the stay abroad.”
The pilot project’s first phase was held virtually due to coronavirus, but all colleagues expressed the desire to actually be posted abroad.
The team is now looking forward to the second phase and to the active participation of further employees in the program, who – as originally planned – will travel abroad in fiscal 2022/2023. |
Information
You can find more about the “Be There – Building Bridges” program and an overview of the available hosts at https://kwsnet.sharepoint.com/sites/bethere/. The project team will be happy to answer your questions: Asli Sila Guerun, Doralina Hoffmann-Lazar, Elena Averina, Aloisio Lovo and Michael Kohrs. |
Contact:
Elena Averina
elena.averina@kws.com
© KWS SAAT SE & Co. KGaA 2025
