In the current labour market, very few people are still working for their first employer. Jorg is an exception. And not because he is so honourable. "The reason is that Fourtress offers so much variety in your work that it never gets boring," he says.
Career counsellors
Fourtress is Jorg’s first job. After graduating, he did get asked to join his internship company Philips. "But”, Jorg says, “I noticed that in a big company like Philips everything takes a long time and involves a lot of organisational levels. But I prefer short lines and speed, and I like to see immediate results."
That's why he made the switch to Fourtress. "The diversity in projects appeals to me. You can move in all directions in this company. We have so-called Field Managers, who are career supervisors with whom you can sit down with every six weeks. They select assignments that match your ambition and personality. As a result, you almost always have a click with the company for which you start a project and you get assignments that match your interests, knowledge level and ambition."
Rapid progress
As a result, employees develop continuously. So does Jorg. "When I came in, I carried out several projects to discover what suited me. I soon found out that I really liked Front End and App development and then specialised in that. I developed everything from the Philips Hue app to a MaaS travel planner for public transport (the Turnn app)."
When Fourtress set up its own project agency, Jorg raised his hand. He then worked with colleagues to develop the internal processes. From that job, he grew into the consultancy field. After all, as a consultant, he doesn't always have to be engaged in project work on a full-time basis, he can continue to do work for Fourtress itself. Among other things, he chairs the works council. "Fortunately, there are no complex processes, because most employees are thoroughly satisfied with the content of their work and with the framework conditions. As a Works Council, we are mainly involved in organisational changes, such as last year's takeover by ICT Group. I find it interesting to use this role to take a look at what is going on internally and which decisions are taken by the management. And it is even more interesting to be able to influence these decisions."
"Fourtress is an informal company where it's easy to knock on each other's door for help and where everyone is nice to each other. We also regularly meet each other outside of working hours."
Good training opportunities
At the moment, Jorg is consciously thinking about his career again. "I have been a consultant for a number of years now and I’m noticing that I do want to move closer to operational project management. This was triggered by a project in which I initially wondered whether it was the right match, but which, on reflection, turned out to be very instructive. It involved scheduling a lot of software migrations, and I found out that project management requires different skills and I am developing those now."
In order to acquire these skills, Jorg mainly uses Fourtress' online learning environment, which allows you to take all kinds of e-learning modules. "It’s a good thing that Fourtress encourages you to develop yourself and take regular training courses. That can be done offline, but also online. The latter suits me well at the moment, because it allows me to take a training course at the time that suits me best." Asked about the most interesting training courses, Jorg thinks for a moment, then says decidedly: "I now use Stephen Covey's methods in my work: 'The 5 choices to extraordinary productivity' and 'The 7 habits of effective leadership'. They are incredibly useful to me."
Fun staff outings
Finally, he praises the atmosphere at work and the pleasant colleagues. "Fourtress is an informal company where it's easy to knock on each other's door for help and where everyone is nice to each other. We also regularly meet each other outside of working hours. We have events organised by our staff association to which everyone is invited, sometimes including your partner, for instance the Christmas dinner and the summer event. We also organise a lot of informal outings with smaller groups, and we regularly undertake sporting activities, such as an ice hockey clinic or mountain biking."
Jorg has been working at Fourtress for 15 years, but he can’t see himself leaving for the time being. "I like everything about this company: the working atmosphere, the colleagues, the supervision, the career opportunities. I’m happy with the steps I’ve taken and that I’ve been able to develop so well. So with hindsight, I can say that it was an excellent choice that I chose Fourtress so early in my career."