Our apprentices Fabrice Kern and Munira Baumann, both in their 4th year of training as Event Specialists EFZ, took over the management of audio and lighting for the Fight Night event. Steffen Schmid, Technical Manager, was responsible for overall project management and liaising with the client. Get exciting insights from Steffen's perspective in our two-part interview series "Apprentices take over divisional management" and find out from our young talents what highlights and challenges they experienced.
Steffen: Due to tight budget constraints, I worked with the client to find a way for us to realise the project. The client thought it was great that we, as a training company, were able to offer our next generation this opportunity. He took on board the risk that perhaps not everything would go perfectly right from the start – but fortunately this was not the case. Of course, we didn’t send our apprentices into the race without support. Our specialist planners were always on hand to answer their questions or to reflect their ideas. The timing was also good, Munira and Fabrice had plenty of time. As school days are repeated on a weekly basis, it is often a challenge to involve students in a longer project.
All apprentices took part in the ‘Fight Night’ event.
For Habegger, it was a first for apprentices to take over the management of an area within a client project. This was truly unique and marks the next step for us as a training company to bring our budding event technicians even more out of their shells. All our apprentices, regardless of their year of training, have huge potential and a great passion for their profession.
My aim is to encourage and challenge our young talents in order to give them a solid foundation. Of course, this also means extra work, but it is our responsibility to pass on knowledge and provide training – and this investment is 100% worthwhile.
To be able to give both of them a lot of experience along the way and to show them the various options open to them through the management of a department. Our young talents don’t normally have so much responsibility, but in this project they were immersed in our systems and had to take many details into account when planning that they didn’t know about beforehand. One particular moment was when Munira put pressure on me and demanded outstanding information – I knew then: “It’s working!” Both have implemented this very confidently, not a single mistake.
I’m particularly proud of the two of them for how well they carried out their new position and how calm they remained on production day.
Of course, the project also came with a certain amount of uncertainty, as I had never managed a project with prospective event technicians managing a department before. In the end, praise came from all corners: from our partner venue, the Hallenstadion Zurich, the client and also internally – it was simply a fantastic young talents project.
For the next apprentice project, I would plan the pre-implementation phase in even more detail in order to define clear learning objectives and process phases. In the fast-moving live event business, this is easily forgotten alongside the many other productions. Learners have to be able to take on responsibility and also hand it over – in this project, I had to learn to hand over responsibility to Fabrice and Munira myself. It was a new role for me, too, but I would do it again any time.
Fabrice, Head of Lighting, and Munira, Head of Audio, take a look behind the scenes and talk about their highlights and challenges and what this unique opportunity has meant to them.
Our team will continue to broaden in the future, as we are always on the lookout for exceptional personalities for live communication.
Every two years, Habegger takes a close look at its own working environment together with “Great Place to Work®”, with the aim of identifying optimisation potential in order to remain an attractive employer in the future, too. In 2022, we have once again received the award for an optimal working environment.
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