Beyond the Job – because vocational training at Krones is so much more

Helping to organize Welcome Week 

A warm welcome!

Apprentices who started their training at Krones in 2024 or 2025 will already be familiar with Welcome Week. It’s a four-day onboarding event for new apprentices, persons undergoing reskilling and students enrolled in a combined vocational training and degree program, and it’s aimed at helping them quickly get oriented at Krones. The highlight among the many activities is a two-day gathering that brings together all new apprentices from across the German centers in one place, so they can get to know each other. An event like this needs careful planning. And that is where the organizing team comes in: Second- and third-year apprentices ensure that participants from the other plants are well taken care of in Neutraubling, coordinating everything from hotel accommodations to a shared meal and plant tours. Another important aspect of the event are the team-building games, which all apprentices take part in. 

Although Welcome Week doesn’t take place until September, the organizing team starts meeting in December of the previous year to begin drafting plans, which are then fine-tuned in monthly or twice-monthly meetings. “Being involved in the preparations for Welcome Week is a great opportunity for apprentices to look beyond their specific apprenticeship fields,” says Michael Gregor, a trainer at Krones and advisor to the organizing team. “It’s fun, it produces unexpected results, and it shows how much we can accomplish when we work together.”

Junior safety officers

Safety first 

Vocational training focuses on two additional areas besides the career-field-specific curriculum: safety and health – of the apprentices themselves but also of their colleagues and the environment. To raise awareness, Krones created the role of junior safety officer in 2025. While job shadowing in the Corporate Safety and Security department, apprentices are trained under the guidance of experienced occupational safety specialists. “We felt that occupational safety was such an essential topic that it needed to be highlighted and awareness of it raised as early as possible. We also wanted to allow apprentices to develop a rapport with a trusted peer,” explains Melanie Segerer, occupational safety specialist at Krones. Through interactive lessons, the apprentices learn how potential hazards can be identified and how they can play a role in implementing safety measures. An especially important aspect is their supporting other colleagues with respect to safe behavior – whether in the training center, on the production floor or in the office.

It helps us to raise awareness for safety-related topics early in their training and to actively integrate our apprentices into Krones’ safety culture. Melanie Segereroccupational safety specialist at Krones

Environmental protection at work – responsible use of resources and how everyone can help prevent environmental harm by identifying risks and taking action early – is another topic that is addressed. As a junior safety officer, apprentices can now actively help make their working environment safer and more sustainable. It creates a link between occupational safety and vocational training and means they are helping to ensure that the motto “With Krones I live a good life” is the true, lived experience of every staff member every day.

Tour guides

Training center tours 

Tours of the training center are an integral part of the program for Krones’ annual Vocational Training Night, which gives potential applicants and their families a chance to ask questions about the workplace and machines and receive information about career training opportunities at Krones. What makes these tours special is that the guides are our very own apprentices! And this isn’t just a once-a-year opportunity for them. Throughout the year, they give guests guided tours of their workspace to show them what vocational training at Krones is all about. 
Tours like these are a team effort, with two apprentice guides providing a brief introduction to vocational training at Krones, our sites and the options available, before leading visitors through the various areas of the training center. At interactive info points, they explain which skills are learned for various careers and demonstrate typical workflows. 

The apprentice guides are supported by trainer Maximilian Mölter throughout. It is important to note that they are never left to fend for themselves. There’s always someone available to speak to, and questions are actively encouraged. “The tours are a great opportunity to present our vocational training programs and give potential applicants and guests a positive impression. With their involvement as tour guides, our apprentices help others experience the training center and get an authentic impression of Krones,” says Mölter.

E-sports team

Level up, Krones!

A relatively new option that is already well attended is Krones’ in-house e-sports team. Besides gaming together and networking, the team participates in internal and external tournaments. The team has even partnered with the local sports club SSV Jahn Regensburg and the Bavarian Football Association (BFV), logging several victories along the way. 

Apprentices can choose to actively participate on the sports team or offer organizational support. There’s an e-sports committee, with three leads, plus other members supervising the games themselves. Together, the e-sports committee and the leads ensure that the team follows its own rules, for instance that no games that glorify violence are included and nor are first-person shooter games. Moreover, the apprentices collaborate with the Health Management team at Krones to organize regular events on the opportunities and risks of the sport, so that all team members can identify the signs and progression of gaming addiction – in themselves and in their fellow gamers.

Azubi-Redaktion

Apprentices as content creators for social media and print

Krones also has something to offer the creatives among its apprentices, with two side jobs in the field of communication. 

The Social Media Taskforce is always on the lookout for the perfect shot. The apprentices meet once a month to discuss the latest projects, exploring questions like: What events should the apprentices attend? What should they create content for? Are there any major holidays coming up like Christmas and Easter or perhaps other special events that should be featured on Krones’ social media channels? Which trends have the apprentices picked up on recently and how can they cover them? 

The content is then created under the guidance of the social media team and posted on TikTok and on the “Krones careers” Instagram account. It’s communication by apprentices for apprentices (present and future) – and it’s working: The Instagram account already has 5,300 followers, and that number is steadily rising.

Apart from creating content for social media, apprentices can also explore working in traditional media as part of the editorial team that produces the quarterly employee newsletter. Two pages of the newsletter are dedicated to vocational training news, with the apprentices themselves writing about topics of interest to young people in training like themselves (and, of course, to everyone else at Krones as well). 

At joint editorial meetings they discuss how to write articles, what exciting news there is to cover, where and how to carry out research and, finally, various writing skills that help apprentice journalists improve their articles. 

These are valuable experiences for participants because even technical careers require a certain level of skill in writing, especially when it comes to emails, theses and communication in general. But their research is also an excellent opportunity for the apprentices to look at their training from a completely different angle, and to catch a glimpse behind the scenes of events and of Krones in general. Plus they get to share it all with their coworkers from their own perspective.