Young employees from the Talent Development Programme become CEOs, colleagues have the freedom to create and then carry out the strategy in their fields. Swiss-headquartered energy company MET Group has based its growth story on the expertise of its workforce – on International HR Day, let’s check how it works in practice.
Thanks to the extensive growth over the past years, MET Group is among the Top 20 Swiss-based companies by revenue, with EUR 24.5 billion consolidated sales revenues in 2023. It has close to 1,000 employees across 15 countries in Europe and Asia, representing more than 56 nationalities.
MET has very talented, outstanding colleagues and the company considers them to be one of its greatest assets. The Group’s vision is to give employees clear responsibility and to leverage on their insights and expertise. This philosophy has been one of MET’s key pillars since the very beginning.
MET strives to create an incentivising working environment which is focused on performance. If you perform well, you will receive special recognition and rewards. Colleagues are given a high degree of autonomy and are encouraged to come up with their own ideas, present them to their line managers and further up the hierarchy to the Group CEO, who can later also ask them to implement their ideas in practice.
This is a fast-growing, dynamic and agile company and the fact that you are part of this growth boosts you considerably. MET Group is not a typical multinational firm where the headquarters decide the most important questions, limiting your local possibilities. You have a lot of independence in your own area – of course, this big autonomy is, at the same time, a big responsibility.
It is part of MET Group’s strategy to nurture young talents through the Talent Development Programme (TDP), putting young colleagues into meaningful roles at a very early stage of their careers. Programme participants can benefit from learning activities, tailor-made career opportunities, exciting, best-in class trainings, mentoring from experienced top managers and lots more.
One of the best examples for advancing internally is Mario Matković, a graduate of the 2017 Talent Development Programme, who was appointed CEO of MET Croatia in the same year, at the age of 30. Today, MET’s Croatian subsidiary has a revenue of 1.24 billion euros and it is a significant market player in Croatia. Mario is not the only young CEO having participated in the TDP initiative.
Pavel Balada started as an intern at MET Holding in 2015. From the beginning, he worked on strategic projects, including market entries, first with MET’s expansion in Spain and then later on in Italy and Germany and, most recently, in Turkey. He is also a graduate of the Talent Development Programme, where he gained management expertise and finetuned his leadership skills. Pavel recently got the task to establish MET’s subsidiary in the Czech Republic and was appointed as the CEO of this new entity.
MET Group stays connected to the next generation of talents
In order to find the best talents, MET Group has established partnerships with leading universities across Europe. The company is a Corporate Partner of CEMS (a global alliance of leading business schools and multinational companies) and has an excellent cooperation with ETH Zürich and Università Bocconi in Milan. Students and alumni from these top-level universities and business schools are often hired for MET internships, junior positions and senior management roles.
Meeting exceptional youngsters is also the reason why the energy company attends the Polymesse every year, one of the largest recruiting fairs of Switzerland taking place at ETH Zürich. As MET’s headquarters are in Switzerland, making the company more visible to the ETH Zürich student community has always been a priority.
At MET, young colleagues will find an environment where their talent is welcomed and their ideas can really translate into something specific. The integrated energy company’s top-performing experts have the opportunity to work abroad within the Group, in other subsidiaries, if they prove to be outstanding professionals.
MET Group even maintains strong relationships with departed talents – the company recently launched the MET Alumni Club, seeking to create a long-lasting community of former colleagues. Reconnecting through different events and activities, and potentially welcoming back former employees - the initiative has several benefits.
As MET Group Chairman and CEO Benjamin Lakatos told former colleagues at an in-person meeting of the Alumni Club: “MET has always been an HR success story. You have all contributed to MET’s growth in the past 17 years. I would like to thank you all for your relentless efforts, the company’s expansion would not have been possible without your hard work.”