Ongoing Graduates Trainees Recruitment at Agova (+7 Recommended Positions)

AGOVA/SYNGENTA FARMS YOUNG TALENT INCUBATION PROGRAM

Location: Syngenta Farms Lusaka

Program Length: 6 months

Remuneration: K3,282 gross per month plus benefits

Anticipated start date: end of November

Number of Spots Available: 7

About Agova:

Agova is a consultancy service with the mission to make shared value the new way of doing business. Shared value refers to ‘a management strategy in which companies find business opportunities in social, environmental, or economic problems’. Since 2011, Agova has been delivering management and technical advice to actors in the private sector in Zambia to further the expansion of business models and norms that increase economic, social and environmental prosperity. Our mandate is to leverage capital, data and innovative ideas to develop a sustainable form of poverty reduction; we focus on creating win-win business models within our client organizations such that commercial and competitive mandates can be met while improving the livelihoods of an organization’s customer and supplier segments, who are generally the urban and rural poor and emergent agropreneurs.

Program Description:

Agova/Syngenta Farms Young Talent Incubation Program (YTIP) is an offshoot of Agova’s Consultant Trainee program is a very competitive training and practical program designed to help young passionate people gain valuable work experience through consultancy positions as well as exposure to shared value as a business strategy. The program seeks youth who have graduated with a relevant bachelor’s degree that are passionate about development of Zambia and see business playing a role in this change.

Over the course of the YTIP program, the Trainees will complete a six-month placement with Syngenta Farms. Trainees will be embedded at Syngenta Farms and throughout the program will be trained on best practices to interact with their client and then expected to deliver excellence on all occasions. Those who do not meet minimum quality standards of Agova will be removed from the program.

Program Benefits:

• Work experience that is challenging and exciting for recent graduates;
• One on one line management support;
• One on one coaching;
• A comprehensive training program at the beginning of the program to get required skills;
• A cohort of like-minded individuals for support;
• Monthly skills building trainings on topics such as Excel, report writing, project management, etc.
• Learning sessions with the larger Agova team;
• Many opportunities for learning and growth; and
• For those who excel in their probation and performance reviews and successfully finish the program will be considered for opportunities at Syngenta Farm.

Positions Available:

Operation Expenditure (OPEX) and Health, Safety and Environment (HSE) Trainee

Support the Plant Manager and the HSE Lead with:

• Support the different teams with defining Key Performance Indicators (KPI);
• Help defining and implementing dashboards for visual management;
• Facilitate Tier 1 and Tier 2 meetings;
• Support Root Cause Analysis (RCA) meetings;
• Organize the capture of RCA conclusions under a standard format for later use as inputs for the Mid and Long-Term Improvement Plan;
• Front line facilitator for HSE: enforce use of personal protective equipment (PPE), conduct regular “Go&See Walks” and record safety observations; and
• Organize a file for capturing safety observations in a standardized format enabling a deep understanding of various root causes.

Quality Management Trainee

Support Production Leadership Team with:

• Support a comprehensive process mapping exercise from the field to primary distribution;
• Identify key steps of the process, support the documentation of the procedure and the connected work instructions;
• Enforce consistency in the formats used in the different documents;
• Support the different teams in conducting RCA linked to non-conformities;
• Organize the capture of RCA conclusions under a standard format for later use as inputs for Mid and Long-Term Improvement Plan; and
• Enforce that all non-conformities and quality observations are captured in Reliance and completed in due time.

Inventory and Product Quality Information Management Trainee

Support Planning and Quality Control Laboratory with:

• Support Tier Meetings by providing inventory and quality information needed for efficient scheduling;
• Ensure that the relevant information systems (SharePoint, ISCALA, SCCI, etc.) are up to date;
• Organize and maintain a file showing inventory and quality information;
• Supply the Planning and Laboratory teams with the relevant information for maintaining their dashboards; and
• Support inventory counts.

Engineering & Maintenance Trainee

Support the Manager of Engineering and Maintenance with:

• Establish a comprehensive list of tools and equipment;
• Identify all critical equipment;
• Help with the capture of all equipment in Syngenta maintenance software;
• Implement maintenance plan in software;
• Help the team in defining what are critical spares;
• Monitoring spares inventory; and
• Help define dashboards and enforce implementation.

Finance & Cost Follow-Up Trainee

Support Production with:

• Support the definition of a dashboard on Procurement 2 Pay flow. Monitor lead times from purchase requisition to payment. Alert when deadlines are not met;
• Ensure all expenses are recorded as per the granularity defined by the Senior consultant;
• Help different teams with the monitoring of their budgets;
• Support implementation of dashboard for monitoring levels of “non-seeds inventory” including critical threshold for reordering;
• Support the Purchase Request creation in ISCALA; and
• Maintain a file to track out-grower’s payments.
• Multiplication & Production Orders Manager Trainee
• Support the Planning Team with:
• Collect from the Field Multiplication and the Factory Teams their reports on goods produced and consumed;
• Enforce that information is provided in due time and that quality/format of information is compliant with agreed business rule;
• Keep company systems up to date with the same information;
• Hold a key role in the daily production meetings by enforcing availability to and from the different teams; and
• Maintain and monitor the Transactional Discipline dashboards.

IT Program Trainee

Support the IT Team with:

• Building a database for recording information required from Field Production through Final Deliveries to Syngenta’s commercial organization; and
• To define the specifications with the different users.

Required Skills:

• A relevant four-year Bachelor’s degree (agriculture/horticulture, business, finance, engineering, etc.);
• Up to one-year of work experience (including volunteering)
• An interest in Shared Value (businesses solving social/environmental challenges through their business model);
• High-level computer literacy with a solid command of the Microsoft Suite;
• Strong analytical skills;
• Ability to work independently and as part of a team;
• Ability to follow a workplan/instructions and produce deliverables within set timelines; and
• Ability to travel around Lusaka/Zambia (when required).

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