Steve Hughes has found that his innate desire to learn and develop his skills have been amply satisfied by the multiple opportunities ABB provides to learn and grow within the company.

After graduating from university, Steve Hughes, Strategic Marketing & Sales Manager - Motion Service, Warrington, England, secured a spot in a graduate placement program with a small drive manufacturer with an office in the UK.  

“To be fair,” said Steve, “it was a fantastic training ground for the basics, but it eventually became apparent that its small size not only left it vulnerable to market forces, but it also limited my prospects for additional learning and advancement, so I began to look elsewhere.”

Steve was of course familiar with ABB because of its market-leading position in the drives space, so he decided to approach them. However, he didn’t apply for a specific job. 

“I simply submitted my CV which basically said, ‘Here’s what I can do. Do you have a place for me?’,” Steve recalled.

Happily for him, ABB most certainly did, and over the last 20+ years he’s discovered that they had quite a lot of places for him.

“After I applied, I was considered for an application engineer position and an internal sales engineering position for system drives, the latter of which I took up for the next 3-4 years,” said Steve. “I then progressed into internal product drive Sales, and was soon promoted to product specialist, which was sales-related but more of a technical specification role.”

Hughes was then offered the opportunity to do a three-month role swap with an area factory manager in Finland that proved to be particularly beneficial. 

Steve remarked, “ABB gives you many opportunities to move, learn, grow and develop within the company, but they’re not just handed to you. However, if you display an interest and an aptitude, opportunities will come your way.”

And for Steve, those opportunities kept coming. After he returned from Helsinki, he was asked to be part of a team establishing an “e-business” function at the beginning of the eCommerce age we now take for granted. His technical knowledge coupled with his Sales and management acumen, were helpful to those early ecommerce programmes.

But Steve was already looking beyond ecommerce and moved to manage the distribution network programmes for the UK and Ireland drive partners.

“I really enjoyed the diversity because I was working with customers, the field sales team, the support team back in the head office and various other constituent parts.”

At a later stage Hughes was asked to take this channel management experience into a different business. “Everything was being done directly, so ABB asked me to establish a Channel Partner Network within the Instrumentation business. It was a challenge, but we got it successfully established in less than three years.
 
“I then went back to the Drives business, as the sales manager for Drives products. I had come full circle.”

What really interested him was a new role as a digital lead in the Motion Business. ABB was moving swiftly into offerings for the new Internet of Things (IoT) industrial era and Steve led the initial development and implementation of ABB’s UK’s strategy in a powerful and globally compelling growth area.

And once again, back to Sales management, but this time in Motion Service, driving proactive maintenance strategies that deliver resilient systems to our customers wherever they are in their life cycle, some of them that he tendered in System Drives almost 28 years ago.

“ABB has been incredibly supportive of my professional interests and helped me realise those ambitions at every step of my varied career within the company. 

“However, what gets me out of bed, in addition to the exciting, proactive service role that I embrace each day, is the people at ABB. There is a longevity, depth of experience and camaraderie at ABB that you don’t find very often these days. Many of my colleagues have been here for 20, 30 even 40 years. That means two things: They are fulfilled in their work and, if they wish, can build an entire long-term career within ABB.

“It’s why I’m still here… and it’s why I intend to stay.”​​​​​​​