Article on securing skilled personnel
“Securing skilled personnel” – the topic at the 34th Business Forum
Numerous guests gathered for the municipality’s Business Forum at the headquarters of UD Chemie.As previously occured 6 years ago, the forum gathered at the site of this business which is located in Wörrstadt but also has branches in France, Tallinn (Estonia) and Moscow. The “revival” could easily compete with the forum which took place in 2006. As was the case on the previous visit, the mood of the guests was relaxed and the atmosphere was fantastic. Not least thanks to the excellent hospitality of the UD Chemie team and the informal style adopted by the speakers of the evening.
Anke Dubberke, who manages the business along with her cousins Frank Dubberke und Matthias Wruck, described to the assembled business leaders the changes which UD Chemie has undergone in the past 6 years. 50,000 tons of raw materials per year are handled on the production site which during that period grew in size to 23,000 m². The expected turnover in 2012 is estimated at 70 million Euro compared with a turnover of 25 million Euro in 2006. Branches have been opened in France and Estonia, and exports have been expanded to 30 countries across the world from Siberia to Australia.
“We are addressing the rising problem of skills shortage with a diversified training programme”, the training officer, Tina Mader, pointed out. As a trainee herself until 2010 Mader, following her training, studied work-related activities at the Pfalz Management College, and obtained her training qualification in 2011. UD Chemie currently employs 15 apprentices in 6 different occupational training areas, including wholesale and foreign trade sales personnel, industrial sales personnel, food technology specialists, a warehouse logistics specialist, a media designer and a freight forwarding specialist.
In 2012 alone 9 apprentices were hired and 2 new occupational training courses introduced. The training rate of 23% is impressive and 85% of the former trainees were subsequently offered an employment contract. Some of these employees can today be found in management positions. Responsibility is handed over to the young people as early as during their training – they are not simply parked out at the photocopying machine. As an example Tina Mader reported on Sergej Maier who managed during his training to build up UD Chemie in Moscow!
“Placements with suppliers in Spain, cooperation agreements with other businesses, internal and external seminars and much more besides serve to make our training courses attractive to young people”, Mader said. In October there will be for the first time a course on etiquette which should prepare the trainees for the situations that they will encounter every day in their business life, in order also to reinforce their self-confidence in unfamiliar situations. “When there is a skill shortage UD Chemie relies on its own home-grown talent as we have had very good experiences with this in the past, and this is in part the secret of our success”, the training officer, Ms Mader, summed up at the end of her presentation.
During the second part of the evening, the mayor, Markus Conrad, reported on the positive developments in the Wörrstadt municipality. Accordingly the target set forward for 2017 to provide all electricity requirements using renewable energy can already be met this year. Conrad also provided information about the purchase of another wind turbine by the recently founded “Wörrstadt energy and service operations” institute, the construction of a digestion tank for sewage sludge, the climate protection programme, which will be concluded in the next few weeks, and the planned creation of a limited company for tourism.
The Wörrstadt municipality could for the second time since 2010 win the state award as the “community friendliest towards small and medium sized companies” and Conrad thanked the tradespeople for their support in this respect. Before they began the relaxing part of the evening he indicated that the 35th Business Forum would take place at the Volksbank in Wörrstadt on October 24th, 2012. The topic for the evening would be “Internet and Social Networking”. There will be more on this in the forum to which all traders in the Wörrstadt municipality will again be welcome.
Source: www.vgwoerrstadt.de
Article on securing skilled personnel