Qualified and motivated employees are an important prerequisite for the success of Heidelberg Materials. Identifying our employees’ talents and developing them is therefore at the core of the Group-wide personnel policy.

With employee performance assessments, leadership development measures, and systematic succession planning, we aim to:

  • fill key positions worldwide with top-class candidates from within the business
  • develop top talent at Heidelberg Materials in a targeted way
  • retain employees in the Group for the long term by means of personalised development planning

Management Training

The motivation and skills of our managers play a crucial role in determining how well Heidelberg Materials positions itself among its global competitors and how well-prepared the Group is for future challenges. In order to prepare managers for their future tasks, we offer training programmes tailored specifically to the needs of our Group.

This applies both to traditional topics, such as strategy, leadership, and management, or the method of capital expenditure budgeting, and to special training topics, for instance in the area of technology. Uniform training content ensures that a common understanding of strategy, integrated management approach, and leadership is developed.

Securing and advancing future executives

In the reporting year, we consistently pursued our efforts to advance future executives. We offer highly motivated and qualified university graduates international trainee programmes focusing on the following areas: technology, sales, finance, personnel, purchasing, and IT.

We have also offered interdisciplinary trainee programmes. Heidelberg Materials has consistently been awarded the trainee seal of the Initiative for career-enhancing and fair trainee programmes for its high-quality programmes for the advancement of future executives.

Our 53,000 employees at Heidelberg Materials are at the center of our personnel policy. With their professional and social capabilities, they contribute to the company’s success.

As a member of the Fair Company initiative, we have been voluntarily committed to the creation of fair working conditions for trainees and young professionals since 2004, and have carried the Fair Company seal since then. We also continued to work intensively on expanding our programmes for the advancement of future executives and strengthening our recruitment of university graduates and graduates with first professional experience worldwide.

Training and career development

Forward-looking HR management means consistently investing in training, that is to say, employing and training qualified talent. Technical skills are essential in ensuring the functionally sound operational management of process technology and maintenance in our plants. For a few years already, we have offered multilingual e-learning courses about cement production, specifically developed by the German Cement Works Association (VDZ). 

As in the previous year, a focus of our training programmes throughout the Group was on occupational safety. Other priorities were specialist training, and the training of our managers. Our extensive training programmes in virtually every work area are characterised by practical and business-oriented learning and enable our employees to develop their skills.

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When putting together teams of employees, it is our Group-wide personnel policy to prioritise diversity. We understand diversity as a management concept that brings together people with different cultures, personalities, skills, and experiences in such a way as to reflect the international and multiform character of our markets, our customer base, and our business environment. We achieve this goal with the following measures:

  • Local country management and therefore an international management team
  • An international workforce at the Group headquarters
  • A complementary composition of management and other teams (internationality, expertise, experience, age, sexual orientation, etc.)
  • Women in management positions reflecting the proportion of women in the total workforce in Germany

Our goal is to attract and advance highly qualified and committed employees around the world who can bring various social and professional skills to our company and thus contribute to our business success.

The participants in the trainee programme of Heidelberg Materials are gaining an insight into our three core businesses along the value chain: raw material extraction, cement production, and construction sites.

Internationality

The international composition of our management team enables us to benefit from a broad range of experience and different cultural backgrounds, thereby allowing us to respond more flexibly both to global challenges and to local market needs. 

At our Group headquarters, we consciously aim to ensure that the workforce is composed of employees from the countries in which we operate. We benefit considerably from their local knowledge, and this also facilitates cooperation with the local personnel. 

Improving the Work–life balance

As we compete for the best employees, we are adapting to changing lifestyles around the world. In terms of what we offer to encourage a good work-life balance, we focus on models such as flexitime, part-time, and leave of absence. Because of the small size of our locations, cooperation with external networks has proven itself, for example with respect to children’s day care and holiday programmes or caring for family members.

Women in leadership positions

For us, diversity also means that we reflect the ratio of women to men in our workforce as a whole when hiring to fill management positions. 

Managers who report directly to the Managing Board form the first level at Heidelberg Materials, and any of their employees with leadership responsibility form the second level below the Managing Board. The aim was to increase the proportion of women in Germany in both leadership levels below the Managing Board to 15% by the end of June 2022. The proportion of women in leadership positions in Germany at the first and second level below the Managing Board was 16% each as of 31 December 2020. We have thus already reached our target ahead of schedule.

The global NOW – Network of Women at Heidelberg Materials is an initiative that brings together female employees worldwide. Within the various countries, NOW provides an opportunity for female employees to come together and exchange information and experiences. It aims, among other things, to support the network’s members in developing their career potential and to increase awareness throughout the Group of the changing demands of work and life.

Generation management

Like many companies in western industrial countries, we too are faced with the consequences of demographic change. Around 11% of our employees are under the age of 30. The majority of the employees are aged between 30 and 49, making up around 51% of the Group’s total workforce, and 38%  of our employees are over 50 years of age.

We are responding to the effects of demographic change with numerous measures adapted to regional requirements. In Germany, for example, we have continued to develop our health management activities and have incorporated them in the FIT for LIFE initiative. This includes a prevention programme for the early diagnosis of illnesses and risk factors, but primarily focuses on the initiative of individuals to adopt a healthy lifestyle.

In the future, health management activities will continue to focus on the prevention of typical age-specific health risks and change in awareness. We are therefore specifically promoting company sports activities for all age groups.