2020 Sustainability Report

68 Social affairs Training A vitally important element in our role as managers is to identify our employees’ talents and potential for development and deliberately encourage these. The options need to be discussed together, especially during the annual staff review, and that forms the basis for the employee’s objectives and any measures that need to be taken. Ideally, this would lead to employees and managers taking on additional responsibilities or being promoted into more demanding roles. In Bützberg there are currently two employees being trained as production managers in carpentry, one spending several years on a course to qualify as an expert in finance and accounting and one training as a manufacturing specialist and then a Project Manager. Five employees are continuing to attend French lessons, as they have done for some time already. In Endingen, one employee successfully completed a course to become an accountant between 2018 and 2020 and is now in charge of finance and budget ma- nagement at Girsberger GmbH. In the light of the continuing move towards a lean method of production in Endingen, one employee has successfully qualified as a Master in Lean Production. During this reporting period, the main focus was on individual training for managers with staff responsibilities, and on sup- porting apprenticeships and internships. In Bützberg, managers completed a total of 37.5 days of training in 2019. This consisted largely of specialist training courses and one-day seminars. One employee who had taken on a new leadership role attended a seminar on leadership. In 2020 the figure was 35.5 days of training, again consisting mostly of specialist seminars. One manager is training to become a Swiss federal certified produc- tion manager in carpentry. The managers in Endingen completed 60 days of training in 2019 and 26 in 2020. Unfortunately in 2020 because of the Covid-19 pandemic several courses which could not be held online were cancelled or postponed by the organisers. This resulted in a lower number of training days, and not only for the managers. We are assuming that more of these courses which have to take place externally will be held again in the future. Offering apprenticeships in various trades remains firmly embedded in the culture at both sites and internships will also continue to be offered where possible. In future, the subject of sustainability will also form part of the vocational training at Girsberger. During the next reporting period we will investigate whether products such as “ClimateLabs” could be incorporated in our company training plan. Workshops of that kind teach important back- ground knowledge about climate protection and project management. In 2021/2022 we intend to focus on specifically supporting young specialists, i.e. trainees and employees in their first or second job after completing their vocational training. By encouraging the next generation in this way, we also hope to prevent company-specific expertise being lost when older employees retire. In order to have more control over equality of opportunity in staff development, we aim to plan our training so that it is more evenly targeted at workers, managers and the Executive Management. “ A vitally important element in our role as managers is to identify our employees’ talents and potential for development and deliberately encourage these. ”