Commitment to employees

Anyone who wants to lobby social issues should start close to home. For enterprises, social responsibility should therefore start with the company‘s own staff. Therefore, TAKKT Group has implemented a wide range of incentive programmes and voluntary benefits for years.

Health and prevention:
Though healthcare in Germany may have certain shortcomings, many countries still cannot offer the same high standard. For this reason, TAKKT as an international operating company also offers all its employees abroad a wide range of additional benefits dependent on local specifics. For example, employees in countries with no statutory health insurance system are offered cover via the company. There are similar schemes in countries where the state pension is insufficient. TAKKT enables its staff to accumulate additional savings for their retirement. In general, we offer attractive benefit packages in all countries in which we operate. If additional voluntary benefits are not sensible for legal or tax reasons, these are taken into account in wages and salaries. But also in Germany, staff can use health-related services from preventive measures such as vaccinations, sight tests and blood sugar monitoring, lectures on healthy nutrition and preventing health risks, to sports courses such as back training or walking.

Family service and advice:
In Germany, all employees and their families have access to free advisory and mediation services, such as legal advice. Support is also available for dealing with addictions as well as relationship or childcare problems.

Sharing our joint success:
Our employees make a crucial contribution towards the company‘s success; that is why they share in it, for example via bonus models. They receive a bonus of up to one month‘s salary if their company achieves or exceeds its turnover targets. Members of staff in Germany can also participate in TAKKT‘s success by purchasing employee shares every year. There are special incentive schemes for executive personnel: In middle management, bonuses are based on operating results and personal target setting. The bonuses paid to Management Board members are governed by the key figures of cash flow, developments in the TAKKT share price and EVA®.

Training and continuing professional development:
TAKKT attaches great importance to practical training for job starters. In Germany, the company offers training in the following occupations:

• Wholesale and export operator
• Marketing communications operator
• Office communication operator
• Technical draughtsperson
• Production mechanics
• Warehouse clerk
• Warehouse logistics clerk

In 2009, 27 women and men where in occupational training at TAKKT in Germany. On top of that nine staff members attend in-service courses at a university of cooperative education.

Providing opportunities for personal and professional development is a crucial part of being an attractive employer and of ensuring motivation and job satisfaction. In return, highly qualified staff contribute decisively towards the company‘s success. This is the reason why TAKKT invests a lot in its training and further education programmes.

Staff mainly use the following three types of further education:

• In-house seminars in which specially-trained or particularly experienced employees pass on their expertise to colleagues
• Events featuring external speakers on specific topics
• Courses offered by the Haniel Academy for specialists and managers

In May 2009, a conference entitled FUTURE@TAKKT was also held for the Group‘s top executives and e-commerce specialists to stimulate knowledge transfer in the important growth field of e-commerce. At the conference, workshops were held compiling and presenting key insights into e-business at TAKKT. The cornerstones of the Group‘s e-commerce strategy were also developed at the event.

Training courses in the year under review focused on the issue of management. One of the key aims was to give executives better instruments for managing their units and motivating their teams in difficult situations. One such important tool is the TAKKT Dialogue, which provides a structured framework for staff appraisals involving employees and their line managers. Dialogue meetings are held at least once a year. They comprise an extensive review and outlook, an assessment of the employee‘s performance based on TAKKT key qualifications, agreements of quantifiable targets for the coming year and an individual development plan.