Work / Life Balance
WACKER is dedicated to helping its employees to successfully integrate their careers and private lives. Our company has a wide range of flextime models, even including a self-regulated system based on trust. Wherever possible, we offer both full-time and part-time jobs. In individual cases, WACKER enables employees to work from home (an option that may be combined with part-time work), and authorizes unpaid leave for urgent personal matters.
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2014 |
2013 |
20121 |
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Part-time employees, WACKER Germany |
1,158 |
1,285 |
1,194 |
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Thereof female |
796 |
840 |
791 |
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Thereof male |
362 |
445 |
403 |
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Part-time employees, WACKER Germany (%) |
9.4 |
10.4 |
9.4 |
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Employees in phased early retirement |
1,058 |
1,100 |
900 |
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Thereof in non-active phase |
556 |
749 |
573 |
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Since 2014, WACKER has been offering its employees options for organizing their working time in a more personalized way than in the past. Employees now have access to a variety of leave options and part-time models for personal situations, such as providing care for family members with serious health conditions, pursuing further education or taking a sabbatical. Unpaid leave can be taken up to a maximum period of two years. The new arrangements are provided for in the “Working Life and Demography” collective-bargaining agreement and offer employees a wide range of options for balancing the demands of their careers and the different stages of their lives.
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2014 |
2013 |
2012 |
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Sabbaticals2 |
39 |
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− |
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Qualifications3 |
6 |
− |
− |
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Care4 |
2 |
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− |
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Total |
47 |
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WACKER was one of the first companies to sign a joint declaration on Germany’s “Family as a Success Factor” business network, which has its origins in an initiative launched by the Federal Ministry of Family Affairs and the German Chamber of Industry and Commerce. In the declaration, WACKER commits itself to taking into account the needs of employees with family obligations and to offering suitable support.
We support childcare and the return to work after parental leave. One example is the return-to-work workshop at the Burghausen site. Day care and after-school care facilities are available at the Wöhler-Kinderhaus, located very close to the plant. A local day-care center offers a fixed number of day-care slots to employees at the Siltronic site in Freiberg, Saxony. At the Munich site, pme Familienservice GmbH helps employees find kindergarten and preschool places.
At all its German sites, WACKER offers a service for family emergencies. Whether employees themselves or family members fall ill or need nursing care, advice can be obtained from pme Familienservice GmbH.
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2014 |
2013 |
2012 |
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Parental leave |
446 |
456 |
410 |
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Thereof men |
203 |
220 |
196 |
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Thereof women |
243 |
236 |
214 |
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Returnees from parental leave |
291 |
278 |
226 |
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Thereof men |
193 |
198 |
161 |
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Thereof women |
98 |
80 |
65 |
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Returnees from parental leave who were still working for the company 12 months later |
265 |
217 |
223 |
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Thereof men |
191 |
155 |
119 |
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Thereof women |
74 |
62 |
104 |
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Part-Time Manager
Striking the right balance between work and life: Michaela Brumme.
WACKER’s decision to build a new polysilicon plant (Poly 11) in the US in 2010 was not only the biggest investment decision ever made at the company, it was followed by the largest wave of international assignments in the company’s history. Since then, almost 120 German employees, from project engineers to the future site manager, have been deployed to Charleston, Tennessee, and more will follow when the site goes into operation in 2015. Conversely, the first of around 200 new American staff members arrived in Burghausen, where, as chemical technicians, they learned the craft of polysilicon production. For Michaela Brumme, manager of International Assignments for the HR department, and her team, it heralded a highly work-intensive period.
Getting the mammoth Poly 11 project underway was only one of Michaela Brumme’s responsibilities. She also has two children, who are now nine and eleven. During the early months when the heat was really on, her two daughters would barely be tucked up in bed at 8 o’clock and she’d be back at her laptop again. In fact, having to conduct conference calls with the US meant that, due to the time difference, working into the night actually suited her. Michaela Brumme and her team handle the details of each and every assignment. These include: offering support and advice to employees, taxes, social security, work permits, cost allocation between the individual subsidiaries, assignment conditions and much more.
Now that work relating to the Poly 11 project has subsided somewhat, Michaela Brumme has reduced her working hours slightly, from five to four days a week; she once again is working the same number of hours as at the beginning of her WACKER career. Working at 80 percent, she ranks among a number of managerial employees who work part time. “It works, because I have a great team around me here and we can really rely on one another,” she explains. Her co-workers are almost all young women, who know that they might one day find themselves in the same situation as their department manager. But this method of management requires more than cooperative and reliable teammates in one’s professional life. Women also need a partner with whom they can share the childcare, says Michaela Brumme.