Our training programs take account not only of qualifications but also of personal background and life situation. We offer our employees further development opportunities throughout their careers.

Continuing to inspire qualified skilled employees and young talents to forge a career with us is crucial to our company’s long-term success. As with all matters that affect staff welfare, the training and education aspect falls within the responsibility of the central Human Resources department. Together with the HR managers from the locations, the central HR department supports our employees with any questions, problems or complaints they may have. Staff can also seek the advice of the works councils in these matters. Our compliance system provides the overarching framework.

Win-win: Promoting young talent is a benefit for all

Our services are provided by people – it is their motivation and their expertise that enable us to deliver day after day the level of quality that our customers have come to appreciate. This is why training our own future staff is such a vital element of our HR work. In the reporting year, 75 trainees took their first steps on the career ladder with us, and a few years from now will qualify as warehouse logistics specialists, vehicle spraypainters or in one of ten other apprenticeship trades. We also offer options for dual study programs, for example a Bachelor’s degree in Forwarding, Transport, and Logistics or the Bachelor’s in Information Science at the Bremen location.

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In 2020, we employed 227 trainees – 169 in commercial and 58 in technical professions. As part of the company's guarantee to take on former trainees, we made everybody who qualified a job offer. As a result, at our Bremen location we were able to transfer 75 percent of our ex-trainees to permanent employment contracts. For many years, we have also specifically supported employees who want to retrospectively qualify as specialists in warehouse logistics. In the reporting year, we offered two courses, giving 36 employees the opportunity to prepare for the relevant Chamber of Industry and Commerce (IHK) examination on a full-time basis for twelve weeks. 34 of them passed first time around. The course was largely funded by the Labor Agency and is being offered again in the subsequent year – in January 2021, 19 new hopefuls enrolled who are aiming to qualify in late summer.

Creating opportunities through qualification

Through our “Training through Work” program launched in 2017, which is organized in cooperation with the training center Aus- und Fortbildungszentrum Bremen (AFZ) and the youth employment agency, we offer young people with no vocational qualifications the possibility to join an initial qualification program (EQ) after completing an internship. In the reporting year, the first cohort from our part-time “Hanse Logistics Specialist” course launched in 2019 completed their training. This course is directed particularly at women with care responsibilities and opens up vocational opportunities for them in the field of logistics. While all 16 candidates completed the course successfully, we were unfortunately not able to take any of them on due to the uncertainties surrounding the coronavirus pandemic and the short-time work rule in place parallel to the end of the course.

In line with our “character comes before skills” ethos, we also regularly offer people with diverse backgrounds and in different life situations – even if they have no prior qualifications – the chance of a vocational future in logistics. At our Schlüchtern location, we carried out an integration project in 2020 that opens up new prospects for the long-term unemployed, refugees and young people with no training qualifications. After two months of theory classes and a four-week practical course, 14 of the 17 participants found a permanent job with us.

Continuous skills development

The continuous investment in the development of our employees is as beneficial to them personally as it is to us as a company. Expanding their competencies and honing their skills in a targeted manner is therefore a central element of our HR management activities. Despite the COVID-related restrictions, we organized and held 176 seminars and training courses in 2020 dealing with leadership, social and methods competencies as well as developing specialist and technical skills. After initially having to cancel a large number of events, we did manage to hold many of them later in the year under COVID-compliant conditions. In some cases, we switched to completely digital formats. Thus despite the less-than-ideal conditions, with 4,045 employee days we again managed to increase the time dedicated to training year on year.

In connection with the introduction of a digital learning management system initiated prior to the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, the HR development department is currently working on developing other digital learning formats. To this end, initial qualification measures were held in the reporting year and first training courses were tested by selected groups. The system will gradually be made accessible to more employees in the course of 2021. It is fair to say that the experiences made with digital learning have so far been very positive, so that we intend to continue to hold many of our management training courses online going forward. Apart from a higher number of participants, the reduced amount of travel is also a point in favor.