Thanks to CORONA the company is waking up and starting to realize the needs of new work environment.
Arbeitsatmosphäre
Most long established colleagues in the company seem to get along with the working environment of the company quite well. Freshly hired colleagues tend to struggle to accommodate.
Kommunikation
It is of course dependent from your preferences, if you do not mind that you get informed about what is already set and decided so you just can execute, than the communication is perfect. You get professionally formulated Management Board newsletters and intranet information provided to all employees. There is hardly any rumors so the official channels are well established, management decision process is kept within small groups of elected people, and information after decision is done in timely manner. If you however prefer to be included into the decision making process and have an open collaborative working atmosphere, than the company is not the place to go to. Well, after all it is an old established company which management is still strongly influenced by the owner and the corporate culture strongly reflects that - traditional way of management decide and order, employees execute.
Kollegenzusammenhalt
Depends. Within your legal entity there seem to be a strong knit among the colleagues,this is also what I get from some of my friends and befriended colleagues from other legal entities. However this is no longer the case (despite of some individual exceptions) once you try to reach out cross LE borders and your request does not contribute to immediate interest of the other LE. Then you quickly realizes that the group is NOT one company but a collection of individual enterprises which all seem to concentrate on their individual achievements but not on the overall success of the group. It becomes obvious that all those acquisition in the past years did not get really integrated. And even the original core divisions seem to be competing against each other rather than profiting from each other.
Work-Life-Balance
Home office only became officially accepted with CORONA, until then it was only tolerated if really necessary and restricted to maximum 2 days a week. With a 42h week as a standard working contract there is also not much flexibility. However, part time contracts can of course be arranged, but then your salary naturally gets reduced and the salary is bench-marked with salaries which are normally based on 38-40h contracts. Since on the one hand the back-end processes were also not adjusted to the size of the company and resemble those of a small to medium size corporation, work is cumbersome and very time consuming, so you have to work many hours because on the other hand the staffing of theses tasks is measured on industry bench-marks. So a lot of unsatisfying work packed into a 42h week or even more with little flexibility to shift or accumulate your hours in high peak times, all in all not very family or personal life friendly arrangement.
Vorgesetztenverhalten
Depends on the individuals. But as described in the communication box, mainly traditional order character, little collaborative and inclusive. But seem to start changing slowly with new recent additions on the top and upper management level. Maybe with time this will evolve, but change of culture will definitely take a long time in this company.
Interessante Aufgaben
The available tasks could be very interesting, there are a lot of great potentials. However as mentioned in the work-life-balance box, especially the back-end processes are far away from what you need in a company of the size of 30k employees globally and what tool-landscape provides today. So in the end you have no time to address those tasks but are stuck in keeping basics functions running. In the last prosperous years the company simply missed out on making the right investment into digitalizing and streamlining of its processes and is now struggling to cope with the requirements of strong uncertainty, because the current way of working (I restrain here from using "processes" on purpose) is simply NOT capable of dealing with flexibility.
Gleichberechtigung
Management mainly driven by white aged men, even abroad (except at the acquired companies in non European countries). But so far no discrimination detected, neither towards minorities nor towards women. However within a company with very little diversity in top management and no real focus with programs or initiatives to change that, minorities and women will be kept out of decision driving position due to subconscious biases. This can't be helped without conscious drive of change.
Umgang mit älteren Kollegen
Established employees (which are normally considerably senior) are highly respected and valued.
Arbeitsbedingungen
IT equipment is state of the art. Applications for back-end services consist mainly of Microsoft Office and SAP ECC, no modern Applications, Analytics tools or RPA support (not even in sight - at least to my knowledge). Office is not well acclimatized, hot in summer sometimes chilly in winter. Flexible desk only available with doctors prescription. Hardly any collaboration space available. Knowledge-Sharing is difficult, because your colleagues of the same function outside your own legal entity have not only different processes and way of working but also very often even different systems or system set-ups. So you are left on your own to cope with your challenges if you are in a LE with a very small team in your function (or maybe even alone).
Umwelt-/Sozialbewusstsein
Social commitments and support is promoted within the company. And some initiatives are addressed, especially now during CORONA times. However the usage of short-time work support from the government while paying out dividends to shareholders does not seem very social to me. Ecological initiatives not known to me, but might be due to lack of my personal knowledge. Maybe they are just not as well promoted as the social initiatives.
Gehalt/Sozialleistungen
OK for a global player. Additionally see also entries in the Work-Life-Balance box.
Image
Very positive image of a profitable and innovative company, with a global footprint and impressive history.
Karriere/Weiterbildung
HR is trying their best to provide as many opportunities as possible to all individuals. How well you can use it depends a lot on your own drive and the goodwill of your direct manager. No active learning culture. And as mentioned in the box diversity, since the Top and upper management mainly consists of white elderly men, the chances of being considered for promotion into levels above middle management, if you are minority appear to be lower (but might be just personal impression).
Arbeitgeber-Kommentar
Thank you very much for your feedback. We are very sorry that you cannot recommend Knorr-Bremse as an attractive employer. We would be happy to have a personal conversation with you to talk about your suggestions and to improve your situation actively. Please do not hesitate to get in touch!