“KWS’ culture is highly motivating”

Ms. Eisinger, you joined KWS at the start of the year. What’s your impression of the company?

Well, I might sound like I’m gushing, but I’m truly inspired. I’ve found a culture that I feel to be incredibly motivating. Everyone at KWS is friendly and open and has a genuine interest in other colleagues and their opinions and work. I also see how new employees very soon develop a deep attachment to the company – as was the case with me. All that makes KWS so special.

You were also faced with a major project right after joining KWS: the Global HR Roadmap. Could you tell us briefly what that involves?

A roadmap is a concrete plan of action covering a specific period of time. It helps you track how work is progressing and define priorities. In creating HR Roadmap – the plan of action for the Human Resources department – my team and I worked with Felix Büchting to stake out all the strategic, overarching and global topics we want to implement in a period of around three years. We intend to roll out digital technologies and value-adding processes to underpin and enhance the employee experience, for example.

What is meant by employee experience?

How we experience our day-to-day work. KWS’ mission is to offer its employees an inspiring, modern and respectful workplace environment. We at HR wish to play a major part in supporting the company in that and to ensure that our corporate culture can be felt tangibly, for example by creating and improving general conditions to achieve that mission. A key objective in that is to bring together people with different characters, experience and cultural backgrounds and encourage them to put their heart and soul into the company and grow together with KWS. We know from the strategic planning of the Business Units, Research and Development and the Group and Global Functions that all units face similar challenges, namely to keep employees loyal to the company, help them develop, recruit new colleagues for KWS, and enhance our inspiring and motivating leadership culture.

It’s clear that people are at the heart of your planning.

Yes, because it’s people who put our corporate strategy into action. Motivated and dedicated employees are the key to our success. Our goal is to be close to employees so that we can understand how best to support them proactively throughout the employee lifecycle, i.e. their career at KWS. The Global HR Roadmap is the framework that helps us see how effective our activities are and make adjustments if necessary.

What priorities are you setting?

One is to fill vacancies as soon as possible – in particular, but not only, in the ONEGLOBE organization. We believe a further focus is to enable successful onboarding for new employees, as well as personnel and management development and the leadership culture. And we aim to offer our internal customers, i.e. all employees, a good service. To achieve that, we need lean processes, standards and state-of-the-art systems.

KWS is undergoing a phase of major change at the moment with ONEGLOBE. What’s particularly important now?

In such a big transformation project like ONEGLOBE, everyone has to show mutual understanding and patience and provide frank and honest feedback so that we can keep on improving. It’s also important for all employees to know their role and responsibilities and understand what they personally can do in their everyday work to help make KWS successful. We need a clearly defined framework in which everyone feels secure and can unfold their abilities. Close and well-coordinated cooperation is vital for all units, and that’s especially true of the relationship between us at Global HR and the Global Transaction Center HR. |