Consistent organisation and a common corporate culture are crucial factors for the success of the Demag Cranes Group. In our effort to build an integrated group, we brought together Demag Cranes & Components GmbH and Gottwald Port Technology GmbH under the umbrella of Demag Cranes AG. All regional subsidiaries are being structured according to uniform organisational principles to ensure the greatest possible business efficiency worldwide in the future, as well as to create clear reporting and decision-making paths. This new organisational structure goes hand in hand with a corporate culture and integration project that is actively supported by the Management Board, Executive Committee, and other employees from all business units and levels of the Company.

Promoting diversity is particularly important to the Company in the interests of ensuring sufficient skilled employees and good, innovative ideas for the Demag Cranes Group. Critically important in this effort is an international human resources policy at the Company’s headquarters as well as in the various regional subsidiaries worldwide. In the interests of promoting sustainable corporate development, another future focus will be on cultivating female employees at all levels of the Company.

Due to the age heterogeneity of the Demag Cranes Group’s workforce, we pursue targeted knowledge management. We actively support the exchange of knowledge among our employees in all business units and at all levels. This enables us to create a sustainable foundation of knowledge for the Company. We also plan to systematically collect and leverage the know-how and experience of our regional subsidiaries in the future. The building of an international knowledge platform is already underway with the goal of optimising workflows worldwide.

In the industrialised countries, we face the challenge of addressing a shortage of skilled personnel in the future. In the emerging economies, our primary focus is on recruiting, developing and retaining employees for the Company. We believe that meeting these challenges requires effective promotion of young talent and training of employees of all ages in all professions to meet the needs of the Company.

In an effort to recruit young talent, we cooperate with numerous colleges and universities, associations and institutions internationally. One example is our collaboration with Tongji University in China, where some of our managers lecture; this is both to educate the students and to support our Chinese subsidiary in seeking fresh talent. In India, too, Demag Cranes is well known at key state universities thanks to its partnerships with colleges and universities, particularly with engineering departments. Jobs in the Demag Cranes Group are in demand among potential candidates. Our high-level training lays the foundation for a successful career for our apprentices; for instance, young people can enter bachelor degree programmes while training at Demag, which provides them with very good opportunities for advancement. Thanks to the introduction of a structured, international career management system, we are successful in ensuring the loyalty of our management staff to our Company for the long term. A special promotion programme for up-and-coming engineers has been in place since 2007 at our subsidiary in India. The programme allows them to undertake various projects and acquire a broad range of skills through job rotations.

One of our management's core missions is to take responsibility for systematically developing their employees. In the past financial year, the focus was principally on the areas of production and technology. This enables us to guarantee excellent product quality for our customers. This past financial year, Demag Cranes AG took second place in the “Best Factory/Industrial Excellence Award 2010” competition with a special project on multiple machine operation, a project in which the mechanical production employees at our plant in Wetter an der Ruhr were trained as universal machinists. Optimising tooling time and introducing teamwork boosted productivity substantially while considerably reducing processing time.

We also support our employees in other important and very fundamental areas. Our Brazilian subsidiary runs a project to harmonise the basic educational level of our employees. This project offers employees who did not have the opportunity to receive secondary education to catch up in this regard. When participants successfully complete the programme, they receive a diploma recognised by Brazil’s Ministry of Education and Culture. In 2010, we awarded scholarships for continuing education courses for the first time. Thanks to these scholarships, some of our employees began a service manager course at the International Business School of Service Management (ISS) in Hamburg in 2010. Furthermore, training focused on methodological, social and leadership skills was conducted for a total of more than 18,000 participant-days in the reporting period. This equates to an average of three continuing education days per employee – a figure we wish to gradually increase further.

Staff development continues to be offered to managers in the form of the proven “Kollegiale Beratung” (“Colleague Counselling”) programme, which involves managers from various levels in the Company’s hierarchy meeting to offer each other support in working on and solving specific issues they encounter in their everyday work and management duties. This successful programme received the “New Deals Award” for innovative human resources development in 2010. Our managers also receive training in various seminars on social and methodological skills. Up-and-coming managers can also participate in a three-part management training programme to learn and update leadership capabilities.

Human Resources Development aims to develop the skills of our international workforce in the coming years to optimally in line with their job responsibilities by implementing an even broader range of training and continuing education options. Qualification and certification schemes will be implemented internationally as part of this process.

We collect information on employee turnover in our regions and use this data to elaborate human resources measures. Further information is provided in our Sustainability Report. This is available as an online version on our website at www.sustainability2010.demagcranes-ag.com.