Supporting and challenging: LANXESS places great value on its employees being able to undertake further training at every stage of their career, reach their full potential and take on new challenges. Skills are promoted individually. In addition, systematic potential analyses help the company find candidates for top management positions from its own ranks. In 2008, the company established the LANXESS Academy, an international management development program that facilities a common understanding of the company’s strategic alignment among managers across the world.

A vibrant exchange of knowledge
LANXESS is committed to maintaining a diverse international workforce. Assignments outside their home countries help employees acquire new skills and strengthen their intercultural competence. These “foreign missions” also improve knowledge transfer within the company. Sales and marketing and production management are particularly suitable areas for such an international exchange.

Ready for demographic change
Demographic change also presents personnel development with new challenges: In many western countries the average age of the workforce is increasing, with young well trained and skilled staff becoming ever more difficult to find. LANXESS is responding to this situation and investing both in sound in-house training for new staff and in continuing education for older employees. Exchange between young and experienced personnel is a long-term guarantee of commercial success. Interdisciplinary qualification programs have already been launched at selected German sites in which older employees exchange their know-how with younger colleagues.

Family and career
Professional success is dependent not least on private contentment. Developing new models that deliver a sound work/life balance are therefore at the top of the LANXESS agenda. Female employees in the company value this especially. In 2009, women held 18 percent of managerial positions worldwide. In addition, the LANXESS "family service" helps LANXESS employees in Germany find suitable childcare facilities in their region and advises them in the search for suitable care options for older family members.