ALTANA’s Employees:
Our Most Important Asset
ALTANA is one of the world’s leading specialty chemicals
companies with great innovative strength. The some 6,200
women and men working for ALTANA companies world-
wide demonstrate above-average qualifications and commitment.
The culture of our group, defined in ALTANA’s Guid-
ing Principles, is informed by our four central values: openness
and trust, appreciation and empowerment to act.
ALTANA offers its employees further training opportu-
nities, promotes their professional development in a targeted
manner, and supports their health with special preventive
measures. This helps make us a more attractive employer. Our
current employee survey from 2017, in which four out
of every five employees participated, once again shows how
successful these measures are.
The Intranet-based survey shows the reasons for
ALTANA’s employees’ high satisfaction. Contributing factors
include the work environment, the quality of the tasks,
as well as the staff’s identification with the company and its
Guiding Principles. All in all, the employees’ overall satis-
faction is high. With a value of 5.89 on a scale of 1 to 7, the
result is above the industry benchmark of 5.51. The val-
ues for “commitment” were also in the upper range, at 5.82.
Human Resource Development and
Talent Management
In 2016, the ALTANA Group established the Keep Chang-
ing Agenda. Among other things, it states that from 2020
around 70 percent of all leadership positions should be
filled internally. Another focus is the increased internationalization
of management. The success of this approach became
apparent in 2017. ALTANA has already filled a number
of vacant top-management positions in the Group inter-
nally. In addition, it transferred parts of its global functions
from Germany to other regions.
In 2017, ALTANA further harmonized its human-resource
development program worldwide. The program “Fokus
führen” (Focus on Leadership), originally developed for Ger-
many, was also implemented in Great Britain, Italy, the
Netherlands, and the U.S. It conveys ALTANA’s management
instruments and guidelines to the participants and enables
them to carry out annual employee talks, the compass dialog
(see next page). Next, the program will be rolled out in
China, India, and Southeast Asia, as well as in French-speak-
ing countries and Latin America.
For managers, this program is supplemented by a new
format called Leadership PitStop. This format promotes
international exchange between selected managers, enabling
them to discuss personal challenges and develop new
approaches to the issue of leadership.
By introducing a Group-wide talent-management
function, ALTANA has created an important prerequisite for
identifying existing leadership potential in its companies
across the regions. ALTANA is currently examining an overall
concept for worldwide talent management. With it, all
instruments, from recruiting, employee development pro-
grams, and assessment centers to the next career step,
are to be interlinked. ALTANA’s Human Resources department
evaluated the Talent Development Process (TDP) as well as
the online assessment for recruiting. Both instruments have
only been used in Germany thus far.
Within the framework of two pilot talent conferences
held in Germany and the U.S. in 2017, potential talents
were evaluated and found Group-wide and measures for the
further development of these employees developed. The
ALTANA Management Challenge (AMC), an assessment cen-
ter with 65 participants from across the globe, also con-
tributed to better identification of potential up-and-coming
managers. During the Challenge, some development mea-
sures and concrete career steps were already established. The
90 Human Resources