Innovative topics of the future, modern working environments, international development possibilities and the opportunity to make one’s own vision into Vorsprung: All of this makes Audi into one of Germany’s most attractive employers in the opinion of young professionals. “We have achieved the best ranking result since we started participating in the surveys. Never before have so many young people expressed their confidence in us,” stated Stephan Meier, Head of International and Top‑Management Human Resources at AUDI AG. “Furthermore, we regard it as a great honor that experienced young professionals want to help us shape Audi’s future activities with their expertise.”
Experienced engineers and economists voted Audi into top positions in the surveys by both Trendence and Universum, while experienced IT experts see the brand with the four rings directly after the two IT giants Google and Microsoft in the ranking. This means that Audi has gained one place since last year. “Making the automobile into a fully connected digital device is a key topic of our times,” said Meier. “We want to do pioneering work in this field, together with informatics specialists. New operating systems or software solutions for the worldwide digital factories are exciting projects for IT experts.
“In order to be an attractive employer for sought-after experts, we must constantly open up new scope and encourage creative exchanges of opinions and experience,” added Joachim Kraege, Head of Organization and Consulting at AUDI AG. For this purpose, Audi has started transformation processes in many areas and has successfully established new formats. In an “agile process workshop” for example, employees from various departments are applying the creative scrum method to cooperate on new IT solutions. Since September 2016, Audi has also been regularly sending employees from various departments to the “think tank” operating in a co-working space in Berlin. As an agile unit, its goal is to enter into partnerships with startups, to develop new networks and jointly to find ideas for the implementation of the corporate strategy. Also in bar camps and other workshop formats, Audi experts regularly discuss new forms of cooperation or future megatrends, thus inspiring each other. At the first “MQ! The Mobility Quotient” summit in September, Audi employees came together with creative personalities from the areas of business and science, such as Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak. In various workspaces, approximately 300 international participants worked on the mobility of tomorrow.
Employees have many interactive application and feedback functions also on internal digital communication platforms, for which Audi has already received the “Digital Transformation Award.” In this way, Audi is promoting a direct dialog across departmental and hierarchical levels, and is informing the workforce even faster and more transparently. During regular chats, employees can also exchange expertise with the members of the company’s Board of Management.
Audi is opening up further scope for ideas and innovations by offering more than 200 different working‑time models. Among other things, the automobile manufacturer is considering making shift times in production more flexible, for which a pilot project started recently in Ingolstadt. In addition, the employees’ possibility to do mobile work makes the working day more flexible and makes it easier to combine a career with family life.
The company’s philosophy has had positive feedback: This year, Audi has won several awards as a top employer, for example in Germany, Hungary, Belgium, Italy, Mexico and China. All the current advertisements for jobs at Audi can be found at www.audi.de/karriere.