Interview with the Competentia NRW team
Recently, Karin Knütter from Competentia NRW – Competence Center Women & Work visited us here at Ingpuls. Under the motto “Women in focus”, our colleagues Tanja Reichenberg (Finance & Controlling) and Charlotte-Amélie Beckhoff (Purchasing & Human Resources) spoke on this day about their personal experiences as women in the profession – in general and in relation to Ingpuls: From their careers, recruiting and activities to the question of challenges, both – representing all women at Ingpuls – were in focus on this day.Here is a short excerpt of the article, which was written by Ms Bettina Brakelmann on behalf of Competentia NRW and published on the Competentia website – click here for the full article!
For growing companies like Ingpuls, the topic of recruiting skilled workers is very central. After all, the Ruhr region was not exactly a magnet for young engineers in the past. “But fortunately that has changed a lot,” says Christian Großmann, who is responsible for marketing and sales, among other things. In particular, he says, it is thanks to the company’s special proximity to the Ruhr University that there is a “talent pool” that can be accessed. “But this is not a matter of course,” emphasizes Großmann, “we have to do something about it. Burkhard Maaß gives lectures and specifically seeks contact with students. In this way, committed people keep coming to Ingpuls, often initially as interns or working students. And some of them stay with us afterwards. Charlotte Beckhoff also came to Ingpuls in 2016 through a job advertisement at the university. The economics graduate remembers: “At the time, we were looking for a management assistant in the area of human resources and purchasing. It was actually untypical for an economist, but it sounded interesting and I liked the company right away.” The initial maternity leave became a permanent position as a personnel officer. And as fate would have it, she herself is now about to give birth to her first child. For Charlotte Beckhoff it is clear: “My job is very important to me. That’s why I will return quickly, and my husband will then go on parental leave. As a native Frenchwoman, this is quite normal for me. In France, there are other, more progressive childcare models, where it is common practice to be back at work after six months.”
This is not yet normal in many German companies. At Ingpuls, with its still quite young team, there are many parents, and two of the managing directors have recently become fathers again. So Großmann knows from experience that sometimes family must take priority. “If you’re sitting in a meeting and you get a call from the daycare centre that your child has to be picked up because he or she is sick, that’s the way it is. No one has to feel under pressure, they have to go and look after the child
. The bottom line for us as a company is that the work gets done, and in many cases that can be done at home on the laptop in the evening, for example.”Not only human resources, but also finance and controlling are now in female hands at Ingpuls. Tanja Reichenberg has been steering the financial fortunes of the company for a year. Can you do that off the cuff? “No,” laughs Reichenberg, “I have known Ingpuls for many years from the Junior Chamber of Commerce and through my former employer, Volksbank Sprockhövel. We’ve got to know each other better and better over the years and above all, we’ve built up mutual trust.” Großmann adds: “Tanja is a stroke of luck for us. We work very well with Volksbank and Tanja was willing to get deeply involved with us and our complex business model. That’s how we slowly grew together.”
We thank you for the exciting exchange and wish our colleagues continued success in their professional careers!
