Employees and diversity

Thanks to their experience and knowledge, our employees are essential guarantors of Jenoptik’s economic success. As an employer, we are focused on our corporate values of openness, drive, confidence and a dialogue-oriented corporate culture that is characterised by initiative and respect for diversity and equal opportunities. We offer our employees attractive employment conditions and a wide range of individual development opportunities. We encourage employees who drive things forward and who have the will to succeed. Only committed and curious people with new ideas can achieve outstanding results.

Discover the diversity of the Jenoptik family!

Innovation and an open, agile corporate culture need diversity. As a company, we want to use difference and diversity in all areas to promote creativity and generate innovations.

Jenoptik pursues many initiatives which receive high priority and support from the Executive Board, promoting greater diversity and women's careers, thereby contributing to a modern corporate culture. A global and diverse Diversity Council manages the topic internally.

For example, management positions in the Group are to be filled more vigorously with international employees and women – measured in the so-called diversity rate, set to increase to 30% by 2022 and to 33% by 2025. As improver of the year in the Women’s Career Index (FKi) in 2020 and signatory to the Charter of Diversity, Jenoptik promotes diversity in the company and drives cultural change.

Diversity rate

Target by 2025: 33%

Jenoptik is family-friendly

Through flexible models for working hours, we respond to the needs of our employees, and, by way of flextime, part-time work and flexible periods of parental leave, we can ensure a good balance between family and work. Childcare is essential for this, so Jenoptik has been investing in its sites for several years to provide our employees with a fixed space quota.

You can find out more in our Non-Financial Statement (PDF).

Jenoptik is modern and flexible in terms of leadership culture

Respectful interaction with each other in the workplace, work-life balance, flexible working hours, and a health-promoting working environment are crucial to this.

In particular, the introduction of remote working in 2019 has helped us to cope well with the challenging framework conditions created by COVID-19.

Personnel development as a decisive factor

Personnel development is a decisive factor for our future viability and the commitment of our employees.

We support our employees according to their potential and interests and analyze their development needs through regular appraisal interviews. In 2021, Jenoptik invested 2.6 million euros in training and further education for its own employees. At Jenoptik, learning follows the 70:20:10 principle (70% learning at the workplace, 20% learning from others and 10% face-to-face or online training). Our managers are also trained to be essential levers for the company’s success based on this principle.

We aim to further increase the satisfaction and commitment of our employees and measure this through an annual employee survey. The commitment of our employees is illustrated through our “Engagement Score”, which was 72 percent in 2021, while the recommendation rate, measured in the “Net Promoter Score”, was 69 percent.

Jenoptik supports:

career advice projects in schools, and offers students the opportunity to complete an internship
young researchers in Thuringia as a long-standing federal region sponsor company of “Jugend forscht”
various sector-specific organizations to promote education and training
students in the form of degree theses, internships and scholarships.

Jenoptik cooperates with:

selected universities worldwide by way of personnel marketing and recruitment, for research purposes and as part of the further training of employees
selected universities worldwide through projects and sponsoring and is active in various committees and networks in an advisory capacity.

Recruiting qualified personnel

Recruiting qualified staff from around the globe is in line with Jenoptik’s international growth strategy.

Our target groups are primarily specialists and skilled workers from the natural sciences and engineering sciences as well as experts with a business and legal background. Initiatives to approach and employ applicants with diverse profiles will continue to be enhanced. Jenoptik has also set itself the goal of filling more vacancies with internally trained specialists. In 2021, Jenoptik created 30 additional apprenticeships, training a total of 219 young people throughout the Group. In 2021, the apprenticeship ratio was 4.0 percent.