Our Most Valuable Capital

Our employees have made the company what it is: Today, tesa is the world market leader in self-adhesive systems for many fields of application.

Our ability to bring the right people into the company and retain them is a central factor in our success. Appreciation of our employees is one of our firmly established management principles. One focus of leadership positions at tesa is to enable employees to develop and successfully implement visions and strategies. The priorities for all the divisions of the company are set with this in mind. Our aim is to create a great deal of latitude and give employees corresponding decision-making authority, creating a fun work environment at tesa.

Providing employees with opportunities to obtain further qualifications and training is a high priority

One important tool we use to improve performance, support employees, and develop our staff for new duties is ongoing feedback, including feedback for management. Since 2005, tesa has offered its managers the opportunity to review their own behavior from a critical standpoint through a communications process carried out together with the team: the tesa management feedback process. Using anonymous questionnaires, which was developed jointly by employee representatives and the human resources department, compares managers’ and employees’ views of themselves and others. Training sessions and specific skills training are other venues we offer to give our employees further qualifications.

To ensure that comprehensive information is provided and that the company communicates extensively with the employees, media such as the employee magazine inside:tesa and the tesa intranet were created as part of an across-the-board communications strategy that aims to promote an unmistakable international corporate culture.

The company’s innovative personnel policy has won multiple awards.

In 2007 the jury in the “Top Job” competition, which was held under the auspices of former German Minister of Economics Wolfgang Clement, named the tesa plant in Harrislee, near Flensburg, Germany, as one of the top 100 mid-sized German employers. The tesa plant in Suzhou, near Shanghai, was distinguished by the district government as one of the 19 best employers among the 2,000 companies present in the industrial park. In addition, the F.A.Z. Institute of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, a major German daily newspaper, granted the largest tesa plant, in Offenburg, its TOP Business Award. The jurors were won over by the innovative models for employee working hours, progressive programs to promote employee responsibility, and motivation, as well as leadership skills in the management of all three plants.

Since 2004, tesa has been supporting the “Fair Company” initiative

This initiative distinguishes companies that offer graduates good career opportunities rather than employing them as long-term interns, and thus using them as inexpensive labor in positions beneath their qualification levels.

In March 2007, the company also established an internal complaints office serving all employees of tesa AG and its subsidiaries. It offers assistance to all employees and applicants who feel they are being or have been discriminated against on the basis of race, ethnic origin, religion, creed, disability, age, or sexual orientation.

Occupational safety is a high priority at the company

The occupational safety guidelines pursuant to the international OHSAS 18001 standard apply within the company. tesa has achieved great success in preventing injuries and job-related health risks, as the extraordinarily low accident rates at the locations demonstrate. One of the most important goals of occupational safety is the systematic determination of where hazards lie, and the assessment of the risks that arise from those hazards. The locations regularly exchange information and opinions concerning known sources of danger. As far back as 2006, tesa’s German locations achieved the lowest accident numbers in the history of tesa AG: just 2.8 reportable occupational accidents for every 1,000 full-time employees. That corresponds to 73 percent fewer reportable occupational accidents than in 2002.