Conti planning to grow workforce by 7,000 this year

Assuming the market develops according to expectations, Continental intends to increase its global employee count by around 7,000 in 2014. This would bring the number on its payroll to approximately 185,000 by the end of the year. This is about 50,000 jobs more than in 2009, during the midst of the financial crisis. At the end of 2013, the employee count had reached around 178,000, with 50,000 of these positions based in the company’s home country, Germany.

“The larger workforce reflects our business success. In 2014 alone, we are expecting to increase sales by five per cent to around 35 billion euros. Alongside the expansion of production capacities, it is new markets and new technologies that are driving our growth – and this applies to the workforce as well. We are thus well-advised to position ourselves as globally as possible to comply with our strategic dimension of better serving customers by working in the market for the market,” comments Elke Strathmann, Continental Executive Board member responsible for human resources. “In the last few years, we have broadened our base both product wise and geographically. This has made talent management and cultural development all the more important and we are taking this into account.”

The main beneficiaries of Continental’s job creation in 2013 were China, with around 1,800 new jobs, Romania and North America, which each received approximately 1,500 new jobs, and Germany, where almost 1,400 new jobs were created. “Our goal in 2014 is to further develop in the growth markets. By itself, the planned acquisition of Veyance Technologies Inc. would add another 9,000 or so staff to the 185,000 already envisioned,” adds Strathmann.