Pledge of family-friendliness

Kassel. Wintershall AG has received for its business location in Kassel the audit certificate of "Beruf & Familie" ("career & family") for its family-friendly personnel policy. This commendation makes Wintershall AG one of the few companies in Germany to date to be awarded the basic certificate by the non-profit trust Hertie-Stiftung.

The certificate was awarded after an audit in which, for example, working hours models, service for families and childcare facilities were examined in detail. Wintershall has implemented in recent years a series of schemes to help employees combine their career with bringing up a family. Besides introducing flexible working hours, one of these was to establish a childcare centre at the company's head office in Kassel, which was honoured by the federal German ministry for the family, the elderly, women and young people as an example to follow. Family-friendly concepts at Wintershall are an important part of personnel policy and are collected and accompanied by an in-house Work & Life Service. This service, covering every aspect of combining career and family, is placed at the disposal of employees, whether female and male, in every business location.

Wintershall is a fully-owned subsidiary of BASF in Ludwigshafen and has been active for more than 70 years in exploration and production of mineral oil and natural gas. Today the company is the largest German mineral oil and natural gas producer and with 1,537 employees generated an operating result in 2002 of 1.2 billion Euros.