Managing demographic change

• Leadership duties include “leadership in times of demographic change”

Our aim is to create a suitable framework to help maintain the employability of our personnel at all stages of life and ensure the availability of qualified employees – particularly in a technological environment – over the long term. We are working intensively on future trends like new technologies and digitalization (Industry 4.0). We see digitalization as an opportunity to meet the challenges of demographic change.

The demographic situation within the BASF Group varies widely by region. The ever-increasing delay of retirement and the aging employee population are relevant issues, particularly in Germany and North America. We address these different challenges with various measures to manage demographic change such as health and exercise programs, flexible working arrangements, age-appropriate workplaces and knowledge management. Demographic analyses for our sites, for individual plants and specific job profiles make each demographic situation transparent for the responsible leaders. For plants and profiles with a particularly critical age structure, we immediately derive specific measures such as direct knowledge transfer programs or succession planning. Given the special role that our leaders assume, the topic “leadership in times of demographic change” forms a part of many of our leadership programs.

BASF Group employee age structure
(Total: 115,490 thereof 24.6% women, as of December 31, 2017)