MICHAEL HAUER-SCHLEEFMANAGER LOGISTIC

at Emons since 2013

"From the big time to the supposed small time; no regrets."

Michael came to stay. Once employed by a major logistics corporation, an Emons employee one day suggested the change, and he hasn’t looked back since. He went from a global corporation to a medium-sized company and then up the career ladder. Today he is the manager logistic at the Magdeburg branch. The father of two gets the other half of his work-life balance mainly at home, where his two kids and a young Labrador keep him on his toes.

From a major global corporation to a family-run company like Emons; how did that happen?

Emons was recommended to me by a former vocational school classmate. At the time, I thought Emons wasn't for me, they were too small and I was already at a huge corporation. However, out of curiosity, I went to the interview and it clicked right away. From there, things went really quickly and a fortnight later I was hired. I haven’t looked back since or regretted the move from a corporate group to a medium-sized company. Especially since Emons has grown quite a lot in recent years; in fact, I was almost a little shocked that it wasn't quite all as small as I thought at the time.

And what if something does go wrong?

We try to minimise mistakes through the dual-control principle, but of course they still happen. We then try and resolve things in a calm and collected way; after all, as my grandmother always said: "When people shout, the brain shuts down." It's different in a calm conversation, and that's the corporate culture at Emons; rational communication is always possible, even when mistakes happen.

What would you wish for in future members of the team?

We welcome people who really want it, can think for themselves and actively look for work to do. We also try to give our apprentices responsibilities and show them that we believe in them from an early stage. It’s always great when you can rely on each other and the trust is usually repaid. That's precisely the sort of collaboration that we need today.

What exactly makes Emons different to a corporation?

Thanks to the flat hierarchies at Emons, there’s no top-down management, but rather the employees are involved in things such as the hall concept, office design and dealing with the customer, and are allowed to develop freely. That doesn't work in a major corporation. In addition, before, a meeting needed several weeks of lead time, by that time, we’d already come up with three new challenges that had to be tackled. Everything always took ages; that’s not the case here. At Emons, we can organise ourselves and solve everything through direct communication and short exchanges without having to always go through the longer official channels. That was something that impressed me from the start. In general, I couldn't want for a better employer.