Ability-oriented workstation Design and value-added employee assignment

Not only employees but also employers face great challenges if employees are unable to complete their work due to restrictions such as accidents or illness. Volkswagen AG took this into consideration and created work conditions that allow for respectful and value-added employee assignments in the scope of its strategy – TRANSFORM.TOGETHER. Together with UNITY, a Group-wide flagship project was implemented at its location in Wolfsburg. The Project STARK represents the five pillars: stabilization, training, development, respect and core added-value.

Thus, a production area was redesigned in terms of work organization and promoting health in order to meet the special requirements of employees with work restrictions. The most advanced production technologies available and ergonomically designed workstations made this possible, as well as the intensive and personal supervision of foremen, HR, employee representatives and ergonomic assistants. A holistic training and stabilization concept, which was developed specifically for this area, also contributed to this. The goal is to retain employees with restrictions to enable them to continue their work in production or to reintegrate them. UNITY brought both expertise from the production environment as well as expertise from the healthcare and clinical sectors. Through a holistic consulting approach and the integrative abilities of the UNITY project team, this complex and highly sensitive project could be successfully implemented and executed at Volkswagen together with the Volkswagen team.