Employees

Our employees are key to implementing the “We create chemistry” strategy. We want to attract and retain talented people for our company and support them in their development. To do so, we cultivate a working environment that inspires and connects people. It is founded on inclusive leadership based on mutual trust, respect and dedication to top performance. 

We want to form the best team. To achieve this, we focus on three strategic directions: excellent people, excellent place to work and excellent leaders. Emphasis is placed on our attractiveness in worldwide labor markets, personal and professional development, lifelong learning, and supporting and developing our leaders. We are committed to complying with internationally recognized labor and social standards worldwide. In addition, BASF reacts early to external trends and challenges such as the advance of globalization and the increasingly rapidly changing environment, especially as this relates to the digitalization of work.

Ultimately, everything we do has to be of value to our customers. We have a flexible organization and empower our employees to be able to differentiate their offerings. We have great people working at BASF and our employees have the necessary tools and resources to best develop and deliver the products, solutions and services their customers need. Our values define how we want to work together as a team and with our customers and partners – creative, open, responsible and entrepreneurial. As a team we will work together every day to be faster, more effective and more innovative than our competitors. In this way, we want to win our customers’ hearts and minds.

Number of employees

At the end of 2017, BASF had 115,490 employees (2016: 113,830); of these, 3,103 were apprentices (2016: 3,120). The higher headcount was primarily due to the acquisitions of Grupo Thermotek, Monterrey, Mexico, Rolic AG, Allschwil, Switzerland, and the western European building material business for professional users from the Henkel group.