In the context of an employee survey at the German sites, it became clear that the shift supervisors wanted support in managing their multicultural teams in production. When employees from many nations worked together, language barriers and different cultural influences led to conflicts and the formation of “small groups”. This had a negative impact on the company culture and production results.

The goal was to sensitize shift supervisors to the differences between people and cultures and to jointly develop strategies for communicating effectively and leading their multicultural teams successfully. Special focus was to be placed on the most important cultural influencing factors and their own cultural imprint. The shift leaders should recognize for themselves how they can influence group dynamics in an intercultural context in their role as leaders.

The customers and CONTUR agreed that they should work together on concrete problem cases during the training in order to develop individual solutions. The collegial exchange during the training was also intended to strengthen networking among the shift supervisors beyond the training days in order to be able to discuss problem cases and share best practices in the future.

In a first round, the company’s attitude to the initial situation was defined together with the management, and the framework conditions derived from this were operationalized.

Subsequently, work was carried out with the shift supervisors in large groups during 2-day events in order to make diversity perceptible in the training situation.