Success for Vonovia and new skilled workers: German Chamber of Industry and Commerce confirms full equivalence of electronics engineers from Colombia

• Vonovia’s Chief Human Resources Officer Ruth Werhahn congratulates Colombian employees and praises their cour-age and commitment
• The Chamber and Continental AG say recruitment outside the EU has been a success, praising exemplary training as a result of good cooperation between all parties involved
• Nationwide deployment during roll-out of solar panels on properties

Today, 13 Colombian employees at Vonovia, Germany’s leading housing company, have received official recognition of equivalence as “Electronics Engineers for Building and Infrastructure Systems” from the Hanover Chamber of Industry and Commerce, on par with their German counterparts. This has become possible due to their 14-month employment as skilled workers at Vonovia combined with support from the Chamber and vocational training at Continental. “It’s a good day for all of us. Our Colombian colleagues are now fully recog-nised skilled workers in the German labour market, and all the doors are open to them,” says Ruth Werhahn, Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO) at Vonovia. After recognition of their qualifications, the Colombi-an specialists, who were recruited by Vonovia in South America in 2021, can now be taken on as permanent employees.

“To attract new skilled workers”, said Ruth Werhahn, “Vonovia had de-cided to look beyond its national borders. And Colombia was a place where we found skilled and courageous people who appreciated the good prospects we were offering. So they took this opportunity for a new life and made the most of it.” She also praised the excellent level of cooper-ation of everyone involved. “It was real teamwork that led to success,” she said. 

The skilled workers, who had been recruited in Colombia under the TEAM programme of the German Federal Employment Agency, had already been learning German and had passed a language proficiency test. After their arrival in September 2022, they received on-the-job support from the Chamber and from the training provider Continental. Vonovia looked after its new colleagues, accompanying them to the relevant local gov-ernment offices and finding accommodation for them.

“Once the Chamber had reviewed their job qualifications shortly after their arrival, we worked with our partners on a programme of training modules which the Colombians still needed. This was important in ironing out any differences in vocational standards, so that they could obtain full professional recognition. The recruitment of skilled workers outside the EU and their qualification for the German labour market went extremely well here, thanks to good teamwork,” said Maike Bielfeldt, Managing Director of the Hanover Chamber of Industry and Commerce.

The project is based on the German Skilled Immigration Act, which came into force in 2020 and has since been amended. The Act speeds up the recognition of existing foreign job qualifications and gives skilled immi-grants up to two years to acquire any missing skills and any expertise of common technologies that they lack in Germany. 

The Continental Institute for Technology and Transformation (CITT) as training provider is also pleased with the good results: “The people re-cruited in Colombia had a basic knowledge of German and were keen to integrate within Germany. Working with our partners, we created a model that combined learning German, process-based learning and har-monisation with the relevant German job requirements. At the same time, we demonstrated how foreign employees can be successfully equipped as skilled workers and can be integrated into society within a short period of time,” said Dr Ariane Reinhart, Member of the Executive Board for Human Resources and Sustainability at Continental AG. 

After successfully integrating 13 electronics engineers from Colombia last year, Vonovia has employed a further 26 Colombian electronics engi-neers since November 2023. For them, too, the recognition and valida-tion process of their skills is now underway, so that they can start sup-porting the expansion of photovoltaic systems at Vonovia throughout Germany. Again, it involves working with the Chamber and Continental. In the meantime, Vonovia has been recruiting further Colombians. This third group of electronics engineers have now been receiving German lessons in Bogotá since January. 

Use of the photographic material is free, but we would be grateful if you could quote the following source: Vonovia/Offenblende/Franz Bischof

Caption: Ruth Werhahn, Chief Human Resources Officer at Vonovia, congratulates employees on the recognition of their pro-fessional equivalence by the Hanover Chamber of Industry and Commerce. The housing company had recruited the electronics engineers in Colombia. The Colombians were also congratulated by Ariane Reinhart, Member of the Executive Board of Continental AG, and Maike Bielfeldt, Managing Director of the Hanover Chamber of Industry and Commerce.