Medium-sized family business
Secures know-how for the future

The company has been producing high-quality, individual furniture since 1960 and specializes in interior design and room planning. Brothers Ralf and Rüdiger Helmrich run the business with 28 employees, and their children Richard and Pauline are already the third generation to be part of the company.

Hanover Region

Mr. Helmrich, how does demographic change affect your company?

Our age structure means that many employees will be working for a maximum of 10 years. This older generation has an incredible wealth of in-house knowledge and experience that must not be lost. Younger employees are coming in, but passing on the knowledge of the "old hands" to the next generation is a major challenge. Training takes an incredibly long time and is therefore very time-consuming and cost-intensive. What's more, the younger generation may not stay with the company for very long.

You took part in a regioLab workshop to talk about these topics. What did you gain from taking part?

I was able to talk to the other workshop participants who are facing the same problems. We discussed the challenges together, analyzed them and developed initial solutions. That was really interesting, because we were able to filter out very well what our problem actually is, where it can go and what will happen if we do nothing. Knowing that we are on the right track was also important and we were able to take away some very good ideas.

What ideas will you implement in the future?

In future, new employees at our company will document their own induction process in detail and record the knowledge they have acquired for subsequent colleagues. At the same time, we will create short videos of actions and processes so that new employees can be trained more autonomously from now on.

What do you like about the regioLab events?

The exchange is very trusting and cross-sectoral. Everyone is keen to work in a solution-oriented way and you always take something away with you.

Would you like to find out more and take part in a workshop yourself? Then get in touch with the regioLab coordination office.