One team with room for everyone

One team with room for everyone

Just as a good piece of cast iron contains several alloy elements, a good business is also built
on different kinds of people. This is also true in the BIRN Group.

BIRN in Holstebro has employees with 17 different nationalities, and 70 per cent of employees at ULDALL in Vejen are not native Danish speakers. The linguistic and cultural differences place demands on us as a workplace and on our managers. We are ready to meet this challenge, and our Danish companies – BIRN in Holstebro, ULDALL and TASSO – offer Danish lessons for employees for whom Danish is not their first language, and also courses for people with dyslexia. TASSO Bernareggi in Italy also offers courses in Italian to promote  communication and integration within the company. TASSO Bernareggi also offers English courses for office staff.

At the BIRN Group, we see diversity as a strength, as it helps us to see challenges and solutions from various angles and to better understand
the cultural differences among people. We see this at ULDALL in Vejen, for example, where Danish lessons are very well received by the many international employees. ULDALL offers all employees with a foreign background a screening to determine their current level of Danish, and then Danish language training matched to their level. Both the screening and language training are voluntary, but virtually all foreign  employees take up the offer.

“Depending on the employee’s language level, Danish lessons either take place here at ULDALL, or at a municipal language school.
In both cases, the lessons takes place during working hours and employees receive full pay throughout. Both factors are central to the success of the courses. We generally see a stronger sense of belonging, team spirit and mutual understanding as Danish language skills are improved. We are also better able to retain stable and faithful employees,” explains Kurt Olsen, Production Director at ULDALL.

One of the employees who has completed the language course is Mehri Rosha, who has worked in production at ULDALL for the past three years. With an Afghan background, he interacted using English during his initial time at the company, but now uses Danish.

“It means a lot to be able to talk to my colleagues in Danish, because it helps us better understand each other. I have also been very keen to learn to speak Danish, and that has probably helped me learn a little faster. The fact that classes are held during working hours has also made it easier,” says Mehri Rosha.

language course at ULDALL, and in 2024 it will be the third time that the course has been held. However, we have not yet achieved our goals
in relation to strengthening diversity at the BIRN Group. In the coming years, we will give more focus to minimising the differential between sexes. We have a goal that 20 per cent of employees in top management positions should be women, and we are not there yet. There were 10 female managers in the companies in BIRN Group in 2023, which corresponds to 1.2 per cent of our employees having a female manager.

Everyone is welcome at the BIRN Group, regardless of gender, ethnicity, age and more. Here we work as one team, where there is room for
everyone.