“Romania has been for several years and still is a very important country for Leoni. We currently have about 17,000 employees in three legal entities (Arad, Bistrita, Pitesti),” Leno officials told ZF.
“As you read in our annual report, the Bistrita location had to manage several big project ramp-ups at the same time starting in the third quarter 2015, and we were struggling to get sufficient additional employees due to the very low unemployment rate in the region. Meanwhile we do no more need support from other locations abroad (outside Romania).”
Temporary ‘import’ of employees from other areas and the unexpected rise in minimum wage in Romania in 2015 caused a decline in Leoni’s wiring systems division’s revenue, according to the global report of the group listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. The 2015 financial results are not available for all the companies in the group yet, but 2014 results show it posted more than RON2 billion revenue and RON43 million net profit while the average number of employees stood at about 11,000.
Leoni officials also said they have taken a series of steps to improve attractiveness to potential employees in Bistrita, such as a recruiting caravan touring the Bistrita County to interview potential employees and production of a video spread on the Internet.
“We are still looking for employees in all of our sites, not only in Bistrita. We are searching on all levels – from blue-collar employees, including unqualified people, up to white-collar specialists like engineers and managers.”
Leoni’s Romanian operations generated more than 10% of the sales of group in 2014 and the 17,000 employees account for 22% of the over 75,000 people working for Leoni.
“In the last five years, we doubled our staff in Romania. We already considerably enlarged our location in Bistrita with new buildings. Moreover we have set up satellite locations in Beius and Ludus, legally belonging to Bistrita and Arad. (…) Leoni additionally opens a shared service center in Cluj-Napoca, dealing with administrative HR topics for our European facilities of the Wiring Systems Division.”
The first shared service center of Leoni in Europe will open in Cluj next month and employ six to ten people at first. Headcount will then increase to 40 or 50 in the next few years.
Although automotive component manufacturers are Romania’s main exporters of goods, personnel shortage has become a serious problem especially in the west of the country, where companies are unable to find people to work in their plants. The fight over suitable workforce has driven wages up and rising costs might make investors look to cheaper workforce destinations outside the EU such as Ukraine, Macedonia and Serbia.
“Leoni’s objective is to further grow its business. Depending on the customers’ preferences we will grow existing plants or set up new facilities if needed. Eastern Europe remains a focus region, from where we deliver to our customers in Europe. Besides Romania, we are running wiring systems plants in Serbia, Czech Republic, Ukraine, Slovakia, and Russia,” the officials of the German-held group said.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)