Deutsche Bahn wants to expand its offer and become more punctual - this is not possible without new employees. The company is now reporting that more new people have been hired than ever before in a year.
Deutsche Bahn is speeding up the recruitment of new employees. "We've upped the ante with the recruitment and brought on board 2,000 more new employees than planned," said Group HR Director Martin Seiler. A total of around 26,000 employment commitments have been made so far this year, it said, more than ever before.
The bottom line is that this means an increase in employment of 5000 employees, because every year thousands leave the company, mainly for reasons of age. There is an annual requirement of around 2,000 new engine drivers. At the beginning of the year, Deutsche Bahn was also looking for transport service providers and electronics technicians. Last year, Deutsche Bahn hired 22,000 employees, which means an increase of 2,000 jobs.
The railway has ambitious plans. The new timetable provides for an expanded range of services from mid-December. For example, there will be a train from Cologne to Munich twice an hour. Frankfurt Airport will also be better connected. In cooperation with the Austrian Federal Railways, a new night train is also to run from Berlin via Prague to Zurich.
At the same time, numerous routes are to be renovated, which, however, leads to numerous construction sites. After all, long-distance trains were a little more punctual in September than in the previous months. Almost 63 percent reached their goal last month without any major delay, as the group announced on Friday. That was six percentage points more than in August. At the beginning of the year, rail boss Richard Lutz promised a punctuality target of 80 percent, but dropped this plan after a few weeks.
Also in the coming year, Deutsche Bahn wants to hire new employees at a high level. An agreement had been reached with the union side to recruit at least 18,000 new people this year and last year. At the end of June this year, the group employed more than 338,600 people worldwide, around 220,500 of them in Germany. Deutsche Bahn plans to plant a tree for every new employee by April next year, a total of 26,000 in ten different federal states.
