Innovation

A major reason for choosing this company is their environmental and social work and commitment. The industry in general and the company in particular is focusing on development, growth, inventing and reinventing to create a sustainable business through competent employees. They focus on employer branding to attract talented engineers to the organization in order to lead exciting changes and development in the industry through their technology solutions.

Inspiration

We choose this company basically for three reasons. First of all, one of us has established contacts in the organizations so it was quite easy to get them to agree to an interview. Secondly they are very opened minded when it comes to education and students and they are eager to teach and help students out, a quality that is quite rare in the area. At Kapsch they market the organization through two steps. The first step includes drawing engineers to the organization by employer branding and offering an attracting workplace. The second step is to emphasize the exciting changes and development happening in the industry now. They give free lectures to students to market Kapsch and make students aware of the options available so that they consider the company once they finish their studies. The third reason for choosing this company is their environmental work and commitment. The industry in general and the company in particular is focusing on development, growth, inventing and reinventing to create a sustainable business through competent employees.

Overall impact

Kapsch is a 125 year old listed company with its roots and headquarter in Vienna, Austria. The company are owned by a Holding Company where the two brothers Kapsch has two-thirds of the stocks in Kapsch. The holding company manages and controls Kapsch but do not operate it. The company operates all over the world, in Asia, Australia, North and South America to mention a few. In total Kapsch has 5500 employees in 30 countries with a turnover of SEK 11 billion. Their clients usually include everything from banks, construction companies and transport administration to cities.

Kapsch develops and produces products for better transportation by advanced and digitized equipment. Their products are used for intelligent mobility by traffic management, safety & security, smart urban mobility and connected vehicles (Kapsch, 2017). One product they produce is Customs Systems where the traffic is handled and reported by cameras, for example city taxes in Stockholm to reduce traffic in the inner city. Their customs systems are used around the world for various reasons, such as to control road traffic, finance the traffic infrastructure, and additional expenses for the cost of environmental pollution, and every system are specially made after the customers’ demands and wishes.

Kapsch is divided into three areas of specialization;

(1) Kapsch TrafficCom which is the parent company and produces products for traffic management,

(2) Kapsch BusinessCom is a subsidiary and manages internal drifts but also has external customers,

(3) Kapsch CarrierCom is also a subsidiary and they produces products for trains such as ticket handling and communications.

The company also has support functions that will support the entire organization such as finance, IT, HR and quality.

The company is divided into six branches operating by region, the European market (EMENA). Furthermore, there are six solutions centrals. The biggest one are called Tolling and consists of 300 engineers. Right now one of the products that’s being developed are automatically connected brakes for long-haulers. In this way, long-haulers can be very close to each other on a long road and if someone breaks in the front, everyone at the same time brakes completely automatically. This system is estimated to reduce fuel incineration by 12%.

Business benefit

Employer branding is a main priority at Kapsch. The business depends on highly educated, competent staff and especially young and talented engineers. There are 130 employees and 37 consultants working in the office in Jönköping alone and around 80-85% of those have an academic background.

Since they work in the technology field, around 80% of their employees are men and they’re officially working towards attracting more female engineers to the organization.

As mentioned before they specifically focuse on attracting students by offering free lectures and general information about the company. They also instructed headhunters to focusing on finding female candidates for different positions but the competition is hard so they sometimes lose potential candidates to the benefit of larger organizations.

Social and environmental benefit

Hans Kajfalk’s work towards sustainability goes beyond laws and regulation. It is not only a business model but a passion as well. The solutions they’re currently selling are all beneficial for the environment in different ways.

In Rome for example one of their product is being used to preserve old buildings by reducing the traffic in certain important historical areas. This is being done by installing checkpoints regulating the amount of individuals and traffic. The organization has eight official values, or lead words, but Hans Kajfalk finds that actions speak louder than words so they keep the business transparent and free of corruption.

In everything they do, they keep sustainability in mind and it includes everything from improving office routines to checking subcontractors and most importantly developing technical innovation.

"The innovation we are most proud of is our transponders in our customs system solution that helps save the environment. One of our vision that could make our products even more efficient is if the transponders could be satellite based with GPS, then we would not need to have as many components and the information could be sent automatically".

"Apart from creating a sustainable business model we also go beyond rules and laws to support different charity project such as Cancerfonden (a fund that supports cancer research) and Nattvandrarna (a project to make Jönköping safe at night, especially for the youth). With Christmas coming up we also support a project to send Christmas gifts to children in Rumania and Hungary through Frälsningsarmén (christian charity workers). In general we’re working hard to promote entrepreneurs in Jönköping and market the city as a place to live, work, study and flourish. This is not only a regional project but every office around the word follow the same policy. We also encourage the next generation of potential employees by giving free lectures at universities and high schools".

Interview

Hans Kajfalk, HR director