Stefanie Hörner had written a total of 385 applications before she finally got a job in the returns department at Arvato Düren. It wasn’t because of her skills; however, her hearing has been impaired since a serious accident in 2003. “I was invited to many interviews. But whenever I mentioned that making phone calls is problematic, I was turned down,” she says. So, she tended to not mention her impairment in later application processes. Stefanie Hörner is therefore all the more pleased that she is working at Arvato, as the IHK magazine of the Aachen Chamber of Industry and Commerce reported.
Claudia Breuer is the Disability Officer at the Arvato site in Düren. Together with Stefanie Hörner, she found simple solutions. “Mentioning your disability to your employer or applying for severe disability status is often perceived as an obstacle. However, it is not about the disability. It is about compensating for disadvantages – because every person with a disability has disadvantages that we try to compensate for with the application,” said Claudia Breuer.
Compensation for disadvantages in the workplace
The disability officer also found this compensation in the case of Stefanie Hörner: Arvato installed a mirror at her workplace, enabling her to see when someone is talking to her from behind. The phone automatically transmits audio signals and speech to Hörner’s hearing aids via Bluetooth. This allows her to make phone calls without any problems. Meanwhile, she has been with the company since 2013.
The figures for the Düren site confirm Claudia Breuer’s many years of successful work as a disability officer: Around 50 of the 600 employees are persons with disabilities, which means that the site exceeds the legal quota. “I am proud of that,” says Breuer. She uses occasions such as the annual “Day of Persons with Disabilities” on December 3, staff and works council meetings to draw attention to the issue of persons with disabilities.
Story in the IHK magazine
Since August of this year, Claudia Breuer has been the Arvato Group Disability Officer in Germany in addition to her tasks in Düren. The IHK magazine of the Aachen Chamber of Industry and Commerce dedicated a separate article to her: Under the headline “Gleichberechtigt und wertgeschätzt” (“Equal and valued”), the magazine accompanied Breuer in her work.
“Inclusion is not only a matter of social justice, but is also perceived by us as an opportunity for the company to benefit from the diversity of our employees’ different perspectives,” comments Claudia Breuer. She herself suffers from multiple sclerosis, which helps her in her work: “I have very keen antennae,” she adds.
