Dusseldorf Sabine Neuss could also have become a journalist. Her recipe for success in getting to the top of technology in one of the largest German family companies, Jungheinrich AG, which is listed in the MDax and has sales of more than 3.8 billion euros and 18,000 employees, was the often “unpleasant task of critically examining statements,” she says. “I always ask questions that contain three to five thematic levels. If the arguments get shaky on the first level, you have to act.”
The 53-year-old is an exception at her post. There are still few women in management positions in large corporations and family businesses. According to a survey by the consulting company EY, the number of female top managers at the 160 companies in the Dax, SDax and MDax increased by 20 to 94 in 2021.
Their share reached a new record of 13.4 percent. But there are still 52 companies with not a single woman in their top management.
If you look specifically at those responsible for technology, the search becomes even more difficult. At the state-owned company Deutsche Bahn, for example, Daniela Gerd tom Markotten is a woman on the board responsible for technology; at the DAX companies, Claudia Nemat is at Deutsche Telekom, Melanie Maas-Brunner at BASF and Grazia Vittadini at Airbus in this position.
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According to the EY study, most top managers, almost 30 percent, are responsible for human resources, followed by finance. According to a query by the Handelsblatt at EY, Sabine Neuß is the only one in the MDax among the technical directors.
Sabine Neuss wanted to combine business and technology
And it is also unclear whether the rate will increase significantly in the medium term. Few women are as interested in technical contexts as Neuss and stick with it when things get difficult: “I’ve always taken a lot of time to understand it,” is her explanation.
The unconditional will to want to penetrate everything drove the manager from an early age. She studied mechanical engineering in Coburg, started her career at the automotive supplier Brose and took on managerial positions at the beginning of the 1990s.
But she wanted to combine technology and business and studied industrial engineering part-time. Her attitude is clear: “Even the best technology must make economic sense, otherwise it is useless.”
After further positions at automotive suppliers, she was responsible for production at the forklift manufacturer Kion for five years. It was already clear in 2018 that she would start at Jungheinrich in 2020. The family business, founded in Hamburg in 1953, had to wait two years for her because of a competition clause.
>> Read here: Almost every second new Dax board member is female: what the women’s quota does – and what doesn’t
And it was nice to wait there. After all, it was already clear back then that after the quota for women on supervisory boards, the executive boards of listed companies would also have to become more diverse. In the summer of 2021, the Second Management Positions Act came into force. According to this, listed companies with equal co-determination with more than 2000 employees and more than three executive boards must ensure in future that they have at least one woman on the executive board.
Recognition is a relevant quantity in the technology world
Neuss has not lost her curiosity at all stages of her career and is passionate about her tasks, describe her companions. He appreciates “her energy, her pragmatism and of course the high level of competence,” says Christian Erlach, her colleague on the Management Board who is responsible for sales. A high degree of agreement between technology and sales is not always a matter of course.
Apparently, not only competence, but above all recognition of it is an important success factor, confirms a consultant who does not want to be named. He criticizes that mechanical engineering in particular is “largely still a men’s club”. At the same time, however, one also sees that “alibi women” are not a solution. If you promote women from middle management to the top too early, the risk of failure is high. And that made men feel vindicated in their rejection.
Sabine Neuß, who has also been a member of the supervisory board of the automotive supplier Continental since 2014, is anything but an alibi woman. But she sees technology as a male domain, and only one other colleague is a member of her management team.
The technology department is still a male domain in German companies.
(Photo: dpa)
And their standards are high. To ensure that no one is embarrassed in meetings, Neuss believes that everyone would have to go much deeper overall in order to be able to present facts satisfactorily. “By constantly questioning a lot, I achieve a new level of transparency.” Problems would be flushed up much faster and could be tackled at an early stage.
One of her tasks is to ask questions about the future. Jungheinrich intends to refurbish more used forklifts to a high standard in the future. A plant for this purpose was opened in Romania just a few days ago. Neuss has to clarify: How much recycling material can you use? How much sustainability is already in the product idea? How will the cost structure change as a result of the CO2 taxes?
“We didn’t pay enough attention to that in the past,” she says critically. At the moment, however, she also spends a good quarter of her working hours on the topic of supply chains, because the customer’s assembly lines should not stand still.
It is uncertain how many women will follow Neuss’s example: their commitment is high, and the free time for the married opera lover is limited, especially since she has the ambition to visit the factories regularly.
“Demographics make the chairs shake”
Jürgen van Zwoll, partner at the HR consultancy Odgers Berndtson, estimates that only around five percent of technical positions at the top management level of German companies are currently occupied by women. He sees two trends: On the one hand, many positions will become vacant in the coming years because the current CTOs are reaching retirement age. “Demographics are making the chairs shake,” he says.
On the other hand, it may take another five to ten years before anything changes visibly. He refers to the efforts of the US elite university MIT, which began 20 years ago to get more young women interested in technical courses. “In this country, there are no more than ten percent female students sitting in mechanical engineering lecture halls.”
If the companies themselves became more active and also communicated this, they could counteract the ever-worsening shortage of skilled workers. “Jungheinrich is already doing a lot to get girls and young women interested in technology,” says the consultant. This is also necessary, because Sabine Neuss explains: “If you do the same thing for too long, you lose clout and become blind to the business.”
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