On the face of it, they don’t seem to have much in common. But Hanna Lang, HR Business Partner at HERMES, has identified many parallels between her hobby of sailing and her work.

“In my free time, I like to go sailing. Together with my colleagues, I like to set the sails anew and alter course in order to reach our goals.”

This is also evident in Hanna’s career path.

• Apprenticeship at a department store company. After experiencing her employer’s superbly-designed apprenticeship time, Hanna wanted to work in HR to enable other apprentices to have a great time during their apprenticeship.
• After taking a brief detour into purchasing, she quickly switched back to HR.
• During Hanna’s business administration course, her focus was on HR topics and after several HR positions, she realised that she wanted to continue on this course!

“I have never been afraid to take the plunge.“

At the beginning of 2021, Hanna applied to HERMES and became part of the HERMES crew. Today, Hanna is the contact person for operational and strategic HR inquiries such as recruiting, drafting and changing contracts, development measures and the strategic orientation of the departments and companies.

Just as on the high seas where the sails have to be set again and again in order to adapt to the weather conditions, there are also constant changes, realignments and optimisation processes in a company. Hanna was actively involved and deliberately set the sails anew with her counterparts when they decided on a new structure for the production department. Every sailing ship needs a suitable crew, in which every crew member makes their contribution. It is just the same at HERMES: every individual employee counts – quality takes precedence over quantity. Every employee has an essential part to play and is taken seriously. Accordingly, Hanna and her contacts have developed a thorough recruiting process for production. Thanks to this, many good and motivated employees have already come on board at HERMES, and they help keep the ship on course.

“Only with the help of regular consultation, trust and close cooperation can you guide the ship safely into port.”

Cooperation and consultation are important both within the HR team and between the contacts in the various departments in order to jointly design development measures and define the strategic orientation of the departments and companies.

So there is always a contribution to be made on board at HERMES. It is a journey on the high seas, sometimes calm, sometimes stormy, but never boring.

In Hanna’s free time, when not on board the HERMES ship, she enjoys sailing with her partner and friends. In Germany, they are often on Lake Constance. But they have also been sailing off the coast of Greece, Turkey, Croatia and Sicily. She can particularly recommend the Athens-Mykonos-Santorini-Athens route.

“Here, we went on our first night trip and were on the boat with 6 other friends. Sailing into the bay of Santorini at sunrise is breathtaking.“