Home is more than just a place. Home is a state of mind. And an obligation: How do we shape the area in which we live and work? Zalando is closely connected to its local communities and emphasizes an open-minded exchange.
Berlin is a great location
for us. It is a magnet for
people from all over the
world.“
LINUS GLASER
COUNTRY MANAGER DACH
Berlin is where Zalando has its headquarters. It all began at Torstrasse 218. Now, almost ten years on, we still love our adopted home city: “Berlin is a great location for us. It is a magnet for people from all over the world. And what’s more, Berlin provides the ideal foundations for our growth – not least thanks to its lively start-up scene. This means lots of people here have an entrepreneurial mindset. And that suits us very well”, says Linus Glaser, Country Manager DACH.
Berlin inspires us – and, in return, we have played a big part in shaping the city’s digital industry. We feel a strong affinity for Berlin. Just like us, the city is extremely international, innovative and dynamic by nature – a perfect fit.
Absolutely! We currently employ more than 6,000 people in the city, and we continue to grow: in 2017, we created 1,969 new jobs in Berlin. Our smaller locations such as our tech hubs in Helsinki and Dublin are also important, as they help us to tap into international talent pools and attract new employees to Zalando, but our focus remains on Berlin.
new jobs in Berlin
2017
Zalando feels strongly connected to Berlin. That’s why we are committed to engaging with our city and our neighborhood and making sure that we give something back. In 2017, we organized the very first “do. Hack Night” to support social innovators and NGOs in the city with our expertise. Graphic designers, marketing strategists and programmers from Zalando sat with enthusiastic representatives from the social initiatives until late at night, jointly developing solutions to highly specific challenges such as website optimization or fine-tuning an algorithm. Beyond the “Hack Night” events, Zalando employees work on a pro bono basis and as mentors for various causes across our offices.
In 2017, Zalando won the German CSR award in the category “Successful Measures for the Integration of Refugees” for our Hello Festival, the Hello Days and the Hello Accelerator, the core idea of which is to adapt globally successful refugee integration concepts for use in Germany.
We are working together with the social enterprise Vostel to make our employees’ contribution to our local project partners even more effective. Vostel connects people who want to volunteer with projects that need support. It also asks helpers and project managers to assess the effectiveness of the support provided so that it can address the needs of the respective projects even more effectively in the future. One of our common projects in 2017 was a workshop to help refugees gain a foothold in the labor market. Zalando volunteers assisted them in writing and designing professional résumés and got a professional photographer to take their application photos – styling included. These joint projects even resulted in an internship and one refugee accepting the offer of permanent employment at Zalando.
The Berlin Social Academy wants to help address social problems and bring about solutions through intensive cooperation.
Interdisciplinary, project-based bachelor programs – this is, what CODE offers the talented developers, designers and digital entrepreneurs of tomorrow.
We want to offer our
tech expertise to
students of the CODE
University in order to
further promote the
perception of Berlin as
an attractive tech
location.“
LINUS GLASER
COUNTRY MANAGER DACH
Investing in our local ecosystem also plays an important role when it comes to education. We regularly work with different universities and have recently partnered with the newly founded CODE University in Berlin. CODE offers interdisciplinary, project-based bachelor programs for the talented developers, designers and digital entrepreneurs of tomorrow. “We want to offer our tech expertise to students of the CODE University in order to further promote the perception of Berlin as an attractive tech location”, says Glaser.
In 2017, Zalando also became a proud co-host of the Berlin Social Academy, whose courses provide valuable information for social start-ups and NGOs. “Harnessing the benefits of content marketing”, “Local communication – reaching residents with digital neighborhood networks”, “Getting my voice heard – principles of public relations” and “Sustainable strategic communication” are just some of the subjects offered by the Berlin Social Academy.
And our activities are not limited to Berlin. We also embody the spirit of engagement across our other sites. In October 2017, 13 Zalando employees from our fulfillment center in Erfurt helped to maintain a common area in Erfurt-Hochstedt. Together with local residents, they cleared paths and engaged in landscaping.
We also support projects such as the first German Neighborhood Award, which honors the work of neighborhood initiatives in each of the German federal states. The 2017 winner, the “Tag des guten Lebens” campaign, makes parts of a Cologne neighborhood traffic-free for four days in order to create space for neighborhood life – including flea markets, reading events and political debates. The residents throw themselves into the preparations for the street festival, thereby strengthening their interaction and coexistence for the long term.
The German Neighborhood Awards honors the work of neighborhood initiatives in each oft the German federal states.
of the campaigns would not have been possible without Zalando’s support.
of the projects had a mediumterm or longterm impact.
of the projects benefited from our assistance in terms of financial and human resources.
employees are given two days additional leave for corporate volunteering in their neighborhood. The impact of our social commitment is underlined by an internal survey at Zalando and the projects supported, which found that 79% of the campaigns would not have been possible without Zalando’s support. The survey also clearly illustrates the long- term benefit of our involvement for the organizations supported: 93% of them benefited from our assistance in terms of financial and human resources, while 86% of the projects had a medium-term or long-term impact.
