Battle of the Batteries- Duracell vs Varta AG: Comparing Employee Utilization

Despite being considered necessities, battery manufacturers still need to effectively prioritize their resources to maintain market share and grow the company. Two companies that have roots in battery manufacturing are Duracell and Varta AG.

Duracell, also known as Energizer Holdings Inc., was created in the United States in 1924, making strides to hit a $2.07 billion market cap and 2,700 employees. Varta AG shows a similar path, seeing its inception in 1887 in Germany with recent data showing a $1.2 billion market cap and 5,000 employees.

Duracell has half of the employees, yet has accumulated almost double of Varta AG’s market capitalization. Understanding the top resource working behind the scenes can shed insight into this stark difference. By analyzing employment and education statistics provided by Osterus, a software program that sifts through thousands of data points, we can begin to explain the monetary difference between these two companies.

Let’s first start by looking at the education of employees at each company. We can see that the Bachelor’s and Master’s degree categories show similar results with Varta AG displaying 53.21% and 11.79% and Duracell showing 55.4% and 17.51%, respectively. The Doctoral degree category is also similar with only a 2.02% difference.

This information tells us that both companies are prioritizing education with over half of employees having some type of formal education. This makes sense given the complexity of the business environment, requiring knowledge in various areas.

Both companies have global ties, which is why there is an extensive list of languages spoken at each company. Both Varta AG and Duracell show English as the top language that employees speak with 35% and 39.55%, respectively. Next, Varta AG has 26.82% of employees speaking German while Duracell only shows 5.54%. Since Varta AG has roots in Germany, its primary target market would be German consumers.

The average work experience may be a contributing factor to the success of Duracell. We can see that the current workforce at Duracell has an average experience of 4.23 years while Varta AG employees average 3.27 years. The previous employment averages further support the extensive employee experience that Duracell maintains. Duracell shows an average previous experience of 21.98 years while Varta AG has 15.84 years.

Both companies have current averages above 3 years which tells us that they are looking to hire employees with some industry experience. In addition, Duracell’s current and previous experience averages may be allowing them to reach a high market capitalization with half of the employees compared to Varta AG.

The work experience totals for each company support their continuous growth. The data provided by Osterus shows us that both Varta AG and Duracell have employees with over 10 years of experience with 49% and 73%, respectively. The next highest category is 5–10 with 19% and 9% for Varta AG and Duracell, respectively.

More experience can translate to innovative ideas and stronger management controls, both of which are success drivers. However, due to the limited number of employees with under 5 years of experience, it may be difficult to secure a job at one of these companies fresh out of college. Instead, you may need to obtain some experience before applying.

The job title breakdown also gives us insight into which categories these companies prioritize. Both companies place significant emphasis on middle management with 7.81% and 7.73% of job titles for Varta AG and Duracell, respectively. The next highest category for Duracell is sales with 7.16% while Varta AG trails close behind at 5.48%.

The other occupations, intern, engineering, marketing, and finance departments all range between 3% and 6%. This tells us that both companies don’t specifically focus on any one area. Instead, they prefer to differentiate their operations, placing numerous employees in each category. This strategy has proven to be beneficial for these companies as they continue to grow and gain market share.

Osterus’s loyalty and diversity scores can help us summarize what it’s truly like to work at these companies. First, looking at the diversity score, we see that both companies have room for improvement. Varta AG retains a very low diversity score while Duracell has a low diversity score.

There are a few different factors affecting this diversity score, including gender diversity, education diversity, language diversity, work experience diversity, age group diversity, and location diversity. These two companies show similar results with gender diversity ranking in at 0.65 for Varta AG and 0.88 for Duracell. The age group diversity displays 0.75 for Varta AG and 0.70 for Duracell.

We would like to see these companies make more efforts to improve the diversity within their workforce. This could be offering inclusive training programs or adding flexibility throughout operations to attract new employees. With consumer demand being heavily dependent on the cultural components of companies, Duracell and Varta AG will need to rework certain aspects of their operations to appeal to a larger target market.

Having said that, both companies are not headquartered in vibrant and flourishing areas, when it comes to diversity and generally speaking demographics. This is one of the reasons Osterus bases their diversity score on multiple different metrics, which are also achievable for companies outside of innovative and popular clusters.

Another important evaluation is the loyalty score, which outlines employee sentiment towards their employer. Varta AG shows promising results with a high score while Duracell trails behind with a medium score. Like the diversity score, the loyalty score is created based on defining data points, such as current employee tenure, the employee ratio, the employment type ratio, and the boomerang ratio.

The current employee tenure ratio is the highest category for both companies with 0.51 for Varta Ag and 0.49 for Duracell. However, the categories bringing the evaluation down are the employee tenure ratio and the employee ratio with 0.09 and 0.03 for Varta AG and 0.03 and .03 for Duracell, respectively. Based on this data, we see that employees are loyal to these companies, which could be due to creating a strong company culture and meeting the needs of their workforce.

Both Duracell and Varta AG show strides toward increased employee retention and crafting an experienced workforce. The conclusions we were able to draw wouldn’t be possible without Osterus breaking down the information into tangible pieces. As the employment and education specifics of companies continue to evolve, so does Osterus. Soon, we will be able to derive even more insight from workplace statistics.

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