Period: 15 January 2006 – 31 December 2007 Due to demographic developments, company workforces in Germany are going to become increasingly multicultural. Companies that take on trainees are going to face a central problem in designing qualification procedures for trainees and collaboration with skilled workers later on in such as way that the employees’ cultural origins have positive rather than negative effects on labour productivity, the working atmosphere, and employee satisfaction. The aim of the XENOS Project is to enable companies that take on trainees to carry out fast and independent analyses of the company that will provide them with information about the current status of intercultural collaboration among their trainees and the way it is developing. The project was awarded the Federal Government’s XENOS Prize, to the value of € 200,000, for ‘promoting tolerance and understanding in companies through transference between science and practice’.
The Gesamtmetall employer’s association is the cooperator in the project.