At BASF, there are many kinds of chemistry

When she enters the BASF Kids’ Lab at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) in Toronto, Daniela Lopera gets excited. She’s not a kid, but she loves to see the reactions of the children who participate. Which is understandable, since it’s her employer, BASF Canada Inc., that partners with ROM to offer the lab, which she helps organize. And for the global chemistry firm, says Lopera, the lab is “one way that BASF gives back to the community.”

Lopera is a communications specialist for BASF, focusing on social engagement and charitable giving, and her enthusiasm for the company and her job is immediately evident. She joined the Toronto-based company in 2022, not long before the ROM partnership was announced. Part of BASF’s social engagement strategy, the Kids’ Lab promotes STEAM education – science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics – among young museum visitors attending ROM’s Signature Family Programs.

“It's amazing to see the kids really engaging with science education and participating in the experiments,” says Lopera, who helps co-ordinate schools’ involvement and attends each session. “It's truly inspiring to see the kids’ faces light up.” Making slime is a big one – “they always ask to do more slime, because they want to make more colours.”

As part of her volunteer activities with the company, Lopera has also participated in donation drives and holiday wrapping activities for low-income families – it reminds her of her own early years, when her family had just arrived from Colombia and were the beneficiaries of a similar program. Seeing the same generosity at BASF, she says, “it was just déjà vu.” To support employees’ personal volunteering efforts, BASF offers up to one day annually of paid time off during work hours.

Lopera is also a passionate member of the Women in BASF employee resource group, which offers her more opportunities to get involved in volunteering and fundraising activities. “I love participating, because not only am I giving back to the community, but I'm also networking and connecting with colleagues.”

All of which syncs with her view of BASF, which she says has “a very collaborative environment. I can always go to a colleague if I have any questions or need help – someone said to me that BASF stands for Better Ask Someone First! And it’s true. There's a lot of interconnectivity and a very supportive culture.”

With just over 1,000 employees at 10 sites across the country, BASF is “very employee-centric,” says Peter Halder, head of people. “It's in our mission statement that we create chemistry for a sustainable future, but chemistry is also something we try to create for our colleagues and our work environment.”

As part of social engagement, BASF is also committed to sustainability and diversity, equity, and inclusion – which it showcases by engaging employees in eco-friendly activities like tree planting, and in diverse community initiatives with organizations like Indspire. “We put a lot of emphasis on building a diverse culture, having an organization where we welcome and advocate for people of all backgrounds,” says Halder.

The company draws from a wide range of professions, depending on the site, he says. “We have a large agriculture business, predominantly in the West, based around canola. So we have agronomists and agricultural background folks. We have engineers and we have specialists in coatings and paints for the automotive industry.” Not to mention technologists, with a growing interest in AI, and people in corporate roles.

One of whom is Lopera, who has found real chemistry at the company. “The great thing about BASF,” she says, “is that they hire for the potential they see in the person.”

This article appeared in the magazine announcing this year's Canada's Top 100 Employers winners, published November 15, 2024 in The Globe and Mail. This article was prepared with the financial support of the employer, which reviewed but did not write its contents.

Young hires bring more than expertise to BASF

When Wayne Barton began his career at BASF Canada Inc. over 25 years ago, he was focused on finding innovative solutions for farmers’ problems. But on his path to becoming a research and commercial development manager in the company’s agricultural solutions group, Barton says his horizons broadened.

“My team runs several small farms across the country to develop new technologies,” says Barton, “and we hire about 15 summer interns a year. I started to realize we were learning a lot and doing more, precisely because of the people joining the team, starting with those interns. It’s pretty rewarding to see them develop, learn and eventually start doing things you haven’t been able to do or wouldn’t have thought of doing.”

Nor is he alone among BASF managers in thinking that way, Barton adds. “We now have a whole team of people, young hires who have helped the organization become more people-focused. We realized we were getting a lot more than work from young people and developing young talent just became part of us – it’s a development culture now, right across BASF.”

Some of the summer interns eventually become part of BASF’s two-year professional development program (PDP) for recent graduates, which takes on two to four newcomers every year. There are two streams, technical and commercial, both of which rotate them through numerous work assignments in two distinct 12-month postings.

After the program is completed, the PDP graduates are placed in a permanent role in the organization to kick off the next step of their careers. It aims to prepare young talent for future leadership roles while familiarizing them with the company’s wide-ranging operations.

It certainly does that, says Calgary-based technical services specialist Rongrong Xiang, now in her second year as a regular BASF employee after two years as a PDP.

“I have licence plates from all three Prairie provinces,” she says, laughing. “I was living in Alberta when I was accepted and they sent me to Winkler, Manitoba, first and then Saskatoon the second year. Looking back, it was really good experience, because I got to see and learn a lot first-hand, like launching a product and having customer-facing moments.

“The PDP was amazing,” adds Xiang, whose master’s degree is in plant science. ”It was so good to learn how the business works. I think it’s pretty unique for BASF to have a role like that for fresh graduates.”

As for a workplace culture dedicated to development, that, too, was part of the experience for Xiang. “Managers here don’t care just about your work, but about your whole well-being,” she says. “It’s as much a mentorship as a development program. When I was on the technical side, my manager reached out to ask if I was interested in learning more about other functions, like the customer solutions team, and offered to connect me with their manager.”

Becoming a company focused on talent development is one part of a virtuous circle, Barton believes. “The more young people we hire, the more their values influence ours,” he says. “We have a growing diversity and inclusion culture and a focus on employee wellness. We are talking a lot internally about Indigenous reconciliation and what our role should be as a large Canadian employer.”

It’s an evolving alignment of values that benefits everyone, says Barton. “We see it pay off almost immediately. People are more apt to join, they’re more engaged, they provide more value, and we do better as an organization and can continue to build a better company culture that welcomes them.”

This article appeared in the magazine announcing this year's Canada's Top Employers for Young People winners, published January 23, 2024 in The Globe and Mail. This article was prepared with the financial support of the employer, which reviewed but did not write its contents.

At BASF, DEI is both a moral and a business imperative

When Marian Van Hoek, BASF Canada Inc. general counsel and chief compliance officer, recalls the events led by the Women in BASF employee resource group (ERG) while fundraising for breast cancer research, eating “15 or so desserts at 10 a.m.” is hard to forget.

However, it wasn’t the specifics of the baking competition, which she judged as part of CIBC’s annual Run for the Cure, that Van Hoek wanted to stress, but how deeply embedded ERGs are in BASF’s workplace culture.

“Our ERGs help achieve our diversity, equity and inclusion objectives,” says Van Hoek, executive sponsor for Women in BASF Canada, “but they also help create a wonderful company culture of engagement and belonging.”

Robustly supported by the 163-year-old, globe-spanning chemical company, the number of ERGs at BASF Canada now stands at 11, alongside two employee development groups (Toastmasters and Regional Marketing Council). The country-wide, employee-led ERGs have formed around a broad spectrum of identities, and many BASF employees are involved with more than one.

With a distinctive set of chosen names – such as ALLchemie: LGBTQ2+ and Allies at BASF or Emerging Professionals and Friends – all ERGs welcome allies. “The goal for us is inclusion, after all,” Van Hoek points out. “So, there is strong encouragement for all employees to participate in whichever groups they are passionate about.”

Anne Shore, a multi-business unit controlling liaison and 14-year BASF Canada employee, is a member of three ERGs: Women in BASF (where she is co-chair); ALLchemie; and AVID (Awareness of Visible and Invisible Disabilities), the newest group. “AVID is really important to me because I have a son who was diagnosed with an invisible disability,” Shore says. “Knowing the challenges that he went through and our family went through to overcome stigmas associated with that has motivated me to support my colleagues who may have a disability or who have family members with one.”

What matters as much as or more than the personal element to Shore is the way ERGs help her give back to the community. “At AVID I was asked if I could help do a site assessment for two colleagues joining from Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital who were both in wheelchairs,” Shore says. “We thought our site, which was fairly new, was fully accessible.

“However, we found out there were some changes we needed to make to accommodate wheelchair users, like physically lowering the visitor registration podium and having an emergency evacuation chair available for each wheelchair user. This was an eye-opening experience and has allowed us to ensure we are inclusive and welcoming for any employee, guest or customer.”

Van Hoek agrees. “In 2023, when we had the Holland Bloorview Ready to Work Program participants as summer interns, it was a tremendous partnership for BASF as a company,” she says. “They provided very valuable insights into how we could continue improving both our workspaces and our culture to be even more inclusive and accessible.”

Shore has seen the same sort of positive results through all her ERG work, from organizing Run for the Cure events alongside all the Women in BASF chapters and leaders across Canada to collecting supplies for women’s shelters to mark National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women on Dec. 6. “The ERGs offer those network and growth opportunities, and they also provide opportunities to give back to the community, which is something I really love.”

This article appeared in the magazine announcing this year's Canada’s Best Diversity Employers winners, published March 5, 2024 in The Globe and Mail. This article was prepared with the financial support of the employer, which reviewed but did not write its contents.