Farewell to Hannelore Spangler-Schäfer
Deutsch
SPANGLER – the Plus of change.
Hannelore Spangler-Schäfer transfers management of Spangler GmbH to the next generation.
With mixed feelings Hannelore Spangler-Schäfer retires as managing director. She has built up, accompanied and led Spangler from a three-person operation to an internationally active company with 150 employees.
After her brother Helmut Graspointner left the company at the end of 2019, the founding generation now ultimately passes on the baton of the management to the following generation.
‘I will miss the people’, Spangler-Schäfer explains the change, and with people she means all those who have influenced her everyday life up to now: the employees, the customers, the suppliers.
Hannelore Spangler-Schäfer has always met them with appreciation and with this attitude she laid the foundation for the continuous success of her company. Thus, the connection to customers and suppliers are based on a long-term cooperation and the concerns and welfare of her employees have always been important for her. ‘We are a family-run company and our employees are members of the business family.’
Cohesion in the event of a crisis
Hannelore Spangler-Schäfer is the one who knows best what support means. ‘When I took over the management together with my brother after the sudden death of my husband Franz Spangler in 2003, the backing was the base for surviving – both in the family and in the company.’ The past twelve months now have shown again how precious mutual reliability is under difficult conditions. ‘Like a chain we have defied the challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic together and managed to come through troubled waters with our company’, she describes with gratitude.
Smooth transition
Exactly for this reason and considering the background of a well-established management team, Hannelore Spangler-Schäfer can calmly hand over the reins. The future management consists of Tina Lambert (born Spangler) and Christian Brandmüller. All other members of the extended management team with the department managers have been part of Spangler and are well known for many years or even decades. Although current times did not leave room for a dignified farewell, the employees used the existing possibilities at the best. In several separate events the employees and the management remembered common times.
Farewell gifts
The employees handed over a photo album to their ‘boss‘ for her farewell, full of memories of more than thirty years.
Another emotional moment for Spangler-Schäfer was when she got a second gift – a ‘forget-me-not’ wooden bench should remind the managing director of the employees . ‘The bench will get a special place in my garden‘, Spangler-Schäfer promised. She, too, did not miss the opportunity to give something back to the employees: completely Corona-compliant, she had baked muffins for all em-ployees. As it should be for a business family.
Plans for the future
And what is Hannelore Spangler-Schäfer doing now? Of course, she will be in the company for some hours, but she will have enough time for trips, bicycling or hiking. ‘The biggest gift for me is that I can shape my daily routine on my own’, she says modestly and humbly. She has always kept humility during her business life – despite all successes or perhaps precisely for that reason.