The first quarter of 2026 at NOBO in České Budějovice

This week, the new CEO of NOBO is visiting our factory, and I’ve been preparing a presentation for him on the things we’ve managed to achieve since his last visit. He was last here before Christmas, so this covers roughly the first quarter of this year.

Management team dinner with the NOBO CEO

During this period, we have taken on 107 new employees, whilst 27 employees have left the company. Staff turnover is quite high, but this is down to the fact that we are in the early stages of the project; there is a lot of work to be done, and unfortunately, despite all our recruitment efforts, it sometimes happens that someone’s expectations do not match what is actually happening here. This volume of recruitment and staff turnover naturally puts pressure on all departments, and with that come new conflicts and pressure on everyone involved. And, of course, this brings new and interesting situations that we have to deal with every day. On the other hand, that’s exactly why I personally joined NOBO – I don’t like getting bored at work.

If I were to break these figures down in greater detail, we would find that the vast majority of new recruits are production operators. I’ll pause here for a moment to discuss them, as this is a separate issue. At the start of the year, we had around thirty of them, and we have since promoted 10 of them. We knew that we would need around 100 of them for the so-called PZS (BMW’s equivalent of R@R = a stress test of the readiness of technology and staff). Given the age of our company and the relevant legislation, we looked for these 100 people on the local labour market. We launched a major local recruitment campaign in cinemas, newspapers, on buses, on billboards and online, and conducted interviews every working day. Igor Limanov Between February and April, we invited 245 candidates for interview; of these, 183 attended, 92 passed the tests, and 78 accepted our offer letter and have either started or will soon be starting. Unfortunately, 11 colleagues left us during this period, and of course, during our recruitment drive, we also managed to select a few employees who, sadly, were not „cut out“ for the job. Alongside them, we also managed to take on a few professional sick-leavers who know the system of temporary sick leave inside out, as well as other shirkers with a penchant for various worldly vices. Unfortunately, this is the price we pay for a high volume of recruitment activity.

Alongside our local recruitment efforts, we’ve also started recruiting in the Philippines, which I wrote about in a separate article. Over the course of 14 days in Manila, our colleagues interviewed over 450 candidates; 130 of them are currently going through the visa process, and we’re already looking forward to welcoming the first 15 of them to NOBO next month. We’re currently putting together an onboarding plan – covering the period between their arrival in Prague and their entry into the training zone. We need to arrange transport, accommodation, legal formalities, medical check-ups, as well as providing them with mobile phones and bank accounts… And all this for a large group of employees who won’t all fit into a single car.

Apart from recruiting operators, we’ve managed to take on nearly 40 colleagues in our specialist departments. I’m absolutely delighted that the vast majority of these appointments were made without the help of external agencies; keen number-crunchers are no doubt already working out how much money Daniela Víznerová RACR Thanks to this performance, they were able to save the company money.

One role was a bit more challenging for me personally. We were looking for a new plant manager and managed to „snag“ the final candidate, who will be joining us later this summer. From an HR perspective, this was quite an interesting exercise, as our requirements included experience in the following areas: the automotive sector, car seats, premium customers, the JIS system, the ability to communicate in Czech and English, and ideally experience with Asian culture. When I listed these requirements to my seven-year-old son at home, even he realised that there wouldn’t be hundreds of people like that in České Budějovice and that we’d have to work hard to find the right candidate.

In addition, we in HR managed to organise several events for staff. We prepared small gifts for Easter and International Women’s Day, and this year we also continued to provide physiotherapy sessions for production staff. We’ve agreed to cover part of the entry fee for staff volunteers taking part in the Budějovice Half Marathon. For me personally, this will be my first time running it in exactly 10 years.

A major focus for HR was the launch of the new canteen, including all the processes and systems that had not previously been in place at the company. So far, staff have mostly praised the food, and the current rating stands at around 3.7 stars out of a possible five. Given the tendency to „grumble“ in our culture, I consider this a very good result.

All of this is the work of the entire HR team, which has grown by three new members during the same period. An in-house payroll accountant joined us in April Petra Klečková, which will be importing payroll data from an external payroll agency over the coming months; together, we are updating all internal documentation and preparing for the arrival of hundreds more employees and the transition to shift work.

As well as Petra, we were also joined by Kateřina Knížková for the role of back-office specialist. Kačka knew about us thanks to my lectures at university, and she is replacing Pavla Dolanská in our team, who has decided to leave the company.

The latest new addition to the team is Jakub Michalec, who has become our in-house facilities technician, and together we now deal with everything to do with the building, permits, inspections, cleaning, security… and these topics will one day be the subject of a separate article :-)

There are also an increasing number of rather amusing situations arising from the collaboration between our Czech and Chinese colleagues. Over Easter, Allen from our HR department went round the whole production floor with an Easter whip and learnt to say „hody hody doprovody“ in Czech. Another colleague from China was shouting „wait, wait, wait“ yesterday whilst preparing components, just as he was about to check that the version of the component in question was correct.

And we’re continuing to develop our language skills on the other side too; staff have been given the opportunity to take part in Chinese language courses, which around 30 colleagues, including myself, are currently doing.

The next six months are set to remain very hectic, if only because we’re hurtling towards the start of series production at breakneck speed. I’d be delighted if you continued to follow me here. I’d also appreciate any feedback in the comments below this post.

David Havelec

HR Manager in Nobo Automotive Czech Republic

23 April 2025