Uniper's virtual sports community

At Uniper, we are proud that more than 200 of our employees and alumni have joined forces in a virtual sports team, which consists of amateur athletes from more than 70 different cities and locations in six different countries. Together, these sport enthusiasts cycled 289,686 km, ran/walked around 66,478 km and swam a total of 1,712 km in 2022. Behind those very impressive numbers are many individual and team successes. For example, Uniper teams once again took part in the B2Run in Düsseldorf and the virtual "WingsForLife" event for spinal cord research. Multiple colleagues were successful both as runners as well as on inline skates at the Berlin marathon and our colleague Ali Osman Calikbasi ran the Istanbul Marathon, which connects the European and Asian continents. 

While Colin Wilkie from Uniper UK has been running for a long time and regularly does half marathons, he took part in a marathon for the first time and managed the 42.2 km of the London marathon in less than 4 hours. When it comes to cycling, the team from Datteln4 and Kraftwerk Scholven took part in the 24h Duisburg mountain bike race and achieved a respectable ninth place. Together with our strategic partner Randstadt Sourceright, Annett Löffler and Anna Drieling took part in the "Team Rynkeby" charity bike ride to Paris. Gary Masters, Uniper UK, has successfully raised funds for Alzheimer's Research on a bike ride from London to Brighton – the longest bike ride he’s ever done. He normally does parkruns on Saturdays, but had the opportunity to take part in this big event with 15,000 riders giving him something to aim for and a reason to go on long bike rides on the weekends.

On an internal website, the members of the virtual sports community can find information on everything Uniper does in sports. They also have a group on Strava, in which they arrange to exercise together, share their achievements and motivate as well as support each other. That’s also how Colin and Gary were able to raise funds for their marathon and bike ride. While Gary raised money for Alzheimer’s Research in his home county Sussex, Colin raised over £3000 in donations for the Stroke Association. 

Next to the support from their colleagues at work, they could use their contact in the sports community to help with donations. “It’s great to have that supportive network in Uniper of other people that are doing similar things – both for inspiration but also for help with fundraising”, says Colin Wilkie, General Project Manager Uniper Hydrogen.

In addition to sports, Uniper cares a lot about health in general. “We’ve had a ‘Health and Safety Awareness Day’ recently. Because of the industry we’re in, we of course talk a lot about safety but we also emphasize the health aspect. Uniper generally is very supportive of health initiatives and everything that goes with it, like healthy eating, sleep, mental health and sports”, says Gary Masters, Integrity Engineer / Gas Systems Specialist at Uniper. To support this, Uniper also offers its employees flexible working time models that enable a healthy work-life balance. “Without that I wouldn’t have been able to sign up for the marathon because I simply wouldn’t have been able to physically do the training. The flexible working arrangements have helped me to fit it in”, explains Colin.

This year we are yet again looking forward to both well-known and new sporting highlights – #EnergizeYourself! Interested in working for an employer that promotes a healthy lifestyle and flexible working time models? You can find our vacancies here: https://www.uniper.energy/career/vacancies