In conversation with Michelle Zantopp & Paul Wildner
… who are committed to building a powerful team at Vaionic Technologies
The Adlershof Health Network offers a broad array of holistic, preventative services to support employees across the campus, ranging from back health and longevity coaching, to eye yoga, strength and mobility training for daily life, and brain-fit microbreaks. For Paul Wildner and Michelle Zantopp, team leader and HR marketing manager at Vaionic Technologies GmbH, respectively, these offerings are a perfect complement to their own internal efforts to promote health and wellbeing in the workplace. As a start-up developing next-generation electric drives, they see regular physical activity as key to building both team performance and a strong company culture.
Adlershof Journal: How did you first come across the Adlershof Health Network?
Paul Wildner: As a young company, our financial resources are still limited, so we are trying to implement a small-scale health programme as cost-effectively as possible. Many of the 55 people on our team are keen cyclists, which is why we’ve been taking part in the three-week STADTRADELN cycling challenge for several years now. It’s coordinated through the Adlershof Health Network, and that’s how we first connected. For the first time this year, the network’s BikeMobil visited our company. It offered tailored consultations to help staff optimise their bike setup, adjusting it to their body size, individual riding style, preferred area of use, and personal goals.
Adlershof Journal: How many kilometres did your team clock up in 2025?
Wildner: The competition within the Health Network is pretty fierce, with teams from Allianz, the GFaI – Society for the Promotion of Applied Computer Science, or SENTECH Instruments, but our 26-strong team managed to cover more than 10,000 kilometres—giving us the highest average per person. In addition to everyone’s individual rides, we also organised a few team circuits of BER Airport and collectively racked up kilometres. One of our advantages is that cycling is something we actively practise year-round, not just during the challenge. We’re also in quite decent shape.
How sustainable are your efforts to support employee health in the long term?
Michelle Zantopp: As a qualified ecotrophologist, this is a topic that’s particularly close to my heart. We know that one-off health days don’t have a lasting effect, so we’ve made it our goal to offer health-focused activities throughout the year as part of a broader occupational health management strategy. We call this Vaionic-Active. It includes outdoor activities like volleyball, badminton, or team bike rides, as well as things like anti-stress workshops. The infrastructure around the Adlershof campus is ideal for that. There’s a great cycle path network, the Berlin Wall path is nearby, and so is the landscaped park.
Wildner: Beyond the physical and mental benefits, we’ve really seen how these shared activities strengthen team spirit. People connect differently when they’re moving together. It sparks new ideas. Our employee lounge is a nice example of that. We were all watching the World Darts Championship over the New Year, and that led to the idea of installing a steel dartboard at the office. Since we were too lazy to add up all the numbers in our heads, our engineers built an optical scoring system using self-printed components from our 3D printer.
What are your plans going forward?
Zantopp: We’ve recently started working with an occupational health physician who supports us on workplace health issues. We’re planning to expand the range of services we offer to our team. One idea is to introduce employer-funded health vouchers, which staff can use individually for preventive care. At the moment, we haven’t seen any major health issues within the team, but we do know everyone’s under a lot of pressure. That’s why we want to take a more preventative approach, including making greater use of the Adlershof Health Network’s services for recovery and resilience.
Peggy Mory for Adlershof Journal
Adlershof Health Network (in German)
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