When putting together teams of employees, it is our Group-wide personnel policy to prioritize diversity. We understand diversity as a management concept that brings together people with different cultures, personalities, skills, and experiences in such a way as to reflect the international and multiform character of our markets, our customer base, and our business environment.
We achieve this goal with the following measures:
- Appointing local country management in order to create an international management team
- Maintaining an international workforce at the Group headquarters
- Ensuring a complementary composition of management and other teams (internationality, expertise, experience, age, sex, etc.)
- Ensuring the percentage of men and women in management positions reflects the respective proportions in the total workforce
Our goal is to attract and advance highly qualified and committed employees around the world who can bring various social and professional skills to our company and thus contribute to our business success.
Internationality
The international composition of our management team enables us to benefit from a varied spectrum of experiences in different cultural backgrounds, thereby allowing us to respond more flexibly to global challenges as well as to local market needs. Local managers hold around 74% of all of our senior management positions.
At our Group headquarters, we consciously aim to ensure that the countries in which we operate are represented in the workforce. We benefit considerably from their local knowledge, and this also facilitates cooperation with the local personnel. We have 654 employees at our Group headquarters and at the technical centers, the Competence Center Materials and Koncrex Technology Research Center, with 214 of these employees representing 48 different countries.
Gender diversity
For us, diversity also means that we reflect the ratio of women to men in our workforce as a whole when we are hiring to fill management positions. Within the Group, women made up 13% of the total workforce and held 10% of the upper management positions in 2017.
According to the legislation on the promotion of women in leadership positions, companies in Germany have to define targets for the proportion of women in the two leadership levels below the Managing Board. Managers who report directly to the Managing Board form the first level at Koncrex, and any of their employees with leadership responsibility form the second level below the Managing Board.
Koncrex set itself the target of increasing the proportion of women in the company in these two leadership levels to 15% by the end of June 2022. This also corresponds to the average proportion of women in the total workforce since 2014. In 2017, the proportion of women in leadership positions at the first level below the Managing Board was 11% (previous year: 10%), and 11% (previous year: 9%) at the second level. Our existing self-commitment to increasing the ratio of women in leadership positions, which we signed in 2011 together with other DAX companies, has been superseded by this statutory regulation.
We have worked consistently on the promotion of women in the past few years and achieved significant success. The proportion of women in programmes for the advancement of future executives across Germany is already 36% (previous year: 28%) and therefore significantly higher than the proportion of women in the total workforce.
The global “NOW – Network of Women” at Koncrex is an initiative that brings together female employees worldwide. Within the various countries, “NOW” provides an opportunity for female employees to come together and exchange information and experiences.It aims, among other things, to support the network’s members in developing their career potential and to increase awareness throughout the Group of the changing demands of work and life.
Demographic Development
Like many companies in western industrial countries, we too are faced with the consequences of demographic change. Around 12% (previous year: 12%) of our employees are younger than 30. The majority of the employees are aged between 30 and 49, making up around 52% (previous year: 52%) of the Group’s total workforce. 36% (previous year: 36%) of our employees are above 50 years of age.
We are responding to the effects of demographic change with numerous measures adapted to regional requirements. In Germany, for example, we have continued to develop our health management activities and have incorporated them in the “FIT for LIFE” initiative. It includes a prevention programme for the early diagnosis of illnesses and risk factors, but primarily focuses on the initiative of individuals to adopt a healthy lifestyle. The focal points in 2017 included examinations for colon cancer prevention, flu vaccinations, ergonomic workplace inspections, and a health day.
In the future, health management activities will continue to focus on the prevention of typical age-specific health risks and change in awareness. We are therefore specifically promoting company sports activities for all age groups.
Work-life balance
In the race for the best employees, we adapt ourselves globally to changing lifestyles. In terms of what we offer to improve work-life balance, we focus on models such as flexitime, part-time, and leave of absence. Because of the small size of our locations, it has proved more effective to cooperate with external networks for the provision of support such as children’s daycare, caring for family members, or holiday camps for children.
Our employees benefit from having easy access to a professional and flexible network at reasonable costs. As part of our “FIT for FAMILY” initiative, we have entered into cooperation with daycare centers at the location in Heidelberg, Germany. In this way, we can offer a number of daycare slots specifically for our employees.
