Objectives, Measures and Indicators

Our aim is to meet the mounting and constantly changing requirements of the working world, harness synergy potential and find employees who are a perfect fit for the positions on offer. This means that one of the most important HR tasks is to attract new and qualified employees – and to make sure that they stay at Vonovia in the long term. The work of our HR management team also focuses on targeted training and education.

An employee survey conducted in 2019 shows that we are on the right track: 72% of the survey participants rate their own job within the company as very good. 81% say that they want to stay with Vonovia for a long time to come. We engaged the independent service provider Great Place to Work to conduct the extensive employee survey in order to find out just how satisfied our employees are, and to be able to develop as needed in a targeted manner. We received around 6,300 responses out of a total of almost 8,800 surveys sent out – a participation rate of 72%. Great Place to Work allocated all of the questions to five key aspects, and Vonovia achieved a good score with regard to “credibility,” “respect,” “fairness” and “team spirit” and only fell slightly behind the benchmark with regard to “pride.” The survey also revealed that the rapid growth experienced in recent years has been a challenge. This serves as motivation for us to improve our performance even further. We are using the results of the survey to achieve this and are developing measures as part of a structured follow-up process.

We recruited numerous new employees in 2019 using both internal and external recruitment measures. We intend to continue with this approach in 2020 based on the employer branding concept initiated in 2018, which serves as a guideline for our recruitment activities. Target group-specific communication with candidates was expanded in 2019 as part of the employer branding concept, which includes the use of new images and text for our various business areas. We have decided to particularly highlight our company’s innovative ability, the importance of team work and workplace safety. Ensuring that our new hires get off to a good start with us is a top priority. This prompted us to start developing an onboarding process in 2019. The process will be further expanded, consolidated and digitalized in the period leading up to 2021.

Our overriding objective is to implement a long-term approach to HR work that promotes corporate growth and covers personnel requirements to the greatest extent possible. We confront this issue through targeted recruiting, training and education, health management and occupational health and safety measures as well as measures to improve work-life balance and to ensure equal opportunities by:

• Developing and expanding the skills of employees in a targeted manner using needs-based training courses and programs
• Ensuring long-term employee performance by doing our best to protect our people from health hazards at work
• Allowing our employees to strike a work-life balance
• Using the opportunities offered by diversity to give us a competitive edge and ensuring equal opportunities at all levels

Developing and Expanding Skills of Employees in a Targeted Manner

We are stepping up our training activities in a targeted quest to find up-and-coming young talents. We aim to use this approach to cover Vonovia’s need for employees, especially in the trades. We are constantly enhancing our training schemes because training allows us to manage the qualifications that our young employees have and to plan according to our requirements.

In addition, we are continuing to focus on human capital development and expanding our range of further training courses to provide our employees with the best possible support in increasing their professional and personal potential. Our work focuses on the targeted development of (up-and-coming) managers and the structured expansion of succession planning.

Preserving Employee Performance

We aim to offer our employees a safe and healthy working environment. In order to achieve this, we continually put into practice and expand our Group-wide occupational health and safety standards and measures. The aim is to use personal protective equipment and recurring safety briefings to keep the number of occupational accidents at a minimum. We have made a conscious decision not to set quantitative targets in this area, as there are numerous factors that cause occupational and commute-related accidents that are impossible to control (e.g., force majeure, accidents caused by third parties or also misconduct). We also help our employees to stay in good health as part of a comprehensive health management program and by offering numerous preventative measures.

Allowing Our Employees to Strike a Work-Life Balance

Our employees are attaching increasing importance to being able to strike a balance between work and home life. This is why we are committed to promoting family life in order to develop a range of services that meets our employees’ needs. We also now offer various working hours models that even trainees can make use of.

Making the Best Possible Use of the Opportunities Offered by Diversity

We see the diversity of our workforce as a huge strength for our company and also as an opportunity. We are therefore doing our best to promote diversity and, for example, are making targeted moves to recruit female employees to our traineeships. We are working on continuously increasing the proportion of women in management. We have also expanded our commitment to include refugees in our training program even further, and in the period under review, 33 refugees underwent training at Vonovia. The proportion of trainees with migration backgrounds is also high throughout the company.