Diversity concept
With around 50 companies and more than 25,000 employees in Austria and Central and Eastern Europe, Vienna Insurance Group combines many countries, languages and cultural backgrounds. Diversity is a key strategic priority in its human resources strategy.
Vienna Insurance Group follows a bottom-up approach with respect to diversity management for the Company’s boards. By applying diversity management to all personnel, the Group expects to generate the corresponding diversity in the candidate pool for internal successor planning in the long term.
For Vienna Insurance Group, diversity reflects both the similarities and the differences it encounters in the Group, its markets and its partners as well as customers. Diversity management is based on genuine appreciation and open acceptance of diversity, and makes conscious use of this diversity. The Group includes this understanding of diversity in the VIG Code of Business Ethics: “We tolerate no discrimination. We are committed to equal opportunity in the hiring and promotion of employees, regardless of their beliefs, religion, gender, worldview, ethnic background, nationality, sexual orientation, age, skin colour, disability or marital status.”
Group and VIG Holding level
Vienna Insurance Group developed a new diversity concept in 2017 based on this understanding that focuses on the criteria of gender, generations and internationality at Group level, and refined and developed measures for the following criteria:
- Gender: Ensure equal treatment for women and men in all areas (career and development options, benefits and income, etc.)
- Generations: Use mixed-age teams and take the various phases of life to develop full potential into account. Generation-appropriate offers and support in the various phases of life, learn from one another, healthy work, fair recruitment
- Internationality: Group-wide exchange of know-how (local expertise), learning, use of VIG’s internal job market and ensuring an appropriate mix of people from different countries within VIG Holding
The criteria of gender, generations and internationality are also taken into account when new Supervisory Board Members are proposed for election at General Meetings.
Vienna Insurance Group has relied on the concept of local entrepreneurship for decades, thereby also promoting a very internationally diverse “community” of Group Managing Board Members and CEOs.
The topic of diversity is a key element in Group-wide management development training programmes, in terms of content as well as the participants and lecturers.
Group company level
Based on the principle of local entrepreneurship, the VIG insurance companies choose their own priorities against the background of priorities set for diversity at VIG Holding and at Group level. The Group sustainability report presents examples of successful implementation of the diversity concepts at Group company level on page 31.
The diversity concept at Group level was presented to the managing board chair members of the subsidiaries during a meeting in November 2017. The diversity concept was also a central topic at the Group conference for human resources managers in October 2017.
Diversity Officer
The VIG Managing Board appointed Angela Fleischlig-Tangl as Diversity Officer as of May 2017. In this newly created position, she advises both VIG Holding and local VIG companies on matters related to diversity management.