Remuneration at our company is determined by clear and transparent rules. Our employees are paid according to their specific tasks, their skills and qualifications and their performance on the basis of a remuneration policy that applies worldwide.
Employees in Germany benefit from the security and advantages of the collective agreement for the private insurance industry. 93% of our employees at the Hannover location are covered by the collective bargaining agreement. The remaining 7% can be attributed to some non-collective agreements with executives, whose salaries are comprised of fixed, performance- and responsibility-based components. Depending on the individual objectives agreed with them, managers additionally receive performance-related payments and long-term incentives. Group-wide, 100% of employees in France, India and Sweden are covered by collective bargaining agreements. In view of the very specialised nature of our business we deploy highly qualified personnel worldwide. Salaries reflect these high skills levels. Salary increases and promotions follow a clearly defined process. There is consequently no risk of falling short of a local minimum wage.
The individual promotion grades for staff employed in Germany are subject to transparent criteria published in the company's in-house intranet, which are also purely task- and skills-based. In the context of the annual round of salary adjustments and promotions, we explicitly evaluate how many women and men receive a salary increase, whether there is a difference in the average amount and whether a trend towards favouring or disadvantaging one gender over the other can be discerned. As in the previous years, there is no preferential treatment or discrimination in this respect – neither in terms of the numbers nor the average amount. In addition, we review how many women and men are promoted for each hierarchical level: here, too, men and women are treated equally.
Supplementary to individual and statutory retirement provision, employees in Germany who have been with us for longer periods of time are entitled to inclusion in the employer-funded retirement provision models. The amount of the funding contributions is determined by the individual salary levels and calculated according to the pay scale groups under the collective agreement. Employees can accumulate further employee-funded occupational retirement provision by way of deferred compensation. Our company's expenditures for social security contributions as well as pension provision and assistance amounted to altogether EUR 57.1 million in the year under review.
Social security contributions and expenditures for pension provision and assistance | ||||||
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Figures in EUR thousand | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | |
Social security contributions and expenditure for pension provision and assistance | 57,112 | 56,753 | 59,700 | 53,300 | n.a. | |
Social security contributions | 26,928 | 25,486 | n.a. | n.a. | n.a. | |
Expenditures for pension provision | 26,117 | 26,551 | n.a. | n.a. | n.a. | |
Expenditures for assistance | 4,067 | 4,716 | n.a. | n.a. | n.a. |
Furthermore, we offer our employees additional voluntary benefits. These include, among other things, life, health and disability insurance policies. Such offers are dependent upon the particular location and relevant legal stipulations. All members of our staff are granted the same benefits in proportion to their working hours.
Clear and transparent rules are just as important to us in the area of personnel recruitment. For a number of years now we have participated in the Fair Company initiative, a campaign supported by the publications Handelsblatt and Wirtschaftswoche for the fair employment of interns. As a "fair company", we undertake to comply with various fundamental principles, including for example not filling full-time positions with interns, volunteers, student employees or long-term temporary workers.