Diversity and Equal Opportunities
GRI
3-3
405-1
405-2
406-1
Our Approach
Diversity is a part of Vonovia’s profile. This applies to both, our tenants and our employees. We see diversity as a significant opportunity and attach great importance to the structural equal acknowledgment of all groups within our workforce. Our focus lies on the overall conditions for cooperation as much as on the everyday work in Vonovia’s various fields of operations. We believe raising awareness for diversity among our workforce and managers is one of our most vital tasks.
(Inter-)national Guidelines
- Core labor standards of the ILO
- UN Global Compact
- Diversity Charter
- General Act on Equal Treatment (AGG)
Specifically promoting equal opportunities – including through various offers ensuring a healthy work-life balance and adjusting our recruiting processes to the demands of a pluralistic, multicultural society – is an important aim of our corporate policy. We apply an array of measures designed to fulfill the various and constantly changing demands of a diverse workforce. At the top level of management, the diversity concept for the composition of the management and control bodies, set out in detail in the Corporate Governance Declaration, applies. Works councils represent all Vonovia employees in Germany and Austria. Since July 2022, they have also represented Deutsche Wohnen employees. As for the German branch, we have also appointed representatives for young people and trainees and the severely disabled.
Organizational Focus
All managers in the company are responsible for implementing and respecting our diversity and equal opportunity standards and complying with the corresponding policies on a daily basis.
Objectives and Measures
We see the strengthening of women in the company as an important mission, as they – chiefly due to the technical occupations in the field of skilled trades – are considerably underrepresented with a share of 28.2% of the workforce (excluding SYNVIA and the Care segment) as a whole.
The SPI indicator “Proportion of women in leadership roles in first and second management level below Management Board” is recorded annually. This underscores our commitment to our aim of actively promoting women and opening doors to management positions and technical careers for them. When setting the target – 30% by 2026 – we were guided by the representation of women in the Group as a whole. At the top level of management, the diversity concept for the composition of the management and control bodies is set out in detail in the corporate governance declaration. In Austria, we were awarded the equalitA certification for the internal promotion of women in 2021.
PERFORMANCE METRIC
We strive for equal opportunities and diversity in our everyday work at the company. In order for every employee to know and understand our central equal opportunities and diversity principles, we adapted our anti-discriminatory behavior training to current focal points and added it to the Vonovia Academy in the reporting year. Participation in our regular online training courses on the General Act on Equal Treatment (AGG) is mandatory for all new employees. This material is closely related to the digital training course on our Code of Conduct, which all employees are required to complete every two years.
We are happy to announce that there were zero cases of discrimination reported in the 2022 reporting period. In order to more firmly anchor the issue of diversity at the strategic level of the company in the future, a comprehensive range of management development courses – focusing, for example, on the topic of “unconscious bias” – is currently being developed and is scheduled to be rolled out in 2023. We are also focusing on including more people from abroad and people with a refugee background into our technical service teams and in the Value-add segment. This not only encourages intercultural exchange in the workplace, but also contributes to expanding individual knowledge and expertise, which benefits all employees. Vonovia is also a partner company of the Klischeefrei (Cliché Free) Initiative. Its aim is to establish career and study choices throughout Germany that are free from gender stereotypes. It is a broad social alliance for anyone involved with career choice processes.
One important criteria for employees with children in terms of gaining their loyalty is our ability to provide a healthy work-life balance. We offer our employees information on our intranet platform about pregnancy and parenting, childcare and financial help for single parents. We also make child-friendly spaces available for parents at our various locations to cover short-notice childcare situations. In 2022, BUWOG in Austria also had various offers for employees, including child- and family-friendly workplaces and a one-week childcare program organized for BUWOG employees in cooperation with a external provider in the reporting year for the summer vacation. Our Austrian subsidiary has been certified as a family-friendly company by the Austrian Federal Ministry for Labor, Family and Youth since 2017. A recertification is planned in 2023.