Employees

The multifaceted abilities and personal efforts of all employees contribute materially to Covestro’s success. All employees have both the freedom and the mandate to act and contribute in line with the company’s goals, values, and culture. Covestro thus promotes a working environment that is shaped by unconventional thinking, the effective exchange of knowledge, creative problem-solving, constructive feedback, and collegial cooperation. We aim to empower each of our employees to work to their full potential. Our managers are responsible for facilitating and supporting these objectives in close collaboration with our employees. In this way, we can work together to make an ongoing contribution to the company’s success. Our social responsibility as a company and an employer is based on our unreserved commitment to supporting and fostering human rights in our sphere of influence. In the interest of encouraging a transparent exchange of information, employee questions and comments are collected via the Sli.do software – anonymous or not – and regularly addressed and answered live by the Board of Management in video messages and virtual global meetings like town halls meetings and WeAre1 talks. (These discussions are mostly unedited, apart from inappropriate language and statements targeting individuals.)

As of December 31, 2021, Covestro had 17,909 employees worldwide (previous year: 16,501). At the reporting date, the Group also had 581 employees in vocational training worldwide (previous year: 551), 568 of whom were based in Germany (previous year: 543).

Employees by division¹

Corporate Values and Corporate Culture

Covestro is proud of its corporate values, summarized as C³: curious, courageous, and colorful. Curiosity drives us to think beyond the horizon and allows us to create innovative and unexpected solutions for our customers. Courage helps us identify opportunities where others see limitations. Diversity promotes employee engagement and creativity; multiple viewpoints make us successful. These values guide all of the Group’s employees and are reflected in their daily thoughts and actions.

Our “We Are 1” corporate culture is based on Covestro’s values and behaviors, and is an integral part of our strategy. Our employees influence and shape this corporate culture. A culture filled with life by our employees enables us to pursue our strategy and therefore contributes to Covestro’s success now and far into the future. Our corporate culture empowers employees, especially our management staff, to always act responsibly, to strive for continual improvement, to nurture collaborative teamwork, and to be outstanding leaders.

Our cultural dimensions and key behaviors

Human Resources Profile and Focus

Digital transformation, demographic change, and the trend toward individualization – freedom of choice and self-determination – are changing our work and the ways we do it. Our human resources (HR) activities therefore focus on the development and implementation of initiatives that sustainably support our business success in view of these changes, while at the same time encouraging professional development and engagement across the board. In this context, our HR strategy is derived from our overarching Group strategy and is also aligned with our corporate values and understanding of a common corporate culture. The four strategic action areas of HR activity are employee engagement, skills development, leadership, and the work environment.

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, we have stepped up our efforts to enable employees to work remotely. In the future, we would like to continue to offer this work opportunity to interested employees and are continually evaluating the options and conditions to do so. A new company-wide works agreement signed in the 2021 fiscal year enables employees in Germany to work outside the office for up to 80% of their working hours per month in the future, if their responsibilities, the company’s requirements, and their workplace are suitable for flexible working. This regulation will enter into force as soon as the coronavirus pandemic situation normalizes. Similar rules were also implemented at our other sites worldwide, some of which are more limited or more flexible than those in Germany.

In addition to other HR goals, Covestro’s Board of Management is dedicated to promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion as well as ensuring our employees have the qualifications to meet the demands of today’s continually changing working world. We are confident that employees can best unlock their full potential through new work experiences, exchanging information and teaming up with others, and learning independently with the help of the training resources provided by the company. Together, employees at all levels of the company set the standards for success, develop future-proof skills, and interact with one another on a basis of mutual respect. Workplace health and safety is a fundamental requirement.

The chief objective in incorporating the workforce of the Resins & Functional Materials (RFM) business acquired from Koninklijke DSM N.V., Heerlen (Netherlands), is to integrate these new employees into Covestro’s work environment as quickly and completely as possible, both in terms of administrative and organizational concerns. Most of the necessary steps have already been taken or are in the planning stage. Various communications initiatives, workshops, and trainings have been held to meld the two corporate cultures and determine a unified strategy. These continue to be a regular part of the change management process. We regularly assess our employees’ perception of our progress and the effectiveness of this cultural integration process using specialized employee surveys distributed in the acquired business. The surveys to date indicate a high degree of satisfaction and identification with Covestro while at the same time supplying us with important insights and jumping-off points for improvement. A total of 82% of participants agreed with the statement that they are proud to be part of the Covestro family.

Winning Qualified Employees and Promoting Covestro’s Employer Brand

Our goal is to be an attractive employer to candidates worldwide. Covestro aims to recruit qualified employees for the company, ensure their professional and personal development, and retain talent for the long term. We therefore strive to reinforce our employer brand through diversity and raise awareness of our company among new target groups.

We take responsibility worldwide for the professional futures of young people and maintain close contacts with leading universities like RWTH Aachen University (Germany), the University of Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania, United States), and Tongji University in Shanghai (China). Covestro is also involved in international student networks, such as Enactus, a global organization for university students, and continue to steadily expand these partnerships. We bring in university students to take part in professional internships worldwide each year. This gives them insight into our company’s operations as well as personal experience with Covestro as an employer. In fiscal 2021, we offered 364 internships around the globe.

We also take an active role in helping young people in various countries begin their professional lives by partnering not only with conventional colleges and universities, but also with organizations such as Stiftung Deutsche Sporthilfe, where we support top athletes in starting their careers. In addition to giving support to students, we provide alternative routes to joining the working world. In Germany, for example, 184 young people were able to start their careers with Covestro in fiscal 2021. Covestro offers vocational training in a number of scientific and technical professions. If the vocational training is completed successfully, trainees are guaranteed a position with the company.

During the coronavirus pandemic, Covestro organized events such as virtual career fairs in other countries in addition to these activities in Germany. These were held in conjunction with universities in Spain, including Universidad de Barcelona, Instituto Químico de Sarriá (IQS) in Barcelona, and University Rovira I Virgili in Tarragona.

As an employer, Covestro received major awards again in the reporting period. In the current ranking by Universum, Stockholm (Sweden), Covestro was named one of the top 100 employers for students of health and medicine in China and among the 50 best for young professionals in the sciences in Germany.

Promoting diversity and inclusion is a key factor in our appeal as an employer. In fiscal 2021, we again posted a year-over-year increase in the share of women in the trainee cohort in Germany. This effort is supported by other initiatives, including a change in our target group-oriented images for our “Junge Frauen in der MINT-Ausbildung” (Young Women in STEM) recruiting campaign in Germany. The abbreviation STEM stands for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics in paths of study and careers.

A campaign in the United States was also launched on LinkedIn on Women’s Equality Day (August 26, 2021). Particularly notable is our participation in the Disability Equality Index. This is a benchmark comparison supporting inclusion and equality for people with disabilities in the United States. Covestro was recognized as one of the best employers for people with disabilities for the first time in this rating.

In addition, we improved our corporate website and revised our global career pages. As a result, all of our career websites were combined into one global site where candidates can find global as well as local content using our new intuitive navigation. The site features entry-level opportunities, information on Covestro as an employer, and, for the first time ever, a look at diversity, equity, and inclusion at Covestro. What is more, we pursued our “We Are 1” culture in fiscal 2021 by more tightly integrating the activities of the worldwide staff of our communications department and improving our social media presence. Each month, our global Instagram account @Covestro features a Covestro intern from a different country. We are increasingly using social media channels in other countries as well to increase our appeal as an employer and attract employees. In Mexico, we added Facebook as another recruiting channel in the reporting year, and in China an employee recommendation program was established on the WeChat platform to inspire production workers to apply for jobs with Covestro.

Promoting and Developing Employees

Well educated and trained staff is crucial for ensuring that the company can develop further, and is essential to the company’s success. We believe in lifelong learning and therefore support our employees in obtaining additional training, both personal and professional, in all career phases.

To this end, we offer a wide range of customized continuing education options for all employees through our in-house learning concept. Numerous in-person classes are available worldwide along with virtual training sessions, each of which focuses on a different target group. In-person training was possible only to a limited extent in view of the coronavirus pandemic. Courses were increasingly held online so that employees could continue to have suitable continuing education choices.

In the 2020 fiscal year, we began restructuring our training systems and strategy, an effort that continued in fiscal 2021. Improving self-directed learning was our priority to provide employees with flexible options for developing their skills. To this end, we focused on further updating our learning management system (LMS) by adding content and improving user friendliness. Another priority was to promote knowledge transfer within the company, to create in-house training sessions using suitable tools, and to train in-house trainers (train-the-trainer program). These initiatives serve to further develop educational content in-house and to analyze the content required (including e-learning content) to create a type of knowledge market. Learning on the job was further reinforced and a mentoring program launched at Covestro to ensure that knowledge is transferred during day-to-day operations.

Our people development activities include working on an updated, more agile approach to performance, development, careers, and our talent portfolio. For instance, we intend to introduce new initiatives in line with our “We Are 1” culture that are streamlined, transparent, and intuitive. The aim is for management staff, other employees, and the company to grow, deliver high performance, develop, and be successful now and in the future. This requires all of our employees, especially our management staff, to approach their work from a development perspective and be ready to learn new skills and approaches.

The ENGAGE global initiative launched in the fourth quarter of 2019 to measure and improve employee engagement continued again in the year 2021. All employees worldwide can provide feedback several times a year by filling out a voluntary, anonymous online survey. This helps us understand what is important to our employees in terms of work environment and day-to-day operations. The results are then shared transparently with the employees. Team discussions are held so that employees and supervisors can collaboratively decide on measures to continually improve the working situation.

The rate of participation in the employee survey conducted in May 2021 exceeded 70%. Over the time we have been conducting the surveys, we have observed a steady increase in the overall engagement score, which is derived from two questions about job satisfaction and recommending Covestro as an employer. In addition, there are also several other questions about various topics.

Compensating Employees Transparently and Competitively

Offering fair compensation in line with the market independent of gender and other diversity criteria is an essential prerequisite for recruiting, retaining, and motivating qualified employees. Covestro therefore combines a base salary reflecting the duties of a position with performance-related compensation components and extensive additional benefits to create an internationally competitive pay package, about which employees are informed transparently.

Tasks and responsibilities are classified on the basis of a job evaluation conducted without considering the individuals in the positions. For management functions, a standardized evaluation method is used if the job evaluation has not already been stipulated by a local collective agreement. Based on this classification, the amount of the base salary in all countries is aligned with standard compensation levels in the respective region. Regular compensation benchmarking is conducted to ensure this is maintained for the long term.

Through a bonus program, the Group-wide Covestro Profit Sharing Plan (Covestro PSP), we have made it possible for our employees to participate in the success of the company each year with a uniformly calculated bonus payment. In addition, management-level employees participate in the Prisma global compensation program, which bases payments on the Covestro share price, including comparisons with our competitors, and in this way rewards the long-term changes in the company’s share price. Since the tranche launched in the year 2021, this program has included a sustainability component comprising a reduction target for carbon emissions and other greenhouse gases such as nitrous oxide.

Furthermore, a global budget is available from which management-level staff can promptly grant individual performance awards to recognize outstanding conduct, commitment, and the performance of their employees in regard to our corporate values.

As in previous years, the Covestment share participation program was offered once again in fiscal 2021 and provided employees with the opportunity to purchase Covestro shares at a discount. A total of 99% of Covestro’s global workforce in 16 countries is thus able to purchase Covestro stock at discounted prices. Around 40.4% of all eligible employees worldwide took advantage of this offer. The participation rate was 51.3% in Germany, 30.2% in the United States, and 50.8% in China.

Promoting Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

We work to make the world a brighter place. Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) are key components of our corporate culture. We advocate for a working environment in which various skills, talents, experiences, and points of view are welcome, and everyone is treated with dignity and respect, both within and outside of our company. We also believe that a diverse workforce and inclusive environment are important drivers of innovation, sustainability, employee engagement, and business success. Our goal is to create an environment at Covestro in which all employees can give their best each and every day.

Covestro’s DEI strategy is derived from our values and based on three core principles: Colleagues, Company, and Community. These are three essential factors for building a strong, diverse, equitable, inclusive, and innovative work culture at our sites. The Colleagues principle encompasses all activities that aim to make Covestro’s workforce more diverse. These include building and maintaining our employer branding. The Company pillar brings together all of Covestro’s efforts to promote inclusion, such as creating a global framework for employee networks. Our Community efforts comprise our partnerships with others to establish a foundation for more diversity in society. This includes activities such as our participation in the “Klischeefrei” (Cliché Free Initiative) initiative. The interaction between the initiatives of all three pillars will ultimately result in greater diversity and inclusion in the company. We promote engagement among our employees and external partners; support efforts to recruit, retain, and ensure the professional development of our employees; expand our supplier diversity; and contribute to directing Covestro’s business strategy.

In the year 2021, Covestro published its first global report on diversity and inclusion, which presents information on our DEI strategy, as well as facts and figures, and regional examples documenting Covestro’s progress in this area.

Our diversity, equity, and inclusion strategy

Colleagues – Build, Engage and Develop a Strong, Diverse Workforce

Employee networks are a key factor in involving our staff even more in driving diversity. We want to bring people with similar interests or concerns together in these networks, and promote an exchange of inspiration and ideas. Covestro has many different themed employee networks worldwide. The globally active UNITE network focuses on all issues of concern to the LGBTIQ (lesbian, gay, bi, trans, intersex, queer) community, and the Compass network is for employees interested in gender equity. In the 2021 fiscal year, our employees launched several new networks across the globe, including a women’s network, a spinoff of UNITE in Mexico, a network for fathers in Germany and one for working mothers in China.

Company – Establish an Inclusive, Supportive Work Environment and Culture for Everyone

Covestro knows that companies are more successful when they pursue gender equity and is committed to greater representation of women. We strive to promote diversity and equity at all levels for all genders. In the year 2021, we stepped up our commitment in this regard, setting an independent global target for the entire workforce in addition to meeting legal requirements in Germany. The Board of Management has agreed to build a measurably more diverse work environment and to attain the goal of Covestro’s total workforce comprising 40% women by the year 2029. At the end of the reporting year, women made up 23% of our worldwide headcount.

At the end of the year 2020, Covestro joined the UN Women’s Empowerment Principles (WEPs) initiative along with the UN Global Compact to promote gender equity. The initiative features seven defined principles that guide the participating companies in supporting women in the workplace and in society.

Despite the coronavirus pandemic, we sent a clear signal in favor of diversity and in May 2021 held a roadshow at our four sites in Shanghai (China) on the topic of diversity, equity, and inclusion. On May 18, 2021, we participated in the ninth Day of Diversity in Germany held by the “Charta der Vielfalt” (Diversity Charter) initiative with virtual sessions for all employees.

Community – Achieving Business Objectives through Community Engagement, Supplier Diversity, and Customer Interaction

Promoting diversity is the mission of society as a whole in which each of us shares part of the responsibility. Covestro takes this responsibility seriously and thus proactively promotes diversity. We are confident that we need to work shoulder-to-shoulder with various outside parties beyond pursuing our own activities. This is the only way diversity will be permanently integrated into the company as well as society. For this reason, we are further expanding our cooperation with various partners.

In Germany, we work with Väter gGmbH in Hamburg (Germany), which promotes work-life balance from the personal and business perspective. We also joined the “Klischeefrei” (Cliché Free Initiative) initiative in the year 2021 and its advocacy for career and degree choice free of gender cliches. Covestro supports the “Future of STEM Scholars Initiative (FOSSI)” by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AiChE) in New York (New York, United States). FOSSI grants scholarships to students with STEM degrees from historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs). These scholarships also include internships that help candidates develop leadership qualities and offer mentoring options in the participating companies. Covestro supports a FOSSI scholarship recipient with a grant of nearly USD 50,000 over a period of four years. In China, we hosted the Qiantan Forum, where various employers from the area around our office building in Shanghai came together for a panel discussion to promote the building of a diverse, equitable, and inclusive work environment.

Our diversity, equity, and inclusion goals and culture are being integrated further into the company by way of global action plans and regional implementation teams for all pillars and with the support of the CTO, who is the sponsor of these efforts and a member of the global DEI committee. Global decisions are additionally made by Covestro’s full Board of Management.

Designing Healthy Working Conditions and Work Models

Our basic principles include the constant improvement of working and organizational conditions and the identification of factors that either promote or are detrimental to health.

In this context, we offer our employees an extensive selection of preventive health measures featuring programs and initiatives that promote good health. Our focus here is not only the health of individual employees but also current environmental influences, which we actively address, something that became particularly evident during the coronavirus pandemic. We offered virtual sessions and initiatives worldwide (including training on mental health, ergonomics, exercise breaks, etc.) to support employees in this new situation for most, both in working from home as well as in dealing with the changed framework conditions at the company’s sites.

We are aware that our management staff has a significant influence on the performance and wellbeing of our employees. Against this backdrop, we launched an extensive program to help our executives to perform their roles as leaders and put in place a healthy work environment.

The corporate Human Resources function is aided in this effort by the corporate Group Health, Safety and Environment, Law, Intellectual Property & Compliance, and Corporate Audit functions. They ensure that all internal guidelines and all relevant standards and labor law requirements are met.

We also offer modern working conditions to our employees, so that they can be successful in a changing working environment and balance their professional and personal interests. In many countries, we exceed our legal obligations, e.g., by offering solutions such as flexible working hours, part-time work, working from home, and remote work, if this is compatible with operational requirements. A direct dialogue with our employees is also particularly important to us. In this regard, we take into account national and international notification duties.

At Covestro, our social responsibility as a company and employer also includes creating fair working conditions that are based on mutual respect and appreciation among employees and particularly ensure safety, health, and wellbeing in the workplace. Our sustainable personnel policy also features a strong social safety net for our employees.

Covestro actively raises awareness of healthy lifestyles with a stable committee structure for workplace health management and a range of initiatives and projects tailored to the individual needs of our employees. This is particularly true in regard to the challenges facing us as a result of digital transformation, demographic change, and the trend toward individualization, or freedom of choice and self-determination for individuals, which are all changing our work and the ways we do it. Against this backdrop, Covestro has decided to roll out a digital platform in the year 2022 to enable employees to participate in a broad range of health-promoting activities.

We offer comprehensive workplace health management whose focal points are continually developed further in response to health surveys. Our intention is to ensure that all employees have access to suitable and affordable health services such as sports programs, regular medical check-ups, help in overcoming illness and on-site medical care, particularly with regard to psychosocial counseling. The nature and scope of the health promotion programs differ around the world with regard to the respective country-specific level of development and access to national health systems. We offer our employees comprehensive measures aimed at preventing illness or maintaining good health, in many cases exceeding statutory requirements.

Covestro was named to the excellence level as one of the three best companies in the chemical industry in the Corporate Health Award (CHA) 2021 given by initiators EUPD Research Sustainable Management GmbH, Bonn (Germany), and Handelsblatt Media Group GmbH & Co. KG, Düsseldorf (Germany). The CHA is a prestigious award for excellent corporate health management in Germany in which companies are recognized for their above-average commitment to the health of their employees and pursuit of a sustainable HR strategy.

New, Flexible Working Environments for Improved Contact and Communication

Work environments, work content, and working methods are undergoing constant changes due to digital transformation and the increasing speed of change and complexity at our workplace. In order to meet these ever-changing requirements, Covestro provides a modern working environment that promotes flexible ways of working.

We call this work environment our C³ way of working based on our C³ values. At the heart of this philosophy is our conviction that all our employees, regardless of their status in the hierarchy, need working environments suitable to their duties to be able to work effectively. In this way, we want to enable changes in perspective and drive creativity in the company. Open-plan office environments combined with flexible work concepts encourage contact and the exchange of information across team and departmental boundaries and thus strengthen communication and interdisciplinary cooperation. Active change management prepares employees for and involves them in shaping new work environments. To achieve this, we provide not only the appropriate facilities, but also the IT infrastructure and media technology that works simply and intuitively.

Our philosophy applies particularly to cases such as moving into or creating new workspaces. We have already implemented this flexible working concept at many sites, including in Brazil, in Switzerland, in Taiwan, Greater China, in Thailand, and in China. Another new office building, which we use as our new corporate headquarters, opened for business in November 2020 at the Leverkusen (Germany) location. Due to the coronavirus pandemic and the protective measures we put in place, only very few employees have worked there in-person so far. The rest of our employees will gradually move into the building in conjunction with the return to other buildings once health protection regulations permit this.

Our managers play a special role in this system. In addition to implementing established leadership standards and modern work methods, they increasingly collaborate with their employees to develop flexible and customized solutions to support Covestro’s efforts to extract maximum potential from this new work environment.