GoAhead – focused promotion of mobility within the Group
Particularly in a growing international Group, one of the central tasks of human resources management is to ensure that the right employees are assigned to the right place at the right time. The GoAhead mobility programme of the UNIQA Group has made key contributions to accomplishing this goal. It enables temporary deployments of Austrian employees to international Group companies and, the other way round, brings foreign colleagues to Austria or other countries. In addition to the exchange of company-internal expertise, GoAhead serves to foster direct interpersonal networking, thereby strengthening a shared corporate culture. The programme is being constantly improved with new elements and made more efficient since it serves within the Group as both a recognition of achievements and a springboard to further career advancements. Introduced in the year 2003, GoAhead has been able to handle an impressive 467 participants from 17 countries in its seven years of existence. In the year 2009 alone, 147 employees took part in this initiative.
Over the course of the years, the programme was made more attractive in particular to employees with families. In 2005, the GoAhead Light module was introduced for short stays abroad. This was followed in 2006 by GoAhead Light Mentoring (international expertise partnerships). These two models provide stays abroad of only one to three months, while the “normal” foreign assignment ranges on average from twelve to 36 months. Roughly 73% of all participants in GoAhead have since opted for this shorter version.
Crossing borders – even during apprenticeship
International mobility at UNIQA starts already during apprenticeships. Since 2008, the Group combines the two-year training programme for young employees with a five-month internship at a UNIQA company abroad in the interests of further internationalisation. This is intended to promote mobility as well as to create a personal network. In 2009, six apprentices of the regional offices in Vienna and Upper Austria completed internships at Hungarian and Czech Group companies. In autumn of 2008, the programme was also expanded to include an apprenticeship in ExclusiveSales in order to offer the apprentices their first sales experiences in addition to specialised knowledge. Since it was introduced, 26 apprentices have taken part in this programme.
