Most attractive employer

Working even better together. According to this guiding principle, the UNIQA Group is pursuing the ambitious objective of becoming the most attractive employer in the industry by 2024. Specifically, UNIQA wants to achieve at least 4.5 stars on a scale of one to five in implementing the new corporate strategy UNIQA 3.0. To achieve this, we have designed a wealth of measures. Many of them were already initiated in 2021, and some have even been implemented. However, digitalisation, automation and the Covid-19 crisis pose major challenges for employees.

In addition to the changes resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic, HR management is also confronted with a number of questions regarding new job profiles, working models and techniques, and changing perceptions of potential employees. Working from home has come to stay and face-to-face meetings have almost become the exception. UNIQA supports hybrid working, responds to the individual needs of employees and, thanks to a company agreement, allows them to combine mobile working, working from home and working in the office.

The constant adaptation and improvement of our modern work concepts is also reflected in the satisfaction of our employees. In 2021, UNIQA once again received several employer awards, including Forbes World’s Best Employer and Leading Employer Austria. Among 1,000 employers evaluated in the Best Recruiters Ranking, UNIQA was ranked 66th and thus in the “Silver” category. At the same time, we were pleased about a jump of 152 places in “trend” magazine, to 73rd place. And the rating of 4.0 out of five stars on kununu also confirms the satisfaction of our employees and testifies to the open, appreciative and respectful communication within our company.

However, there is still room for improvement in targeted external communication – i.e. whenever UNIQA introduces itself to potential new employees. In addition to common channels such as cooperative efforts with universities, career and job fairs and our presence on social media and career platforms, we want to strengthen and sustainably develop our employer brand primarily through communication with our employees. In doing so, we focus on tools, projects and formats that enable a better exchange with our employees and thus ensure even greater satisfaction, more commitment and identification with UNIQA as an employer. When positioning UNIQA as an employer, all employees are given the opportunity to contribute their feedback, which is then incorporated into the final version. With the help of our employees, we can thus create a clear, uniform and differentiating employer positioning and support potential candidates in their decision-making process through authentic communication.

Five key action items for HR

In order to make UNIQA more attractive as an employer, we have defined five central action items, which we have already actively worked on implementing in 2021: for example, the higher-level objective within the UNIQA 3.0 strategy, cultural transformation, has been initiated and the entire“employee journey” has been improved.

• In the area of Employee Experience we are making continuous progress, which can be seen in the satisfaction of our employees. Through improvements in recruiting, onboarding and offboarding and ongoing feedback in the evaluation system, we continue to raise our Group-wide standards and thus work consistently to establish the UNIQA brand as Austria’s leading employer brand.
• In order to define our target culture, we have more clearly delimited and analysed the action item Employee Engagement. More than 8,000 employees in twelve countries took part in a group-wide culture survey. After evaluating the results, three target dimensions were derived: community, responsibility and simplicity. We cooperate beyond the usual boundaries, we encourage each other to take responsibility, we take action and we learn from mistakes.
• In addition to our leadership programmes and further training in the action items Learning and Leadership, mentoring is also an effective measure for increasing career opportunities in the company. As part of our newly defined learning strategy, we prepare our employees for future digital and hybrid working environments and encourage them to share their experience, expand their network and optimise their skills. This benefits both their mentees and the mentors themselves.
• Almost all of our HR activities are based on our initiatives in the action item Digital Skills. Starting with a modernisation of the human resources management system, we have laid the foundation for the development of new analysis and analytics capabilities as well as for the introduction of strategic HR demand planning. Digitalisation facilitates HR processes and enables UNIQA to plan its capabilities and resources in a forward-looking, future-oriented manner. Strengthening the digital skills of all employees will be a priority in the coming years.
• Our action item Future of Work continuously monitors technological progress in the workplace, analyses changes resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic and digitalisation, and provides guidelines for better orientation in this new working environment. Under the motto “Working better together”, we offer a wide range of information and tips on how our employees can make their work from home as functional as possible, which meeting form is suitable for which occasion and how our office space is best used. In addition, there are numerous new offers for health and well-being, such as the fitness break or the mystery break for informal exchange while working from home. The objective of such activities is to experience and strengthen the sense of community online as well.

Diversity and inclusion (D&I)

Our employees are just as diverse as our customers. Together, we form a community in which we value and respect each other, regardless of gender, age, origin, physical ability, sexual orientation, religion, world view or other characteristics. The diversity of our employees makes UNIQA a place of personal growth, development and meaningful engagement. We only consider our guiding principle “living better together” to be fulfilled when equal rights and equal opportunities are actually given in their entirety. We reaffirmed this commitment in 2021, among other things, by joining the Diversity Charter of the Austrian Federal Economic Chamber and a joint workshop of members of the Supervisory Board and the Management Board on the topic of “Unconscious Bias”.

We underline our commitment to diversity and inclusion with numerous initiatives. In 2021, for example, we celebrated International Women’s Day as well as Pride Month and used our UNIQA Tower in Vienna as a colourful ambassador for it.

Measures and objectives 2021

After formally appointing a Diversity and Inclusion Officer, UNIQA tackled a wide range of further measures last year. Under the auspices of two members of the Management Board, the Diversity and Inclusion Committee was set up to ensure the implementation of the new diversity strategy in all areas and processes of the company. To establish the legal foundations, training sessions were held on the topic of equal treatment law in the workplace.

After the women’s network “Women with Power – Network Now”, which was already founded in 2020 and which, among other things, campaigns for a higher proportion of women in management positions and equal pay for work of equal value, in 2021 we initiated a generation network, an LGBTQIA+ dialogue forum, the “Balance Work and Family” group and, most recently, a network for people with disabilities. For the latter, detailed analyses, so-called “DisAbility Performance Checks”, were also carried out in cooperation with myAbility, barriers on the website were reduced and a communication focus was set.

Priorities and challenges 2022

We want to establish diversity and inclusion as a fixed, self-evident part of our everyday life and thus sustainably change our corporate culture. In order to achieve this objective, in 2022 we will continue to pursue the initiatives and measures already launched, anchor them more firmly and intensify them. In addition to the development of a Diversity and Inclusion Policy, the introduction of a standardised process for dealing with allegations of discrimination is also planned. Existing elements such as the guiding principles and objectives of Diversity and Inclusion will be enriched into a comprehensive strategy of their own, which will form the basis for all our activities.

An important criterion for the successful implementation of our diversity strategy is the measurability of our objectives. Therefore, in addition to the already existing Inclusion Index, the development of an indicator system is planned, which will make the impact of our efforts visible and provide new approaches for improvements and measures. With the help of this indicator system, we want to create more transparency and commitment – an important thematic focus in 2022. In addition, we will increasingly initiate initiatives on the dimensions of gender, generations, people with disabilities and sexual orientation.

There is a particular challenge with regard to the participation of women in leadership roles: Although, at 57 per cent, more women than men work in the UNIQA Group, the proportion of women among the members of the Management Boards in our insurance companies is only 28 per cent Group-wide and in management only 44 per cent.

More information on diversity management can be found in the Corporate Governance Report.