On the way to becoming:
To be the most attractive employer

Working with a variety of measures, the UNIQA Group continues to pursue the ambitious objective of becoming the most attractive employer in the industry. With success: in the last three years, we have been able to recruit around 6,000 new employees and welcome them to our team.

We remain fully committed to the goal defined in the UNIQA 3.0 strategic programme of achieving at least 4.5 out of 5 stars in terms of employee satisfaction by 2024. Particularly in light of the many changes and challenges in the labor market, considerable efforts are required to sustainably increase our attractiveness as an employer. In addition to numerous individual measures in all areas of UNIQA’s working environment, we also changed the way we are organised in 2023 in order to provide structural support for this ambitious path.

Organisational transformation

As part of a reorganisation of the management structure of our HR department, we created the new “Group People” function in 2023. Under the leadership of Iris Brachmaier as Group Chief People Officer, this role is now responsible for all HR agendas as well as Group-wide HR processes, guidelines and projects. At the same time, the previous head of the department, Robert Linke, took over the personnel matters for Austria.

In parallel, we have revised our operating model and thus laid the foundation for UNIQA to focus even better on the increasingly global and dynamic labour market. Additional resources were also created for this purpose. The emphasis here is on driving forward a uniform HR technology landscape, further developing our learning opportunities, establishing modern skills management and making our recruiting even more professional and global.

Key action areas

As a leading employer in the industry, the UNIQA Group also faces major challenges. In addition to the war in Ukraine, significant inflation, the after-effects of the coronavirus pandemic and the increasing urgency of environmental protection, competition for talent in economically uncertain times is particularly high on the strategic agenda.

In order to position the Group as the most attractive employer in the industry, we continue to work rigorously in the area of HR along five central strategic action areas. These were further developed during the reporting period as part of the transformation of our operating model, but have remained unchanged at their core. The action areas aim to improve the employee journey at every stage – from recruitment until the employee leaves the company.

• The continuous improvement of the Employee Experience remains at the centre of our HR strategy. In 2023, we conducted another Group-wide survey in which our employees were able to provide feedback on their satisfaction along the employee journey. Regular surveys such as these serve as the basis for the ongoing development and standardisation of the Group-wide employee experience. The new resources created in Group HR this past year also make an important contribution to sharpening the UNIQA Group’s image as an employer. Recruiting measures have already brought improvements, but the applicant market remains tight, so we are continuing to focus our attention more closely on this area. Another area of focus is modern skills management, with which we want to support our employees in pursuing a long-term career in a dynamic industry. We have also continued our well-received Future of Work initiatives, with which we aim to live up to the changing requirements of modern work models. For example, the remodelling of the UNIQA Tower with various work zones and increased accessibility was continued in 2023. This gives employees the opportunity to utilise a hybrid working model that includes both office and remote working.
• We have also continued and refined the activities of recent years in the action area of Leadership & Learning. The experiences of the coronavirus pandemic in particular led to an improvement in the learning programme and an adaptation to the modern working world. A large proportion of the former face-to-face training courses are now also held virtually. Additionally, we continue to offer specific webinars and e-learning courses and are continuously developing them further. Existing initiatives such as job shadowing, where employees can observe members of top management in their day-to-day work, were also offered in 2023 and were very well received. One ongoing challenge continues to be the teaching of digital skills, which are becoming increasingly important. The focus in the coming years will be on further developing the Group-wide offerings, including the underlying technical platforms, and further developing managers as part of the leadership development programme called “Inspiring Coaches #leader_ship Journey”.
• The projects launched in 2022 in the action area of Culture were also systematically continued in 2023. Around 20 active internal cultural trainers have now trained more than 1,500 employees in new ways of working and behaviour in numerous cultural workshops in 15 Group countries. The programme will be continued and further expanded in 2024, partly due to the very positive feedback.
• During the reporting period, we stepped up our initiatives in the action area of Diversity & Inclusion even further.
• Finally, the action area Data & Analytics is becoming increasingly relevant because the desired improvement of our employee journey [more or less] demands a data-orientated approach to HR management. To live up to this, we updated the Group-wide management and HR dashboards in 2023 and can now provide meaningful data and analyses on relevant HR-related KPIs on a quarterly basis. Supported by the newly created Group People function, existing processes were also increasingly standardised and automated across the Group. Moreover, modern analytics capabilities are being created to better analyse personnel-relevant data and plan for the future.

Initiatives for 2023

UNIQA puts its motto “living better together” into practice both in its positioning towards the outside world as well as consciously towards all employees. To this effect, once again we launched and continued a number of employee satisfaction initiatives in 2023:

• Online fitness breaks: “Fifteen minutes for health” three times a week with VitalCoaches
• Massage offer
• Free consultation and coaching for work-related and personal challenges for all employees throughout Austria in cooperation with Mavie
• Launch of mental health initiatives with the Mental Health Day in October 2023
• Mavie Health Hub: massage, HealthCoach and symptom checker at UNIQA Tower
• Work/life balance: children’s summer camp and supervised children’s days

Employer branding activities 2023

With dedication, we continued to work on our employer brand and our employer value proposition #startyourbetter in 2023. One focus in June was a campaign specifically for the target group “IT and Female Tech Talents”, which more than doubled the number of applications during the campaign period and in the following months. In November, another employer branding campaign followed, primarily targeting potential new employees in sales. Additionally, we launched a new regular onboarding event, also under the title #startyourbetter. As in previous years, we also participated in numerous national and international career events, including the We Are Developers World Congress in Berlin.

Multiple awards

In 2023, we once again achieved notable successes in various employer awards. Thanks to a renewed improvement in “Best Recruiters”, we are now in 19^th place (out of a total of 570 companies assessed) and, for the first time, we secured second place in the industry ranking. We were also delighted to receive new international awards: the Financial Times included us among the “Leaders in Diversity” and the Times Magazine included us among the “World’s Best Companies”.

Apprentice training: individuality, flexibility and variety

With currently around 100 apprentices in training, UNIQA is also constantly looking for new talent for apprenticeships. In addition to the apprenticeship for field sales, there will also be a separate apprenticeship for office staff starting from autumn 2024. Apprentices offer considerable potential for the future: thanks to the sound dual training programme, they can enter the profession seamlessly – and are therefore particularly attractive in times of increasing retirements among the baby boomer generation.

Apprenticeships at UNIQA are as flexible and diverse as the young people themselves: from the regular three-year apprenticeship and the apprenticeship with a school-leaving certificate, to the “turbo apprenticeship”, where prior experience is credited, everything is possible. What all options have in common is a varied training programme in both the office and in the field, where expertise is built and individual talents honed. As an internationally active group, UNIQA also offers a wide range of development opportunities and career prospects once the programme is completed.

Diversity & inclusion

Our employees are just as diverse as our customers. We therefore focus on structured measures to promote diversity and inclusion and put people at the centre of our efforts. We only consider our guiding principle “living better together” to be fulfilled when every majority and minority at UNIQA has equal rights and is actually given equal opportunities.

Diversity and inclusion are core elements of our UNIQA 3.0 strategic programme and are particularly relevant to our goal of making UNIQA the most attractive employer in the industry. In implementing this strategic programme and in line with the Guiding Principles defined therein, UNIQA published its own Diversity & Inclusion strategy for the first time in 2022.

Apart from fulfilling a fundamental ethical obligation, diversity and inclusion help to strengthen loyalty to the company, reduce staff turnover and counter the shortage of skilled labour. A diverse workforce can attract new customer groups and better understand their needs. Furthermore, diversity and inclusion offer the opportunity for greater economic success and growth.

Our commitment to the power of diversity was once again manifested through numerous projects and initiatives in 2023:

• Thanks to a co-operation with Female Founders, several women from the UNIQA women’s network were able to take part in the event “Lead Today. Shape Tomorrow”, which focussed on the aspect of inclusion in future entrepreneurship.
• Our successful mentoring programme continues to enjoy great popularity and entered its third round in 2023.
• Proactive initiative also played an increasingly important role in 2023: committed employees founded two new initiatives, the “Together better family” network and the “Sustainability” network.
• University students with disabilities or chronic illnesses were given the opportunity to take part in job shadowing at UNIQA as part of the myAbility career programme.
• Customers from the LGBTQIA+ community have their own expert available to answer their questions.

Measures and objectives for 2023

In the area of equal pay, we want to use a combination of detailed analyses and concrete measures to ensure fair pay and further reduce the structural pay gap. In 2023, the adjusted pay gap for office staff in Austria was 0.6 per cent for the second year in a row, which is a very good level.

In terms of the proportion of women in senior positions, we have already exceeded our target of improving our Women’s Career Index – a recognised benchmark for the development of women’s careers in companies – to 70, achieving a score of 77. The proportion of women in senior positions increased by an average of 2.3 percentage points in 2023, and UNIQA’s Group Management Board has included a woman as a member since 1 April 2023. Improvements to the framework conditions through measures and initiatives such as our mentoring programme, job/top sharing models and part-time management, help with childcare support, working from home and flexible working hours have a correspondingly positive effect here.

In order to quantify our goals and developments, we have created an inclusion index. It measures how clearly appreciation, equal opportunities and fairness can be experienced by the most diverse people in UNIQA’s working environment. Our goal was to increase the baseline value measured in Austria in 2021 from 3.6 to 3.8. The Group-wide employee survey 2023 has now even produced a score of 4.0. Thus, the target was exceeded.

To create commitments and clear responsibilities, we rolled out a Diversity & Inclusion Policy for the entire Group in 2023. This is now reviewed annually and revised as necessary to account for any changes in legal requirements and other developments in the UNIQA Group.

In addition, we have nominated our own Diversity & Inclusion officers in the individual countries and have so far held three international Diversity & Inclusion conferences in order to promote the topic as effectively as possible and ensure better networking.

A mandatory e-learning module on “Equal treatment and protection against discrimination” is intended to ensure that reports of discrimination are consistently followed up on [in the first stage] in Austria.

Since 2023, dashboards for managers have also been available Group-wide to visualise and compare the results of data analyses as needed.

The mandatory training courses for managers on the topic of “Unconscious Mind. Inclusive Leadership” were continued in 2023.

We have also consistently promoted the inclusion of people with disabilities. Internships and job shadowing were offered for people with disabilities in a targeted manner, and important structural changes also ensure even greater accessibility in the UNIQA Tower.

Priorities and challenges for 2024

Over the next few years, we would like to focus on the following topics in terms of diversity & inclusion:

• Compensation fairness: standardised equal pay analyses are to be carried out throughout the Group and additional measures derived to close the pay gap.
• Women in leadership positions: we want to continue to increase the proportion of women in leadership positions and further improve the work-life balance at UNIQA. In particular, the creation of a concept for parental leave management is on the agenda.
• Generations: the topic of age diversity is to be given greater prominence through targeted generation management. We want to strengthen the loyalty of older employees to retain expertise within the company and reduce the fluctuation of younger employees. To this end, we are relying on mentoring and reverse-mentoring programmes.
• People with disabilities: actively recruiting and increasing the proportion of employees with disabilities is a clear goal for the coming years.

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