Employee survey provides yardstick for progress

Our Group-wide employee opinion survey is the main tool we use for measuring the advances we have made in implementing Group strategy and how executive conduct has progressed. We conducted the survey for the fifth time in 2011 with 80% of all employees participating (previous year: 79%). The findings improved across all survey questions and key performance indicators for the third year in a row, thus indicating a stable upwards trend.

The highest scores were awarded to the categories of “customer promise” (80%; previous year: 77%), “co-operation” (77%; previous year: 74%) and “working conditions” (76%; previous year: 73%). The category “strategy” registered one of the highest growth rates at 70%, an improvement of 6 percentage points on the prior year. We also made progress in the area of “active leadership”, which increased from 63% in the previous year to 67%. This parameter will flow directly into senior management evaluations. The ratings for measures taken as a result of the preceding survey also improved (2011: 59%; previous year: 53%). Compared with other companies, this is a good result. Nevertheless, we would like to continue to improve in 2012 and increase the sustainability of our follow-up measures.