Borealis’ People Strategy focuses on creating a learning organisation, supporting the requirements of a growing company which is developing towards globalisation and the Circular Economy, and leveraging the benefits and opportunities of digitalisation. To implement this strategy, the Group focuses on five areas: employee engagement, diversity and equal opportunity, training and people development, process automation and fair remuneration. Achieving the Group’s goals in these areas supports Borealis’ profitability, helps to ensure high levels of employee engagement and satisfaction, contributes to operational excellence, encourages a strong health and safety performance and continuous improvement, and broadens the talent pool from which the Group can recruit. In 2019 7,397 employees (compared to 6,671 in 2018, now including mtm plastics GmbH, Ecoplast Kunststoffrecycling GmbH, Rosier S.A. and Rosier Netherlands B.V.) worked for Borealis on a permanent (98%, same as 2018) or temporary (2%, same as 2018) basis. This workforce was supported by 159 (177 in 2018) leasing employees who are not employed by the Group, primarily in Austria and some 300 summer workers, job students, apprentices and interns.
The Group’s primary people-related goals in 2019 were to:
During 2019, Borealis:
Achieving high employee engagement strengthens employee satisfaction and is in line with Borealis’ Values and desired behaviours. As engaged employees are more productive, high engagement is also important for delivering Borealis’ growth strategy and links directly to the Group’s profitability. Borealis has the opportunity to further improve engagement and its business by maintaining an open dialogue with employees, to understand what drives engagement.
The Borealis People Survey is the Group’s key tool for obtaining feedback from employees, evaluating employee engagement and measuring the effectiveness of Borealis’ people management. It takes place every two years and has a tagline of “Building a better Borealis”. The overall participation rate in the 2019 People Survey was 85%, compared to 83% in 2017. Actions are being defined based on the survey results and their implementation will be closely tracked.
One of Borealis’ four core values is Respect. This value includes respecting employees who wish to organise themselves and be represented by unions or works councils. In Borealis, 90,31% of all employees are covered by collective bargaining agreements. In some countries, no comparable agreement exists.
The Corporate Co-operation Council (CCC) is an important platform for dialogue between management and employee representatives. It is a forum for exchanging information between the works councils at the various Borealis locations, top management and owners. The CCC holds four meetings and one conference each year. Anticipating Borealis’ future transformation, the 2019 CCC Conference addressed the topic of “Balance in Times of Change”. The aim of the event was to ensure that the successful well-being approaches at the different sites can be sustained and to find activities to further improve local cooperation between employer and employee representatives.
Borealis also has Open Fora and other opportunities for interaction at all of its locations. Common topics discussed at these events include the Group’s financial performance, different Group initiatives and other topics of interest.
Diversity and equal opportunity, in terms of gender, origin, religion, nationality or any other facet, are integral elements of Borealis’ open culture and enrich the Group’s working environment. Borealis strongly believes that diverse teams are more creative, resourceful and knowledgeable, and that they generate broader perspectives, ideas and options. Diversity and inclusion therefore have a strong impact on people and teams, improving engagement and job satisfaction and directly contributing to the Group’s profitability and sustainability.
Gender diversity is one area where Borealis is only in line with the industry average, with about 20.6% (20.1% in 2018) of the Group’s employees being female. Borealis is therefore starting to take a more structured approach to increase gender diversity. Diversity will be one of the core people themes in the new Company strategy and is also part of the People KPI in the Group Scorecard 2020.
The Group’s HR goals for 2020 are to:
