Sustainability Report 2019/2020

Creating tomorrow’s solutions

Employment Structure

The company pursues a flexible personnel-planning strategy in order to deal with production peaks and economic downturns, while at the same time protecting its permanent staff. If measures to reduce personnel costs become necessary, these are decided in close consultation with employee representatives.

WACKER regularly informs its employees of current trends within and outside of the Group that could affect business development. Employees receive timely, comprehensive information on material changes in operations, with the company observing its respective national and international duties of disclosure.

WACKER’s headcount decreased by 2.6 percent in 2020, while in the previous year it increased by 0.8 percent. German sites accounted for 70.7 percent of WACKER’s employees and international sites for 29.3 percent. As a manufacturing company, WACKER has a large contingent of industrial workers, at 47.9 percent (2019: 48.3 percent). About an eighth of its industrial workers are women (12.1 percent in the reporting period).

To mitigate the economic effects of the coronavirus pandemic, WACKER introduced short-time work in several production-related and administrative units in Germany in the second quarter of 2020. At certain times between April and December 2020, around 2,000 employees were working reduced hours at the Munich, Burghausen, Stetten and Nünchritz sites.

Shape the Future – WACKER’s Efficiency Program

In October 2020, as part of its Shape the Future efficiency program, the company and employee representatives reached an agreement on the framework for planned job cuts. By the end of 2022, some 1,200 jobs are to be eliminated groupwide in administrative units and in the non-operational functions of the business divisions. Around 1,000 of the job cuts are planned for Germany. The reduction in Germany will be implemented solely through voluntary and socially responsible measures, such as phased early retirement arrangements and severance agreements. Forced layoffs are explicitly excluded in Germany under this project.

Jobs

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2020

 

2019

 

2018

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Group

 

14,283

 

14,658

 

14,542

Germany

 

10,099

 

10,359

 

10,291

International

 

4,184

 

4,299

 

4,251

Percentage outside Germany

 

29.3

 

29.3

 

29.2

New hires, groupwide

 

798

 

1,205

 

1,798

Percentage new hires, groupwide

 

5.6

 

12.3

 

12.4

Permanent and Fixed-Term Employees

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2020

 

2019

 

2018

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Group

 

14,283

 

14,658

 

14,542

Permanent employees

 

13,845

 

14,146

 

13,989

Fixed-term employees

 

438

 

512

 

553

Temporary Workers (as of Dec. 31 Reporting Date)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2020

 

2019

 

2018

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Group

 

123

 

97

 

109

Of whom Germany

 

92

 

71

 

75

Of whom international

 

31

 

26

 

34

Percentage1 temporary workers, groupwide

 

0.9

 

0.7

 

0.7

Percentage temporary workers, Germany

 

0.9

 

0.7

 

0.7

Percentage temporary workers, international

 

0.7

 

0.6

 

0.8

1

Ratio of temporary workers to employees groupwide