The Messer Team 2020
Diversity and equal opportunity are anchored in our mission statement. Our forward-looking and sustainable Human Relations policies ensure a level playing field for professional success, respect cultural differences, and promote interaction among each another. For Messer, diversity is essential to innovation and sustainable business success, and mutual trust and respect form the basis of our corporate culture.
Diversity management
The goal of our diversity management program is to create a respectful work environment that is free of prejudice, regardless of the employees’ gender, nationality, ethnic origin, religion, ideology, disability, age, sexual orientation or gender identity. With that purpose in mind, we have established an interdisciplinary team.
Since 2019, Messer Group has been a recipient of the Total E-Quality Award for equal opportunity in personnel and organizational policy with the special citation for diversity. Valid for three years, the award is supported and recommended by the German Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth as well as by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. In addition, we are signatories to the “Diversity Charter,” an initiative that promotes diversity in companies and institutions under the patronage of German Chancellor Dr. Angela Merkel.
Contact persons responsible for diversity management will continue to strengthen and anchor it in our national subsidiaries. Moreover, our Diversity Team is already creating an international in-house training program to reveal and combat the employees’ “unconscious biases,” which represent one of the major impediments to the implementation of diversity strategies.
Share of women and equality
As of December 31, 2020, Messer employed 10,764 people; on December 31, 2019, that figure was 11,063. The share of women was 28.4 percent versus 29.5 percent in the previous year; 24percent of managers in the first and second levels of management were women, versus 26.2 percent in 2019. The decrease was partly due to a 9.1 percent reduction in the share of women in Messer Group GmbH, which was attributable in part to a change in the definition of second level management: To motivate women to accept a leadership role, since the start of 2021, team or project managers who report to first level management are now also counted as second level management.
The share of women will be increased over the long term. To that end, among other things, equality at Messer was analyzed in 2020. For example, a study was conducted to determine whether there are any inappropriate systematic inequalities in remuneration. A review of salaries paid to women and men in comparable functions revealed no gender-specific discrimination against women.
Our salaries are based on function, market, performance, education, experience and number of years of service, as well as any collective wage agreements or comparable collective wage agreements and adjustments for inflation. It goes without saying that our remuneration policy makes no distinction among genders.
Diversity Report
In December 2020, Messer published the first Diversity Report. In the meantime, we have compiled additional data that will be published in a Diversity Report in May 2021 and annually thereafter. The key indicators of the workforce relative to male or female gender are collected anonymously along with length of company service, age distribution and nationality. This monitoring will help us achieve the established objectives and manage the subject.
In 2020, the average company service of our employees since they joined Messer was 10.2 years. Employee turnover was 13.2 percent.
Messer in Hungary established an onboarding program to improve the integration of new colleagues: new employees are assigned a personal mentor, who helps them get situated during their first months on the job and is ready to assist them in a wide range of matters. The program also includes short assignments in other departments to promote a better understanding of those roles and provide interdisciplinary context. This lets new employees get to know their key contacts better, which builds greater social cohesion and a feeling of comfort and security. Their direct supervisors discuss the integration process with them on a monthly basis.
Messer is committed to the education and training of talented young professionals, who represent an important investment in the competitiveness and capability of our company. Some of that training takes place at various locations, supplemented by multi-week assignments abroad. In 2020, the training quota at the Messer was 1.3 percent.
Open dialog and in-house transmission of expertise are important to us. That’s why we promote the establishment and maintenance of cross-regional and intercultural networks. In 2020, employees participated 15,559 times – in most cases virtually – in site conferences or network meetings for strategic integration or know-how transfer. By contrast, that figure was 8,369 in 2019.
Qualification offensive
We made good use of the time during the lockdown to qualify employees. Our “Messer Innovation Forum” advanced training platform for application engineering is designed for our customers, sales representatives, sales managers, application specialists and technicians. One of the aims of the forum is to transfer know-how from the individual divisions and departments to the national entities and subsidiaries. In the first half of 2020, our application specialists conducted a total of 100 webinars, for which 1,920 colleagues in Europe, Asia and the Americas registered. The software and the presentations were also made available to our teams in France, enabling them to train some 400 additional participants at the national level.
