Fair Working Conditions
Material impacts, risks and opportunities
The chemical industry in Germany has comprehensive collective-bargaining agreements in place that apply to WACKER as well. This has a positive impact on our employees and provides them with an adequate standard of living. We implement benefits under collective bargaining arrangements, in addition to offering voluntary social benefits. We place great emphasis on a fair and adequate wage.
Strategy
We have a standard comprehensive groupwide personnel policy and we take equal account of all employee groups with the clear aim of promoting positive impacts on our own workforce. Fair wages play a major role in this. Flexibility and innovative working-time models enable employees to better balance their private and professional lives. We actively support social partnership in the chemical industry. Our pay and working hours are in line with applicable laws and provisions. Our Group directive on compensation and benefits and various agreements with employee representatives, e.g. on the issue of working-time models, govern implementation.
Actions
Maintaining and enhancing WACKER’s appeal
In order to ensure that compensation is non-discriminatory, it is based on gender-neutral criteria related to the duties required by the position in question. Furthermore, we are determined to pay all of our employees throughout the world appropriately. For this purpose, a global survey and review were carried out for the first time in 2024. In 2024, we committed to the UN Global Compact’s Forward Faster initiative, which includes clear targets for living wages and gender equality. WACKER offers employees a variety of opportunities for work-life balance. These include multiple working-time models, childcare assistance, school-vacation support at our major sites, and one week of “family time” for parents of children under eight or for employees providing caregiving to relatives. We offer these benefits to employees of Wacker Chemie AG (excluding subcontracted employees).
Flexible working arrangements are part of our modern working world. Remote work has been established at many sites and is available after obtaining approval from supervisors. Our employees have access to a variety of leave options and part-time models for personal situations, such as providing caregiving to family members, pursuing further education or taking a sabbatical. These arrangements are based on company agreements and the collective agreement on working life and demography.
We assist with childcare and the return to work after parental leave by holding workshops, for example. At all German sites, a service provider offers advice on the search for daycare spaces and alternative forms of daycare. In the event of family members falling ill or requiring care, employees in Germany can make use of advisory services. WACKER is a member of the Family Pact Bavaria network and has a corporate culture that is family friendly.
We review whether our actions are effective by looking at the use of flexible working-time models and options for different stages of life that enable our employees to strike a better work-life balance. We also look at our employee turnover.
Metrics
Adequate wages
All employees receive adequate wages. Many countries have state-regulated minimum wages (e.g. Germany, the USA and India) that serve as a benchmark. Some countries also have collective bargaining arrangements or collective agreements (e.g. Brazil, Sweden and Italy) and others draw a comparison with neighboring countries (e.g. Qatar as a reference for the United Arab Emirates).
Social protection
WACKER strives to ensure that its employees benefit from the welfare system. The percentage of employees covered by welfare benefits to avoid loss of income for all major life events is 95.3 percent.
In the following countries, not all employees are covered against all five major events defined (listed alphabetically):
Bangladesh, Czech Republic, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, United Arab Emirates and the USA. Only one of these countries does not provide welfare benefits to avoid loss of income due to at least one of the major life events defined and WACKER has three employees there.
Typical reasons for incomplete coverage include the fact that, in some countries, certain forms of welfare are generally not provided or required by the state, or only apply above a certain monthly salary threshold. There are also forms of welfare, such as paid parental leave, which are sometimes only applied in one part of a country (e.g. individual US states).
Remuneration
Our remuneration (i.e. compensation) depends on the type of job, responsibility and relevant experience. This is how we compare work duties of equal value after adjustment in our internal analyses.
Based on the analysis specified in ESRS S1, the difference between the average hourly wage of female and male employees is 6.2 percent (based on the average hourly wage of male employees). This means that men have a higher wage per hour than women on average.
The annual total compensation of the highest paid individual is 27.6 times more than the median of the annual total compensation of all employees (excluding the highest paid individual).
For reasons of materiality, we only consider data from the largest Group companies in terms of employee numbers for the compensation metrics. This means that 97.5 percent of WACKER’s employees from eleven countries are included in the assessment.
To prevent the results from being distorted by projections and therefore to obtain meaningful figures, we only take into account employees that have been actively employed for the entire year.
As a result, 89.1 percent of employees representative of the employment structure are taken into account for the calculations.
