Cultural development and regulations

The voluntary check-ups available to senior management were extended to cover the team leader level. Half of the more than 400 team leaders have already taken part, with encouraging results: the participants have above-average levels of physical fitness compared with the average for the normal population.

A day to promote cardiovascular health was held in Frankfurt in 2017 and was accompanied by additional measures on the subject of cardiac health. These included training sessions on the subject of the emergency chain of action and CPR. Since then, training courses, such as on the “medical emergency procedure” have been held. A total of 120 participants have attended 26 events since the training series began.

KfW offers a broad range of company sports clubs and health courses. Suggestions from the workforce are regularly acted upon and offers looked for together. For example, a self-defence course for women is currently being planned.

The existing occupational integration management (BEM) system was redesigned, further developed and tested in a pilot project. After all, KfW always strives to offer its employees optimum support, even in the event of illness.

With the help of a screening procedure developed by the University of Potsdam, observation interviews were used to analyse the workplaces of a representative sample of working people. Possible stress factors associated with their positions were recorded, evaluated and, where necessary, reduced. The overall picture was very positive. Areas requiring action are being addressed systematically.

• KfW employees not covered by collective agreements will test “autonomous working hours”, that could lead to the introduction of trust-based working hours at a later date. This would mean that managers have no access to the time entries which remain mandatory for employees’ own documentation purposes.
• Regular meetings and “jour fixe” sessions are to be held during service hours, taking into consideration part-time employees' working hours.
• As a general rule, employees will only be expected to be available on working days and during service hours.

KfW was granted a deadline for implementing the requirements resulting from the IVV until 1 January 2018. KfW has been carrying out an interdisciplinary project since 2016 to implement these requirements. After several rounds of negotiations, a new agreement on performance and remuneration management was concluded with the General Staff Council in 2017. The agreement came into effect on 1 January 2018. The remuneration system regulated in the service agreement meets the regulatory requirements of the IVV. It also adheres to the remuneration philosophy as a state promotional bank. The system is designed as a performance-based reward system with a focus on fixed remuneration. In the context of performance management, the target agreement and the annual employee appraisal continue to be of great importance. In addition to the “what” in the form of goals, the “how” in the form of behavioural criteria will continue to be included in the target agreement and performance appraisal. The goal in the future is to be able to reward individual performance. Moreover, additional remuneration components ensure that all employees benefit from the success of KfW.

The new system also differentiates between “risk takers” (employees with a significant influence on the bank’s overall risk profile) and other employees. Pursuant to the IVV, special requirements apply to the remuneration system for risk takers that have been implemented accordingly in the agreement.

In 2017, the new remuneration system featured various communication formats and content to familiarise all employees with the philosophy and the system. In addition, all managers were trained on the new performance management system in the first quarter of 2018.