Employees and Society

Respecting, challenging and supporting people

Bayer is a socially responsible company that respects and applies all international labor standards and offers its workforce a wide range of attractive additional benefits. Our CSR activities are also recognized worldwide.

Employees by region (Dec. 31, 2006)
Total 106,000

Bayer’s dynamic human resources policy was reflected in a number of far-reaching changes in 2006. In addition to mastering the biggest challenge – the integration of the employees of Schering, Berlin, Germany, into the Bayer Group

– we adopted a Group-wide “Bayer Human Rights Position” in May 2007

that was developed in harmony with our Sustainable Development Policy. This document establishes a foundation for the working conditions of our employees and specifies positions on matters such as harassment at the workplace, discrimination or child labor. We have also reorganized our human resources system across the Group. As a result, the following functions will be introduced by the end of 2009:

“Human Resources Self Services” enable employees, for example, to use the intranet to change their own personal data, register their vacation dates and take advantage of company-sponsored social benefits and continuing education offers. This significantly simplifies these processes for the employees.
Regional “Human Resources Shared Service Centers” (HR SSCs) serve as direct contact points for employees in all personal matters, and thus considerably shorten information paths in many cases.
In the individual Bayer Group companies, “Human Resources Business Partners” have been advising management on strategic issues since October 2006. This ensures a close link between the new human resources organization and the operating units’ needs.
Since October 2006, four “Human Resources Centers of Expertise” integrated into the Corporate Center have developed strategies, concepts and instruments for all areas of the Bayer human resources organization. They ensure a globally uniform human resources policy.

We reached an important milestone in October 2006 with the launch of the Shared Service Center Europe (SSC Europe). The staff at the SSC in Leverkusen will initially be responsible for recruitment, payroll accounting, foreign transfers, performance evaluations and continuing education in Germany. It is planned for the SSC Europe to successively assume additional tasks for the Bayer Group in Germany and other European countries beginning in 2008. In April 2007, the SSC for America was successfully launched in Pittsburgh. The respective launch in Asia is planned for 2008/2009.

Employees’ rights at Bayer: Established worldwide

At all international Bayer sites, employees have the right to elect their own representatives. Around the world, the working conditions of roughly two thirds of our employees are bindingly established in collective or company bargaining agreements. This applies to the approximately 41,000 employees in Germany, for example, who with only a few exceptions are subject to the collective bargaining agreements of the chemical industry. In Brazil, the conditions for all of our employees are based on a collective bargaining agreement, while this applies to 90 percent of our Chilean workforce and 85 percent of our employees in Venezuela. In the Netherlands, on the other hand, there is no collective bargaining agreement negotiated by unions; here, working conditions are agreed directly between management and the works council. These examples show that Bayer respects the employees’ representatives as working partners.

Supplementing the national employee representation bodies, the Bayer European Forum (BEF) was established in 1992 as a platform for social dialogue between the employer’s and employees’ representatives from the European Bayer companies

. In 2002, the Forum adopted a social charter that defines minimum social standards for Bayer employees around the world. In November 2006, Bayer adopted a comprehensive Declaration on Diversity

Vocational training opportunities: Agreed targets exceeded

In the context of a vocational training initiative sponsored by the German government, the social partners of the chemical industry signed the collective bargaining agreement “Future Through Vocational Training” in 2003. According to the terms of this agreement, the companies agreed to increase the number of vocational training slots by seven percent through the end of 2007. The German chemical industry had already exceeded this target by 2006, increasing the corresponding figure by eight percent. Bayer played a role in this achievement in 2006 in Germany, employing more than 3,000 trainees at the German sites and with its German affiliates. Including the trainees at our sites outside Germany, the total number of trainees is well above what we actually need, at nearly 3,100. We also established 30 additional vocational training positions in 2006 as a contribution to the national pact between the German government and industry as regards vocational training and the development of young managers. Including the approximately 140 Schering trainees, about 1,050 young people began a vocational training course at Bayer in the summer of 2006. Thus we continue to fill more vocational training positions than the company requires to cover its own needs. For trainees to whom we are unable to offer a permanent employment contract, we provide active support in the search for a job through our trainee pool and the Bayer subsidiary job@ctive.

In the context of the Marketing and International Business Studies (MIBS) program, approximately 20 trainees each year take part in a course of study outside of Germany. In addition, about 20 trainees annually take part in exchange programs at Bayer Group companies outside Germany as part of their training.