We as One Swiss Re

Central to our sharpened Swiss Re Group strategy is the emphasis on bringing our entire organisation closer together as One Swiss Re, leveraging strengths across the Group to partner for progress.

Inclusive culture

Living an inclusive culture is one of Swiss Re’s strengths. To further support our inclusion ambitions, we offered employees the opportunity to voluntarily self-identify based on race/ethnicity, sexual orientation and gender identity for the second time as part of our pulse survey in 2021.

Encouraged by the willingness of our employees in South Africa, Switzerland, the UK and the US to voluntarily provide their data in the September 2020 survey, we expanded the list of countries where we collect such data to Brazil, Canada, Colombia, India, Mexico and Slovakia in 2021. We received relatively high levels of consent (between 60% to 81%) for self-identification and are now using the results to assess whether different employee groups have different perceptions of Swiss Re’s workplace culture, as well as determining where targeted actions are needed.

Women in leadership

Swiss Re has focused on the topic of gender equality for many years, and while we have made progress in improving parity of gender representation at all levels, we recognise that women continue to be underrepresented in our executive and senior management and we are committed to actively improving the situation.

We use our gender promotion ratio as an internal performance metric to ensure the proportion of women promoted into management positions (management as well as executive/senior management) is at least equal to the proportion of women in the “donor pool”, ie the corporate band immediately below. Specific actions, such as our diverse candidate slates and selection panels, improve the gender balance of our workforce. We also use a self-service online tool that helps eliminate biases and improve the language used in job descriptions in order to attract more diverse talent.

All Group Executive Committee members have committed to closely monitor the talent flows in their respective teams and locations and to ensure that women and men are equally equipped and encouraged to apply for the most senior roles. In practice, this involves monitoring and addressing any imbalance in succession planning and making sure successors are prepared to take on next-level opportunities. This is enabled by appropriate dashboards to regularly monitor progress.

Equal pay

Swiss Re is committed to ensuring equal pay for equal work regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation or other personal characteristics. We have a neutral, non-discriminatory approach to determining pay at all levels. This approach includes having compensation ranges defined by job area or specialisation in the local market and strict governance related to compensation decision-making and approvals. Every year, we review individual salaries and target incentives with a view to maintaining internal pay equity, external competitiveness and pay for performance. In addition, line managers have dashboards available to analyse compensation for their teams from a gender angle. For our large locations, regular statistical analysis is carried out to identify and address any potential risks of bias in compensation setting.

We regularly monitor pay equity together with market practices and address concerns to ensure we continue to treat employees fairly. In 2021, Swiss Re published a global gender pay gap figure for the first time. When we look at an “adjusted gender pay gap”, comparing pay for people in similar roles, in the same country and in the same corporate band, we do not see systemic bias. At Swiss Re globally, the average adjusted pay gap between men and women is 1.7%.

Listening to our employees

We foster a culture of open dialogue and actively encourage employees at all levels of our organisation to provide their feedback in regular, personal dialogue between employees and managers, as well as through employee surveys. This enables us to continuously assess our progress in fostering an engaging, open and inclusive work environment and an agile, professional culture.

In 2021, we conducted only one employee survey; a so-called “pulse survey” carried out in April 2021. We took the opportunity to gauge the progress we had made on identified challenges, focusing on engagement of senior management, organisational resilience, our Group Strategy, fair pay and Diversity, Equity & Inclusion self-reporting questions.

We were pleased to see that engagement of senior management has increased by 6 points to 87%, bringing engagement levels above the global executive average benchmark. At 82% (Group-wide), employee attendance of Group Strategy hacks and “must-wins” sessions was extremely high. These sessions have had a positive impact on employees’ understanding of how to contribute to our future success. Perception of fair pay continued to increase to 57%, up 2 points from 2020, and 11 points higher than in 2019, meaning we are now above the Finance/Insurance benchmark.

In light of employees’ feedback on workload pressure and the pulse survey conducted in April, which showed the impact of our actions, we decided to postpone the next full employee survey to the first quarter of 2022.

Whistleblower programme

Swiss Re is committed to maintaining the highest standards of honesty and accountability. We encourage our employees to notify us if anyone within Swiss Re or connected to Swiss Re is, or is suspected of, acting illegally, improperly or unethically. In line with our Code of Conduct, we foster a culture of speaking up on discrimination and harassment and provide training and awareness sessions on these topics. Read more about our whistleblower programme in the section “Compliance”.