We lead

As the pandemic continued to place extraordinary pressure on our people, we sought to train our leaders and employees, thereby enabling them to continue navigating a highly unpredictable environment whilst meeting the demands of our partners and maintaining their own personal resilience. In 2021, we provided training on leadership skills to 2 646 managers, with an average of 15.6 hours invested per manager. The training sessions covered three distinct focus areas:

• Leading through the crisis: Many of our line managers participated in various activities that helped them be more empathetic and resilient during the pandemic. In total around 2 460 participants participated across the different events. This was reflected by the positive assessment of line managers’ support to employees during the crisis, which reached 83%.
• Enabling a culture of ongoing dialogue, flexibility and performance: A large number of our employees participated in several virtual offerings to enable effective, high-quality growth-focused performance conversations. A total of around 5 660 participants participated in these different offerings. This was reflected by the positive perception of colleagues regarding aspects such as staying connected and working well together, which stood at 85%.
• Leading in the “new normal”: These training sessions focused on embedding key leadership behaviours with business-led initiatives to drive the mind-set and behaviour associated with leading in a rapidly changing environment.

Managing performance

Our performance management approach supports our efforts to build a high-performance culture in which our individual and team targets, as well as our behaviour, are aligned with our Group Strategy. Our approach focuses on frequent feedback to foster individual growth, real-time improvement and faster, smarter adaptation to business needs.

Our approach has been recognised with a “Gold” rating in the category “Talent Management” for “Best Advance in Performance Management” at the 2021 Brandon Hall Group HCM Excellence Awards, and “Gold” in the “Achievement in Performance Management” category at the 2021 Stevie Awards for Great Employers.

Own The Way You Work™: 2.0 principles

Even before the pandemic, Swiss Re recognised that different people have different needs and preferences when it comes to their working patterns. We are committed to accommodating formal and informal flexible work arrangements. Our Own The Way You Work™ (OTWYW) Programme motivates and engages high performance teams by allowing employees to decide how, when and where to carry out their tasks while considering client and team needs, in compliance with the applicable laws, rules and regulations of their specific region.

While Swiss Re’s overall hybrid approach to working remains the same, we adjusted our OTWYW principles slightly in 2021, after carefully considering employee feedback and lessons learned from the pandemic. The OTWYW principles 2.0 guide our long-term approach and aim to:

• Foster even greater trust, empowerment and transparent dialogue between managers, employees and teams.
• Deliver real choice and flexibility when it comes to where and how employees work whilst considering the needs of our clients, employees and the business as a whole.
• Highlight the importance of face-to-face interaction and the core role that our offices play in nurturing our culture and collaborative spirit.