Our Global Inclusion Framework

Our Global Inclusion Framework rests on three pillars:

Recognising the important role each of our managers plays in fostering an inclusive culture and benefiting from its strengths, the framework’s first pillar focuses on Inclusive Leadership. We have developed Inclusive Leadership Principles that describe exactly what behaviours we expect of our leaders and managers to foster an inclusive work environment for all employees. These are firmly embedded in our Leadership Imperatives – our behavioural framework for leaders that support our strategy, values and brand attributes – and our leadership development curriculum. To make these principles tangible for all our employees, we have also included them in our Personal Imperatives – our behavioural framework for all employees without line management responsibilities – and embedded both the Leadership Imperatives and Personal Imperatives into our performance management framework.

The second pillar Smashing Stereotypes, Opening Minds tackles stereotyping of people based on all dimensions of diversity. It centres on raising awareness of the “unconscious bias” that every one of us has and which can unintentionally influence our decision-making and our behaviour towards others.

Through awareness events as well as face-to-face and web-based training, employees participate in dialogues that increase self-awareness of unconscious biases such as those related to generations, sexual orientation and gender. Training on inclusive leadership and overcoming these unconscious biases has also been embedded into our leadership development and manager training.

Our third pillar is Own the Way You Work^TM: Living Team Spirit. This is a cultural change initiative, which gives managers and employees more autonomy to decide how, when and where work is carried out, within applicable laws, rules and regulations. Our future success depends on our ability to create a flexible, global workforce that is responsive to the needs of our business. We have already made good progress in advancing our employment brand internally and externally in this area, thus meeting the needs of a multi-generational workforce.

As part of our efforts to promote gender balance, we recently started the assessment process for a leading certification standard in gender equality, beginning with our Switzerland-based operations. In the UK, we have launched a similar process to achieve equality and foster inclusion of our LGBT employees. These assessments are just two of the many initiatives currently underway to improve the inclusiveness of our workplace.

In line with Swiss Re’s policy of fostering diversity, we have strong provisions in place to penalise any infringing behaviour. Our Group Code of Conduct clearly states that discrimination in the workplace against any employee or job applicant based on the person’s age, (dis)ability, origin, gender, religion or sexual orientation (or any other characteristic protected by local law) is not tolerated under any circumstances. We encourage our employees to report violations of the Group Code of Conduct, laws, rules or regulations, explicitly stating that reporting in good faith is treated with discretion and that retaliation will not be tolerated.