Our People Strategy

We regard our new People Strategy as our “North Star”: It provides us with clarity and direction, is embedded in everything we do and defines our ambition for the future of Swiss Re.

We have already implemented a number of changes that are aligned with this strategy and make it more concrete for our workforce:

• Listen to our people and act upon what they say: This is crucial and is why we introduced a new Employee Engagement Survey in 2015. By listening to the feedback and measuring the level of engagement of our people, we can identify the changes we need to implement in support of our People Strategy.
• Develop our leaders: We expect our leaders to have the skills to inspire and engage our people. Therefore, we have continued to develop our leadership development architecture, introducing new solutions to develop leadership skills and doubling the hours of leadership training we deliver.
• State clearly the behaviours we expect of all employees: Both our Leadership Imperatives and Personal Imperatives clearly define the behaviours we wish to see as a responsible company and which are needed to drive our success. Since their introduction in 2014, we have run more than 200 leader-led dialogue sessions to make sure our people understand why these imperatives are important and what is expected of them. We have also factored the imperatives into how we measure performance and reward our employees.
• New employer brand to attract the best talent: Our brand promise “Let’s be smarter together” reflects the renewed energy and aspirations that Swiss Re has. It signals our ambition as a best-in-class employer to create an even better workplace by building on our strengths, while seeking opportunities to evolve and differentiating ourselves from our competitors.

In the following sections, we provide more insights on how our new People Strategy is embedded in everything we do, from our culture of diversity and inclusion, to the way we develop and mentor our people.