Investing in employee development and growth

We firmly believe in creating a culture of personal growth which empowers our employees to fulfil their aspirations and encourages them to develop their capabilities through a variety of learning experiences with active support from their managers. Our initiative PersonalGrowth@SwissRe sets out the shared role line managers and employees play and focuses on our investments in employee development. In this context, we offer various rotation opportunities that give our employees a great chance to gain insight into business areas outside their own and that support managers who have a short-term need for additional (project) resources in their team.

Formal training at Swiss Re combines technical, professional and leadership skills training. We design our training internally or in collaboration with leading external partners and deliver it through our long-established Swiss Re Academy. Currently, we offer more than 1 000 different training courses. Our employees attend training in areas as diverse as underwriting, finance, sales and negotiation, leadership, diversity and inclusion, interpersonal skills, project management, office tools and language skills. In 2017, our employees completed 234 609 hours of training overall, averaging 15 hours and USD 784 per employee. We recommend that client-facing employees invest at least two days per year in formal sales training. A total of 581 employees participated in sales training during 2017, with the average feedback score of 4.48 (out of 5), which is in line with the financial services benchmark of 4.4.
Reflecting our efforts in the area of employee development, we outperformed in all HR categories within the prestigious Dow Jones Sustainability Indices, with Swiss Re top on the social dimension and above the world average in every human capital dimension (Human Capital Development scored 100% versus the industry average of 38 and world average of 77).