Build for the future

At Swiss Re, we embrace and build a diverse workforce that brings together the best of multiple generations, cultures, skill sets and thinking. We can only unleash the motivation and creativity of our employees if they can all be who they are and feel included. An inclusive culture is key to our business success: in today’s fast-changing world we can only thrive with a culture that celebrates diverse teams, encourages fresh perspectives and fosters innovative thinking to create smarter solutions for our clients. A commitment to inclusiveness is therefore fundamental to our organisational performance and to reaching the goals set out in our People Strategy. Throughout the year, we continued with several inclusion initiatives.

Promoting an inclusive culture

We know that our employees’ lives and experiences are unique, and we believe in championing that uniqueness. Uniqueness in leadership and in thought – in fact, in every way we work together and live our values. A key aspect of our People Strategy is to prevent stereotyping of individuals based on any dimension of diversity. The philosophy of managing and attracting diverse talent is fully embedded in our development offering for managers.

Swiss Re is committed to provide an equal and safe work environment for LGBTI+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex) employees, and is a signatory to the United Nation’s Free & Equal Standards of Conduct to tackle discrimination against LGBTI+ people. In the last two years, we have equalised our leave (parental & bereavement), gift and insured (medical, death & critical illness) benefits for our employees and their partners: all of these benefits now extend to LGBTI+ partners as well as unmarried heterosexual partners across our locations globally – for the few locations where a significant cultural or legal barrier still exists, we continue to work on solutions.

Our global Together with Pride employee network comprises over 1 000 allies and LGBTI+ employees and has active local chapters in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, India, Mexico, Slovakia, Switzerland, the UK and the US. To honour Pride Month, we decorated our buildings in different locations with rainbow colours to show our support for the LGBTI+ community.

In the US, the new employee resource group Mosaic was launched to promote an inclusive environment for people of colour, with the aim of enhancing their professional and personal development. Nearly 500 colleagues across the Americas joined the event virtually and in-person to engage on the topic of allyship as a driver of inclusion.

Achieving gender equality at Swiss Re

At Swiss Re, we believe that increasing gender balance in leadership is a strategic imperative critical to our future business success. Swiss Re is a signatory to the UN Global Compact and deeply committed to the UN Sustainable Development Goal #5: “To achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls”. We are proud to have been included in the included in the Bloomberg Gender-Equality Index for the second year in a row, an achievement which underscores our strong commitment to gender-related topics and an inclusive work environment.

We recognise that women continue to be underrepresented at executive/senior management levels, as shown in the table below. The figures have been improving but not as fast as we had hoped. Our Group Executive Committee (Group EC) members are committed to driving this change, and closely monitor the talent flows in their respective units and locations to actively improve the situation.

We are also focused on increasing the number of women who join Swiss Re at all levels, ensuring diverse candidate slates as well as diverse selection panels. “Gender Promotion Ratio” is a key internal performance metric for each of our Group EC members: It compares the ratio of female promotions into middle management and above with the ratio of women in the “donor pool”. Whilst we are doing well here, we recognise the need to do more overall to address imbalances in the gender composition of our workforce.

Our global Female Sponsorship Initiative started in 2017 and came to a successful close in March 2019 with very encouraging results. In that, we identified a pool of sponsors and sponsorees and paired them for an engagement that lasted 18–24 months, with the aim of preparing the sponsorees for leadership positions and strengthening our female talent pipeline. We are committed to following up on the career steps of these women as part of our overall talent pipeline and on integrating the concept of sponsorship into our talent development programmes.