We build

As Swiss Re evolves, understanding and sourcing critical, strategic, future-ready skills is essential for our journey to be a tech- and data-enabled risk knowledge company. In 2020, out of 2 037 vacant positions, 27% (546) were filled internally. In 2020, we made significant progress on our transformation across all Business Units. For example, in our Reinsurance Business Unit, we drove a number of specific initiatives:

• Culture transformation: a cultural change programme resulting in improved client focus, efficiency, engagement and commercial thinking. The programme included change leadership workshops with around 300 leaders
• Underwriting transformation: skills assessments resulting in significant change and key strategic hires in senior leadership to help drive change
• Origination transformation: a global sales training programme designed to upskill around 1 400 employees

Developing our employees

Our vision for the future of learning at Swiss Re includes an increased focus on an outstanding learning experience that is digital, social, accessible and commercial. We believe that learning should enable employees to deliver their best performance towards fulfilling Swiss Re’s strategy.

In 2020, we further leveraged our learning experience platform LearningOne, which was introduced in 2019. It is a comprehensive platform aimed at making the learning experience seamless by providing employees with convenient access to their training needs. There are, on average, 5 000 visits per month to the platform, where our employees have access to over 600 000 learning resources. A total of 90% of our employees have already used LearningOne at least once.

LearningOne was crucial to supporting employees and line managers with training opportunities during the COVID-19 pandemic. We held over 367 distinct virtual sessions in 2020.

Attracting talent to Swiss Re

Despite the challenges surrounding COVID-19, Swiss Re was recognised as an attractive employer through various external awards around the globe. We also saw a significant increase of 35%, on average, in new candidates in 2020 compared to 2019. Our Net Promoter Score (NPS) is compiled based on feedback that Gartner, an external service provider, collects from people who have left Swiss Re. The NPS increased by 2 points in 2020, which is 20 points above the global benchmark of –18. Overall, 74% of leavers rated their employment experience favourably, which is significantly above the global benchmark of 67%.

Employee relations

Many of our locations have active employee advocacy groups, in line with local practice, that contribute to the company’s success by offering valuable perspectives and by helping us identify employment-related challenges. These bodies are elected by local employees and have clearly defined information and consultation rights. Although there are significant local differences in the applicable legislation, the advocay groups’ rights typically concern working conditions, benefits, reorganisation and restructuring, redundancies, disciplinary actions and conflict cases. We support and appreciate the cooperation with these groups.

At our Zurich headquarters, where almost one quarter of our employees is employed, we work closely with the Personnel Committee (PECO), which represents the interests of our Swiss-based employees. PECO is involved in changes or adaptations to the General Working Conditions or other important policies, such as the Social Plan. It also focuses on gender parity as well as challenges faced by employees with family obligations. In the UK, similar activities are carried out by the Employee Liaison Group (ELG), and our Munich office has a works council with clearly defined code termination rights in several areas. Other offices in Europe (eg in France, Italy, Luxembourg and Denmark) also have work councils or staff delegates, depending on the size of the branch and local regulations.