Equal opportunities for women and a better work/life balance play an important role in securing specialists for the future. With this in mind, mid-2014 saw the Bavarian Ministry of Employment launch the consultancy project "Win with Parents' SKILLS", which had recently been concluded by the 113 participating companies. Giesecke & Devrient (G&D) used the external support to identify additional contributing factors in the context of its Diversity Management, which is intended to help increase the proportion of women in management and leadership positions in the long-term.
On the one hand, the focus of the project was on reviewing the nomination process for the internal company program for promoting young talent (Talent Management). An intensive exchange with young employees was also launched on the topic of careers.
As part of the Talent Management program, the HR management team systematically investigated to what extent the selection process favors male applicants in its verbal wording as well during the surveying of required skills. The criteria were adapted in terms of comprehensive management skills which motivate the professional and personal promotion of both men and women. The new skills portfolio excludes the impact of stereotypes, enabling a fairer procedure. This alone already enabled the proportion of women to be increased in the nomination process for the staff development program. Furthermore, women and men achieved an almost equivalent statistical average to one another in the selection procedure used for the assessments. The so-called gender-sensitive diagnostics used by Talent Management demonstrated immediate successes.
A second focal point of the project included an intense dialog between young female prospective employees as well as decision-makers from HR and various business areas. At the center of the discussion were the essential contributing factors for having more women in management positions, the changing values for various generations of employees, the diverse range of networks within the company, and the advantages of a heterogeneous workforce at all levels.
As the project came to an end, G&D Head of Human Ressources Hans-Joachim Menne once again reinforced that, "Diversity management is one of the cornerstones of our corporate strategy. In terms of the aspect of gender, specifically concerning placing more women in leadership positions, we were able to benefit from an exchange of knowledge as well as the experiences gained from the consultancy project. It was also helpful to continue expanding our HR work to achieve a highly innovative and diverse employee structure within the organization."
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