Employee matters
Employer attractiveness
Achieving the Group’s strategic and financial targets is largely dependent on its employees and on their skills and commitment. Increasing complexity and a fast-moving competitive environment are leading to an increased demand for skilled employees and executives. HUGO BOSS therefore wishes to continue to strengthen its position in the international competition for the most qualified employees. To increase its attractiveness as an employer, in addition to a fair and value-based corporate culture, the Company is also working primarily to create opportunities for individual development and a variety of offers to make it easier to combine work and family life.
The central department Human Resources is responsible for personnel strategy and personnel management across the Group. It remains in close contact with the managers of the central departments and with the HR departments and managers of the Group companies. The Managing Board is kept regularly informed of the progress of the personnel work and is involved in all significant decisions.
Targets
Further increasing its attractiveness as an employer is an important target in the personnel work at HUGO BOSS. This is intended to strengthen the Company’s position in international competition for highly qualified workers and to increase motivation, commitment and loyalty among the Company’s approximately 14,600 employees.
Measures
For HUGO BOSS, the systematic training and continuing education of its employees and support for combining work and family life are among its top strategic personnel management priorities. Employees
HUGO BOSS offers its employees a multitude of opportunities for individual development. Structured training programs for skilled employees and managers, such as the Employee Development Program (EDP) and the Leadership Development Program (LDP), are designed to support employees in ways that are appropriate to their abilities, to broaden their knowledge and to strengthen their skills, potentially with a view to pursuing a management career. In 2019, selected employees of international Group companies were able for the first time to complete the EDP, which has been available at the Group’s headquarters in Metzingen for several years. Both the EDP and the LDP, which was established last year at the Metzingen site, will be strengthened and gradually extended to more Group companies in the future. Moreover, all employees have access to a broad selection of face-to-face and online training on social, professional and management skills via the Group-wide “HUGO BOSS University” platform. At the Group’s own production and logistics sites, face-to-face training sessions and workplace orientations are an integral part of initiating industrial staff.
To provide support in the creation of individual development opportunities on the process and system side, the Company introduced the “Performance & Development Dialog” (PDD) in late 2019. With the help of an online tool, this aims to bring about further improvements in areas such as performance evaluation, assessment of potential and development planning, initially at the Group’s headquarters in Metzingen and in selected European locations. In this way, HUGO BOSS intends to create greater transparency within the Group, particularly with regard to possible cross-departmental and transnational development paths, to get the best out of employees and create a sense of loyalty to the Company among talented workers for as long as possible. The implementation of the PDD will be extended to other Group companies in the coming years.
To increase its attractiveness as an employer, HUGO BOSS also supports its employees in combining work and family life. A multitude of flexible working models, such as individual part-time arrangements, trust-based working hours or a home office concept, are designed to further increase motivation and commitment among employees. The majority of the Group’s employees already benefit from flexible working hours and part-time arrangements. For example, employees in the Group’s own production site in Izmir (Turkey) are able to take accrued overtime hours as time off within two months. The home office concept is already available to administrative staff at the Metzingen headquarters and to employees at selected international sites. This will be extended to other Group companies in the coming years. The Company is also supporting its employees in bringing private training and continuing education measures into line with their professional activity.
The Company is also involved in the collaboration “Success Factor Family” to strengthen family-friendliness across Germany. HUGO BOSS already offers a broad variety of family-friendly options to its employees. For example, young families at the Metzingen site have access to places in the local daycare center and holiday care programs. In 2019 construction work also began on a Company-owned daycare center there, which is planned to open in late 2021. At international sites too, the Company promotes the combination of work and family life. For example, employees in the United States have free access to an Employee Assistance Program (EAP), which offers independent advice on matters such as childcare and caring for family members. In addition, employees there have the choice of spending part of their personal gross income on external care and support services through flexible spending accounts (FSAs).
The attractiveness of HUGO BOSS as an employer was awarded several prizes in 2019. In the annual survey conducted by the Trendence and Universum institutes, the Company was once again among the top 100 most attractive employers in Germany. In the study “Working in Fashion 2019” in the German industry magazine Textilwirtschaft (“Textile Industry”), HUGO BOSS rose to third place (prior year: eighth place). It scored particularly well in the categories of work–life balance, working internationally, salary levels and training offerings. In the last of these, the Company came in first place.
Performance indicators
HUGO BOSS determines the satisfaction and the needs of its employees as part of an employee survey conducted annually in cooperation with Great Place to Work® Germany. The knowledge gained provides the Company with an important impetus for the further development of its personnel work and the corporate culture. With a Group-wide participation rate of 66%, overall satisfaction rose in 2019 to 70% (2018: overall satisfaction of 68% with a participation rate of 66%). At HUGO BOSS AG, overall satisfaction rose to 76% (2018: 74%). This included further improvements in the results for the training offerings and work–life balance categories compared to the prior year. HUGO BOSS has set itself the target of raising overall satisfaction across the Group to 75% by 2025.