Advancement of women,
family-friendly HR policies

Volkswagen’s corporate culture places a very high value on both job and family. For Volkswagen, family-friendly human resources policies are a key success factor along the road to becoming one of the world’s leading employers. In spring 2011, the Volkswagen Group proposed individual goals to raise the proportion of women at Volkswagen in Germany for the long term as part of a voluntary commitment.

A pioneering instrument is the quota for the university graduates we hire. Volkswagen hires the year’s best university graduates in the necessary fields and then trains them further. It is guided in this by the proportion of female graduates in each field of study. Consequently, approximately 10% of graduate engineer recruits have to be women. For electrical engineering, the ratio is also 10% and for business and economics 50%. Averaged across all fields of study relevant to Volkswagen, the individual ratios produce an overall goal of at least 30% women among the university graduates hired.

Volkswagen approaches female students at an early stage. For example, it uses its Germany-wide Woman DrivING Award and the Woman Experience Day to focus on female engineering students and graduates so as to recruit them for technical positions at Volkswagen.

This increased proportion of qualified women joining the Company will enable us to steadily lift the proportion of female executives in the coming years. The Volkswagen Group is aiming to have 30% women at all levels of the management hierarchy in Germany in the long term. In line with this, the proportion of women at the Volkswagen Group in Germany increased from 9.3% (2012) to 9.8% (2013). 40 women at Volkswagen AG participated in the Company’s mentoring program in 2013, which is designed to support them as they transition to management.

Volkswagen also has the goal of raising the proportion of women among its skilled workers and master-level workers in Germany to 10%. In 2013, 30 women at Volkswagen AG took part in the master craftswoman mentoring program.

With 27.4% female vocational trainees in 2013, and especially with 21.4% in the industrial and technical area, the Volkswagen Group is one of the leaders in the automotive industry in Germany. We aim to increase this to around 30%. Volkswagen therefore specifically recruits female talent, for example by offering special information days for industrial and technical vocational training at Volkswagen and career experience days for young women. The Company has participated in the national “Girls’ Day” in Germany for years and offered roughly 2,200 schoolgirls a behind-the-scenes look into careers in the automotive industry in the reporting period.

In addition to hiring and supporting talented female employees, Volkswagen is attempting to systematically improve its employees’ work/life balance. This includes a high level of working time flexibility and a range of part-time and shift models, as well as easing the transition back into the workforce for employees on parental leave. Teleworking and the associated use of new IT and communications technologies allow employees to find their own individual work/life balance.

Another step toward becoming a family-friendly company is the constant expansion of a range of childcare options. Since 2013, childcare is now available during school vacations at all Volkswagen AG locations for the first time. Volkswagen Sachsen GmbH and Volkswagen Osnabrück GmbH also added childcare during school vacations as of the reporting period; this has been implemented at AUDI AG since 2011.

The Volkswagen Group’s experience with near-site childcare facilities has been positive. For example, MAN offers company childcare facilities at its Munich and Augsburg locations. Volkswagen Financial Services AG’s “Frech Daxe” kindergarten is one of the largest company childcare facilities in Germany. Childcare has been available at Volkswagen Group of America’s Chattanooga location since 2012.