Employees

Our global employee survey METRO Voice is an important tool used to determine the commitment of the workforce and their loyalty to the company. We conduct the survey regularly in all countries with METRO Cash & Carry operations, in the service companies and at METRO AG. Under the slogan “Your opinion. Our dialogue.”, about 104,000 employees were invited to participate in the survey during the reporting period. 89% of employees at the surveyed business units took part in the survey. The level of commitment, which indicates the degree of connection, pride in the company, loyalty and motivation, increased by 1% to 76% during the reporting period. It far exceeds the score of Aon Hewitt’s Global Retail Benchmark (64%) and continues the positive trend of previous years.

During the reporting period, METRO employed an average of 137,136 (2015/16: 138,089) employees on the basis of full-time equivalents. This is a decrease of 0.7% from the same period of the previous year. The majority of our employees work outside of our home market Germany. In Western Europe (excluding Germany), Eastern Europe and Asia, we had 92,611 full-time equivalents, 0.2% more than during the same period of the previous year. In Germany, the workforce by full-time equivalents decreased slightly to 44,525 (2015/16: 45,702).

Our personnel expenses decreased by 5.1% to €4.0 billion compared to the same period of the previous year (2015/16: €4.2 billion). This amount includes €3.2 billion (2015/16: €3.4 billion) for wages and salaries, including payroll tax and the employer’s social security contribution. The remainder was attributable to social welfare contributions, pension expenses and employee benefits.