Employees

Our objective is to achieve revenue growth and profits that are sustainable over the long term. We also aspire to lift the food and hospitality sector to a whole new level. To achieve these goals, we need dedicated employees who bring our strategy to life in their everyday work. One thing is certain: METRO can only grow if we support the growth of our employees. Our human resource strategy focuses on 2 key aspects: on human resource management, which includes employee recruitment, retention and development and on occupational safety and health management. Our objective is to attract the very best employees, to support them in accordance with their motivation and abilities and to strengthen their long-term loyalty to our company. By taking this approach, we strive to be the employer of choice among current and future employees.

Recruiting employees

In competing for the most highly skilled employees and executives, we take steps to polish our image among potential applicants. This also includes offering initial training programmes to young professionals starting their career in retail, which in turn enables us to recruit employees from our own ranks. In Germany, we focus on needs-based initial training with the goal of hiring a large portion of apprentices following graduation.

Employee commitment

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.

Diversity management

Development of employee numbers

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).

Development of personnel expenses

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.