Commitment to our employees

More than 146,000 employees in 35 countries exemplify the success of METRO. Their dedication and the decisions they take in their everyday work generate added value for our customers and for society. Additionally, they are valuable ambassadors for our sustainability approach, METRO SUSTAINABLE. In keeping with our sustainable approach to corporate management, we therefore see it as our duty to create and maintain an attractive, fair and safe working environment. We strive to appreciate the individuality of our employees, foster their diversity through inclusion and strengthen their personal responsibility. In addition, we care for their personal and professional development and encourage creativity and innovation. In this way, we help them to implement our corporate strategy successfully and sustainably, and can be a preferred employer for existing and future employees.

Promoting and embedding sustainability awareness

We encourage our employees to apply our corporate principles on a day-to-day basis. This also includes to think ahead, develop sustainable solutions and to act responsibly. Our shared values are embedded in our 5 guiding principles:

• Customer success
• Power of relationships
• Sustainable business
• Entrepreneurship
• Leadership by example

The employees’ individual performances are also assessed every year as part of the Results & Growth process with respect to how these principles were complied with.

With initiatives such as METRO Sustainability Day, which was conducted for the fourth time on the METRO Campus and in numerous METRO countries in 2018, we provide our employees with inspiration for all kinds of sustainability issues in workshops, presentations and exhibitions, and motivate them to take action themselves.

In addition, the International Days officially declared by the United Nations such as World Water Day, World Environment Day, World Oceans Day and Word Food Day make it possible to draw attention to specific sustainability issues.

In this respect, METRO’s internal social media platform United is a suitable tool for communicating sustainability-related content and knowledge.

Ambassadors of sustainability

The METRO Sustainable Leadership Program (MSLP) lets young executives experience the close connection between sustainability and leadership responsibility – vis-a-vis themselves and their colleagues as well as other partners. This programme encourages them to integrate sustainability into their day-to-day work. The programme was conducted for the fourth time in financial year 2017/18. 29 participants from various sales brands as well as METRO AG and its cross-divisional service companies develop sustainability-related projects which are to be implemented within the next 18 months. Through their work, the employees thus become ambassadors of sustainability, highlighting the relevance of this issue to the various business divisions. In addition, the network of participants inspires people to collaborate and exchange knowledge across the various sales lines.

To better embed social and ecological concerns with all our employees around the world, the METRO national subsidiaries are setting up their own sustainability committees. These lay down strategic directions and stake out major goals to be met. The first national bodies were set up in China and France. Meanwhile, regular events are also being staged in Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The latest countries to officially set up a domestic sustainability committee are Spain and Japan.

On a local level, so-called Sustainability Ambassadors are frequently available as a first contact point for employees. Among other things, they organise measures and events in wholesale stores and/or at head offices. In May 2018, for example, all Czech and Slovak Sustainability Ambassadors congregated in Brno. Inspired by the sustainably built meeting site, they kicked off new ideas, with a focus on the topics of food waste and plastic waste prevention.

In Hungary, 1 participant of the METRO Sustainability Leadership Program, László Baltás, raised the initiative to a new level in 2018: as the Store Sustainability Ambassador 2.0, he focused particularly on environmental issues and has already kicked off a series of concrete steps, including on waste prevention and energy-saving.

Fair and safe working conditions for our employees

To meet its corporate diligence under the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, in 2012 METRO created its own guidelines on fair working conditions and social partnership. They are based on the UN’s Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, on the key labour standards of the International Labour Organization (ILO) and on the 3 main principles of the Consumer Goods Forum’s Resolution on Forced Labour. These include the principles of freedom of association, the right to collective bargaining, the ban on forced labour, child labour and discrimination, structured working hours and wages, occupational health and safety management.

The objective is to guarantee sustainably good working conditions for the employees, in so doing contributing to the growth of the company.

To ensure that our sales lines and national subsidiaries comply with our guidelines on fair working conditions, we keep an eye on our head offices, markets and logistics centres. To improve working conditions in the national subsidiaries, concrete plans are worked out with local colleagues in which measures with clear responsibilities and timetables are laid down and followed up. Since financial year 2016/17, lengthy checks on compliance with METRO principles were conducted in 11 national subsidiaries (Pakistan, Bulgaria, China, Japan, Hungary, Italy, Serbia, India, Slovakia, Moldova and Spain). In many respects, the results were encouraging although potential for improvements was found, especially in the field of occupational safety. The checks in situ were supplemented by comprehensive management training sessions on the METRO guidelines on fair working conditions in which responsible executives were given more profound training on awareness creation, risk background and concrete risk categories. In addition, in financial year 2015/16, e-learning was introduced in the company to make employees more sensitive to fair working conditions and social partnership, and to underpin and communicate the basic position of our company. By 30 September 2018, no less than 6,834 employees had already undergone this training.

Since October 2016, the handling of data protection-relevant information, the participation of and communication with employees, and the possibilities of creating remedial measures are also being assessed. Moreover, the guidelines on fair working conditions and social partnership also provide for the integration of interest groups such as the works councils and employees of service providers who operate in our stores and office premises.

For financial year 2018/19, checks in 6 further national subsidiaries are scheduled. METRO has set itself the goal to complete the inspection of all METRO Wholesale national subsidiaries up to 2020 and shift to a sustainable self-controlling process in these countries thereafter.

To ensure the transnational social involvement of the employees and safeguard their right to collective labour wage agreements and organising in unions, the Euro Forum performs the function of the European works council of METRO. In addition, METRO collaborates with the international union umbrella organisation UNI Global Union.

Occupational safety and health management

The demographic development, the profound changes in the working environment and the increasingly acute competition over qualified human resources require from us promising and far-sighted concepts for occupational safety and a viable health management. Hence, we have laid down unambiguous guidelines and support a safe and healthy working environment for our employees and business partners. In this way, we intend to further reduce accident rates and occupational illnesses and selectively promote performance and motivation among our employees in the long term.

In order to identify areas with high accident rates or especially vulnerable groups of people, evaluate causes of accidents and define targeted countermeasures, the German METRO companies have implemented appropriate reporting which covers 97% of the employees at the German METRO companies in financial year 2017/18. For the above companies, it was possible to reduce the number of accidents compared to financial year 2016/17.

What is important to us is to raise the awareness of our employees that occupational safety is the responsibility of everyone. For this reason, we organised many programmes and events on the topics of nutrition, sport, preventive medical care and psychic health in our sales lines and service companies. In our METRO Wholesale national subsidiaries, employees who are responsible for occupational safety and health management cooperate increasingly in an international network broken down into 4 working groups on different topics, in order to discuss and improve health protection and industrial safety measures and achieve near-term benefits for employees. In financial year 2017/18, we made progress in various areas. Thus, we were able among other things to set up a structured test process for high-rise racks and produce first drafts for a standard process for forklift drivers and maintenance. A unified standard for basic industrial safety equipment was also developed, along with initial approaches to a uniform concept for the safe handling and storage of hazardous substances.

Diversity and inclusion

METRO reflects the diversity of its customers and business partners by means of its individuality and diversity as well as respect for and recognition of all visible and invisible differences, and creates a fair and efficient corporate culture which is constantly developing and challenging itself. Through our diversity approach we also support SDG 5, that is, the goal of achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls, as well as SDG 10: by way of our approach to inclusion, we help reduce all forms of inequality.