Diversity concept

With over 50 insurance companies and pension funds and around 29,000 employees in Austria and Central and Eastern Europe, VIG Insurance Group combines many countries, languages and cultural backgrounds. Diversity is a core value in the VIG mission statement and a key priority in its HR strategy.

VIG Insurance Group follows a bottom-up approach with respect to diversity management for the Company’s boards. By applying diversity management to all employees, the VIG Insurance Group expects to generate corresponding diversity in the candidate pool for internal successor planning in the long term.

For VIG Insurance Group, diversity reflects both the similarities and the differences it encounters in the Group, its markets and its partners as well as customers. Diversity management is based on genuine appreciation and open acceptance of diversity, and makes conscious use of this diversity. VIG companies include this understanding of diversity in the VIG Code of Business Ethics: “We do not tolerate any kind of discrimination. We are committed to promoting equal opportunities with regard to the employment and promotion of staff, regardless of their faith, religion, gender, beliefs, ethnicity, nationality, sexual orientation, age, skin colour, disability or civil status.”

Group and VIG Holding level

The diversity concept focuses on the criteria of gender, generations and internationality at the VIG Holding level, and refined and developed measures for the following criteria:

• Gender: ensure equal gender treatment in all areas (career and development options, benefits and income, etc.)
• Generations: use mixed-age teams and take into account the various phases of life to develop full potential. Generation-appropriate offers and support in the various phases of life, learn from one another, life balance, fair recruitment
• Internationality: Group-wide exchange of know-how (local expertise), collaborative learning, use of the internal Group job market and ensuring an appropriate mix of people from different countries within VIG Holding

The criteria of gender, generations and internationality are also taken into account when new Supervisory Board Members are proposed for election at General Meetings. VIG Insurance Group has relied on the concept of local entrepreneurship for decades, thereby also promoting a very internationally diverse “community” of Group Managing Board Members and CEOs.

The topic of diversity is incorporated into the Group-wide management training programmes, both in the selection of participants and in the selection of lecturers.

Level of the VIG insurance companies

In accordance with the principle of local entrepreneurship, the VIG insurance companies choose their own diversity priorities and are independently responsible for their implementation.

Diversity Advisor

As Diversity Advisor, Angela Fleischlig-Tangl advises both VIG Holding and local VIG companies on matters related to diversity management.