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We expect our employees to actively endorse and support our corporate values. At the same time we promote the diversity and creativity of our staff by creating an environment in which they can unfold their full potential. We aim to create a motivating, family-friendly and healthy environment in order to retain their services and expertise for the company over the long term.

Employment

As part of WestLB´s strategic repositioning, headcount in the Group is to be reduced by a minimum of 1,350 full-time employees by the end of 2010. As in the past, this reduction is to be achieved in a socially acceptable manner. For this purpose the Managing Board and Staff Council concluded a corresponding reconciliation of interests and redundancy scheme. The employees affected receive support from WestLB in the form of comprehensive outplacement counselling in order to plan the further development of their professional career.

Social Security

A comprehensive package of employer and employee-financed models is available to all staff. In Germany, for example, these include the company pension scheme, direct or supplementary pension payments, capital-building payments and preferential terms for property finance. Employees in the United Kingdom benefit from a pension fund.

Diversity

Our Diversity Management scheme helps create a work environment in which individuality and diversity are respected and supported. Back in July 2004, the Managing Board and the Staff Council signed the “Fairness at Work” enterprise agreement, which prohibits any form of discrimination on the grounds of age, gender, disability, nationality, cultural and religious identity and sexual orientation.

Equal Opportunities

As provided for in our 2005 Equal Opportunities Plan, we have largely aligned the salaries of male and female employees in comparable positions. In a mentoring programme, experienced specialists help qualified young women develop their personalities and their careers. In London, the “Capital Chances“ initiative advises young female WestLB employees on career opportunities in investment banking. We explicitly recognise the special needs of working parents.

Thanks to numerous initiatives for promoting equal opportunities, we have steadily increased the percentage of women in management positions in recent years: from 17 per cent in 2006 to 23 per cent in 2008. In the non-tariff area of qualified specialists, too, there has been an encouraging increase in the percentage share of women holding such positions.

Training and Further Education

Despite considerable cost pressure and the required headcount cuts, we continue to attach importance to the high level of qualifications of our employees.
With a view to maintaining the qualifications of our teams at a high level and improving them in line with actual requirements, WestLB invests heavily in staff development. Training courses which are compulsory for most employees include seminars on compliance (with laws and regulations), money laundering, data protection and operational risk management. Employees working in business units involving specialised finance undergo extensive training on environmental issues and development policy. We also offer various further education training on, for example, the Equator Principles and an electronic learning programme on environmental and sustainability issues. 

Health Protection

The physical and mental well-being of our employees at work is the responsibility of WestLB’s in-house medical service and the WestLB Social Counselling Service in Germany. With a view to preventing physical problems at work, we also attach great importance to the ergonomic design of workplaces. Given the steady rise in work-related psychological disorders, WestLB’s Social Counselling Service performs an important preventive task and therefore not only shows employees ways of coping with stress but has also installed an internal, confidential counselling desk that offers effective help at an early stage. A focus of their work is on dependency prevention, which has been supported by the enterprise agreement on “dependency prevention at the workplace” since July 2004.