Diversity concept

With around 50 companies and more than 25,000 employees in Austria and Central and Eastern Europe, Vienna Insurance Group combines many countries, languages and cultural backgrounds. Diversity is a key priority in its human resources strategy.

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

For Vienna 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. The Group includes this understanding of diversity in the VIG Code of Business Ethics: “We tolerate no discrimination. We are committed to equal opportunity in the hiring and promotion of employees, regardless of their beliefs, religion, gender, worldview, ethnic background, nationality, sexual orientation, age, skin colour, disability or marital status.”

Group and VIG Holding level

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

  • Gender: Ensure equal treatment for women and men in all areas (career and development options, benefits and income, etc.)
  • Generations: Use mixed-age teams and take the various phases of life to develop full potential into account. Generation-appropriate offers and support in the various phases of life, learn from one another, healthy work, fair recruitment
  • Internationality: Group-wide exchange of know-how (local expertise), collaborative learning, use of VIG’s internal 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.

Vienna 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 a key element in Group-wide management development training programmes, in terms of content as well as the participants and lecturers.

Group company level

Based on the principle of local entrepreneurship, the VIG insurance companies choose their own priorities against the background of priorities set for diversity at VIG Holding and at Group level. The Group sustainability report (PDF:) (download as PDF file) presents examples of successful implementation of the diversity concepts at Group company level on page 32.

Diversity Officer

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