Deutsche Bahn AG: AARP International Innovative Employer Awards 2008
Source: AARP.org | September 2008
Winning Year: 2008
Industry: Transportation Services
Location: Berlin, Germany
Location: Berlin, Germany
Web: http://www.db.de/
Highlights of 2008 Winning Strategies
Deutsche Bahn has taken a proactive approach to mitigating the effects of demographic change through 10 special human resources initiatives and programs. One such initiative, DB Experience, focuses on preserving and enhancing the employability of older employees through qualification and advanced training. This is accomplished through seminars to promote the value of older workers and to achieve a balanced composition of work teams by age to ensure appropriate knowledge transfer and intergenerational cooperation.
Additional Policies and Practices:
Lifelong Learning and Training: DB Training is one of Europe's largest qualification and consulting providers, with 1,500 different seminars for all vocational groups in the company. The DB Academy offers special training courses and programs for senior executives, while every member of staff is given an average of 43.9 hours off each year for training. DB also grants educational leave for private advanced training courses, which can be organized by, among others, the company's own Academy for International Mobility.
Among the 10 initiatives in DB’s human resources strategy is the initiative DB Experience. The focus of this initiative is a training program to preserve and enhance the employability of older employees through qualification and advanced training. To this end, the current employment and qualification situations of older employees in the company has been analyzed, identifying focus groups and areas of activity, and introducing initiatives to preserve the employability and qualification of older employees.
In another, DB JobService, qualifications for new vocational areas are offered specifically to employees who have lost their previous job or whose job is at risk in the future. Employees are given new employment chances as personnel executives, dispatchers, forwarding clerks, and security staff. These qualification measures are aligned to the personnel demands in the company.
Older employees in particular are being provided with a new chance to contribute their know-how and experience. Employees age 50+ who used to work as switch cleaners, block keepers, or supervisors, now can find activities in security or service.
DB also offers senior executives and employees special seminars for promoting experienced older members of staff. The seminar, "Leading Mixed-Age Teams," focuses on different experiences and roles in the team and how they can be brought together successfully. The aim is to enhance leadership skills in the face of the challenge presented by mixed-age teams, with knowledge of age-specific team roles and their impact on the team.
Flexible Work Arrangements: DB has offered flexible working hours since 1998. Employees reduce their working hours on an individual basis. Many different variations are possible, starting from reducing the daily working hours via fewer days in the week or month to being seconded for a longer period of time. There are also possibilities for flexible daily working hours while maintaining the full number of working hours in the end (for instance, an employee working 10-hour days for four days a week, would have the fifth day off). There are also opportunities for working from home under certain conditions.
Health Promotion and Protection: DB implements comprehensive health management with an HR strategy aiming to preserve the employability of all its workers. Professional advice is provided by the Healthy & Active project, in which health consultants organize specific programs, such as courses on how to lift and carry loads to protect the spine, yoga, Nordic walking, relaxation, giving up smoking, healthy nutrition courses, etc.
Major company sporting events, such as the DB Indoor Football Cup or the JP Morgan Chase Company Run, enhance motivation and employee loyalty. For five years now, DB has been involved in the Smoke Free campaign with the Central Health Education Agency and the Federal Ministry of Health, Germany's largest no-smoking campaign. The company health fund Bahn-BKK offers special health-prevention programs for employees age 50+, including regular tests to prevent colon cancer, prostate cancer in men, and breast cancer in women.
A special health-care program for shift workers has been in place for two years, through which they can spend a long weekend in the sanatorium facilities run by the company’s health fund. Here they find advice on healthy nutrition and stress management, beginners' introductions on keeping fit and Nordic walking, and various forms of treatment such as massages or baths. Through cooperation with fitness providers, employees also benefit from lower rates at local gyms and fitness studios. The company credits their health management focus for lowering sickness levels from 4.7% in 2001 to 4% in 2005.
The company also provides a seminar called “Leadership in Balance: Being Healthy and Successful Together,” which helps make senior executives aware of the impacts of creative leadership and behavior on motivation and health of their employees.
Diversity Promotion: Through the HR initiative “Demographic Development,” extensive measures are being developed to cope with the challenges of demographic changes in the company. Concrete measures are initiated and implemented based on an analysis of the situation in the individual occupational groups and locations.
As an international company, DB sees respect and tolerance as the basis for sustainable and effective profitability. For this reason, Diversity Management was firmly anchored in the HR strategy in 2004. In the HR initiative DB Experience, know-how is transferred from older to younger employees at the workplace under controlled conditions with a balanced composition of teams working together in everyday working situations.
Recruitment: Special attention has been paid in particular to the age group of older employees, and DB takes a proactive stance to recruiting staff members age 50+. In terms of internal recruitment, DB JobService GmbH is responsible for recruitment-oriented qualification of older employees in order to deploy them at jobs in the company.
For example, qualification is provided as personnel executives, dispatchers, forwarding clerks and security staff, vehicle and building cleaners and call agents, together with long-term demand-oriented qualification as office experts, service technicians, logistics clerks and engineers. Here employees are specifically qualified and trained to cover future bottlenecks in certain occupation groups in the company.
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