Global Employee Survey

We firmly believe that for corporate responsibility to be a success, there must be an active culture of living these guidelines within the company. This culture takes years to develop, and requires the consistent, reliable application of compliance standards. Because we introduced our Code of Conduct early on, these standards have already been firmly established and are undisputed. In our last Global Employee Survey, conducted in 2015, the vast majority of our employees confirmed that their work environment places high value on proper conduct in alignment with internal company guidelines and standards. Starting in 2015, we have now investigated all cases in which the answer to the corresponding question showed unit-specific anomalies, and held, for instance, additional seminars or workshops as necessary.

Dialog with employee representatives

Open dialog with employee representatives is an important component of our corporate culture. If restructuring leads to staff downsizing, for example, we work with employee representatives to develop socially responsible implementation measures. This is done in accordance with the respective legal regulations and the agreements reached. The BASF Europa Betriebsrat (European Works Council) addresses cross-border matters in Europe.

Together with employee representatives, we continued to elaborate on the future topics described by the company and works council in the BASF SE 2020 site agreement in 2016. For example, new principles for promoting apprentices were described in BASF SE’s “Apprenticeship of the Future.” We are engaged in close exchange with employee representatives on the topic of changes through increasing digitalization in order to identify and jointly address challenges.