Employees

COVID-19 Management

The COVID-19 situation required considerable additional effort from the Group’s HR function. During the COVID-19 pandemic, many employment-related measures were newly implemented to protect the health, well-being, and economic situation of our employees. By closely monitoring the immense legislative output, we succeeded in maintaining full labor law compliance while also offering our staff new options to help with their pandemic-induced personal situations and needs. Employees were granted various new solutions (depending on the local jurisdiction) to more flexibly combine work duties and care obligations. Work from home was made available to all employees where practically and technically feasible. The Working From Home Guide was created. This is a virtual guide containing tips and tricks to for improving virtual teaming use of technology. Learning Collections were provided to support employees in leading during times of crisis and managing stress and virtual working. Information and advice on all employee-relevant questions are regularly provided. Reliable internal processes mirroring new administrative processes were promptly implemented. Free psychological support was offered to all employees, in which they could talk to a professional about coping with the pandemic. Due to the extensive organizational efforts and the outstanding flexibility of our employees, we were able to avoid measures like short-time work or redundancies.

Especially last year, we needed to ensure we engaged with our employees. We therefore launched a continuous listening strategy, which is focused on improving how our organization listens to our employees for their feedback as well as their input and ideas (e.g., through quick polls, Q&A, and listening circles).

Highlighted here is our quick poll on the coronavirus and its challenges. This quick poll resulted in a response rate of 47%, which is a higher response rate than in our previous surveys.

• Most respondents (77%) reported they were doing ok or were completely fine and were satisfied with the support they received from the Company’s measures, leadership, and working virtually from home.
• Of the respondents who were struggling (6%) most were not working in virtual teams and were impacted by school restrictions.
• To investigate further, listening circles (virtual group discussions) have been organized to explore further support.
• Additional measures that were put in place were a Working From Home Guide on how to improve virtual teaming and Learning Collections to provide online learning that offered employees support on how to lead during times of crisis, manage stress, virtual working etc.

Overall, it was important for us last year to increase our employee engagement. This was achieved as shown in the Net Promoter Score of 8.50 reported, which was almost 1 point higher than in our previous engagement surveys. We continued to make “remaining a great place to work” our strategic priority: after all, 9 out of 10 employees recommend OMV as a workplace.

SDG targets: 3.4 By 2030, reduce by one-third premature mortality from non-communicable diseases through prevention and treatment and promote mental health and well-being; 8.5 By 2030, achieve full and productive employment and decent work for all women and men, including for young people and persons with disabilities, and equal pay for work of equal value