Healthy and committed employees – 2021 sustainability report

Our employees are the driving force behind V-ZUG's long-standing success story. With its focus on quality and reliability, our 2,200 employees achieve V-ZUG's vision and mission. We are proud of them and support them in reaching their full potential. 

Together for a forward-looking V-ZUG
In 2021, we launched the new mission statement containing the vision, mission and fundamental core values of V-ZUG, from which all the principles for our business activity are derived. We actively involve our employees in strategic developments and their operational implementation and conduct regular employee surveys. We create a sustainable work environment and an inspirational management culture that appreciates feedback from employees and promotes their well-being.

The maxims of diversity and fairness
V-ZUG employees bring an enriching diversity of life experiences, skills and cultural practices to the company. Our Code of Conduct ensures that we treat every individual with respect and tolerance. We do not accept any form of discrimination and firmly believe that diversity and inclusion make our company strong and attractive. As a fair employer, V-ZUG pays equal wages for the same work.

Lifelong learning 
Thanks to their expertise, our employees make a fundamental contribution to the success of V-ZUG. We invest in the employability of our employees and help them acquire future-oriented skills. Our further-education strategy and succession planning are based on an individual skills- and performance-based appraisal which underpins the internal competency model. We have the V-ZUGacademy, offering in-house courses, trainee and talent support programmes in addition to executive and management training. As a dynamic teaching entity, we also train young apprentices, with a total of 82 completing their training in 2021.

Health above all
As a responsible company, we have a certified health and occupational safety management process and, in cases of serious grievances, we work with external counselling facilities. We raise awareness of the issues of occupational safety and health through regular campaigns. Established in 2020, the internal Covid-19 task force continued its work in the reporting year and provided constant updates on the situation and the measures taken.

Our core values brought to life
As a company steeped in tradition and boasting a strong brand, we have deep-rooted core values and have always fulfilled our primary objective of keeping the quality promise we made to our customers with top-quality products and services. With the flotation on the stock market and the ongoing transformation of our company, it was time to formulate the vision, mission and fundamental core values of V-ZUG more clearly. But what does this mission statement mean for our employees' day-to-day activities?

“Our strategy and core values are not merely lip service – it is the duty of all of us to bring them to life,” says Christian Roth, Head of HR Development at V-ZUG. To embrace the mission statement in practice, we call on a cascaded and participatory implementation at all levels. To ensure the mission statement – adopted in spring 2021 – is known as widely as possible, we trained “ambassadors” who worked with the department heads to organise “town halls” with their teams. “The employees greatly appreciated the Executive Board wanting them to be actively involved in the thought process concerning the shared culture and vision,” states Roth enthusiastically.

From the summer, the management staff – who had been trained beforehand – held workshops with their teams on how to implement the mission statement. “They had to ask themselves: How do we contribute to the mission? How does our unit inspire customers? How do we embrace the basic principles of cooperation? And are our actions sustainable?” Roth explains. The results are now being incorporated into our cooperation structures, for example in the guidelines for appraisal interviews or the introduction of new team members. “This close and meaningful communication has noticeably strengthened the relationship between the management staff and the employees,” Roth is please to note.

“As an ambassador, it was inspiring to see how the employees could relate their activities to the vision and mission – many of them really blossomed in the workshops! One member of our Maintenance team, for example, noted that continuously maintaining the plants contributes to energy- and cost-efficient production, and thus to sustainable production. The sense of belonging was strengthened.”

Carina Heuberger, Coordinator of Lean Management and Strategic Projects

Checking in with our employees 
How much job satisfaction do our employees have? Do they value the management and cooperation culture at V-ZUG? And how well informed are they about the opportunities for personal career development? 

These and other questions were the subject of the employee survey conducted during the reporting year. “To check in with all our employees, we conducted the survey – containing more than 70 questions – across the entire V-ZUG Group for the very first time,” says Christian Roth, Head of HR Development, who was responsible for the survey together with Fabian Britschgi, Head of Corporate Health.

Measured using a score combining job satisfaction and employee commitment, V-ZUG made progress compared to the previous survey. “V-ZUG is perceived as a reliable employer with whom we identify and are proud to work for,” summarises Britschgi. 

“Naturally, we want to achieve an even better survey score in the future,” says Roth. The Executive Board decided to take group-wide measures with regard to the issues of leadership, collaboration, HR development and wages. Furthermore, the department heads were tasked with defining their own fields of action with their teams. “What is great is that the employee feedback is incorporated directly into strategic developments, for example in the current formulation of our management principles,” Roth adds.

Britschgi has another reason to be pleased: “In 2021, we were awarded the Employers We Trust quality label for the comprehensive methodology approach to our employee survey.”