Advancement of women,
family-friendly HR policies

Volkswagen’s corporate culture places a very high value on both job and family. For Volkswagen, family-friendly human resources policies are therefore one of the key success factors in becoming the top employer. This commitment has tradition behind it: in 1989, Volkswagen was the first major German corporation to establish guidelines for the advancement of women and to support them with targeted programs. Volkswagen AG first set concrete targets for raising the proportion of women in the Company in 2007.

In spring 2011, the Volkswagen Group proposed individual goals to raise the proportion of women at Volkswagen in Germany as part of a voluntary commitment. Volkswagen follows a system for this that defines detailed requirements for all relevant levels of the hierarchy as to when a certain proportion of women must be reached. An important instrument for achieving the goal is the quota for the university graduates we hire. Volkswagen is guided in this by the proportion of female graduates in each field of study. Consequently, approximately 10% of graduate engineer recruits have to be women. For electrical engineering, the ratio is also 10%, for information technology 15%, and for business and economics 50%. Averaged across all fields of study relevant to Volkswagen, the individual ratios produce an overall goal of at least a 30% ratio of women among graduates hired.

This increasing proportion of qualified women joining the Company enables us to steadily lift the proportion of female executives at the various management levels in the coming years. The goal for the Volkswagen Group in Germany is an 11% ratio of women in top management, a 12% ratio in senior management and a 15% ratio in other management levels by 2020.

In the reporting period, the proportion of women in the management ranks for the Volkswagen Group in Germany already increased to 4.9% in top management, 6.4% in senior management, and 10.1% in other management levels (at year-end, excluding Scania and MAN). 45 women at Volkswagen AG participated in a mentoring program in 2011, giving them support on their path into management.

The Company also has the goal of raising the proportion of women among skilled workers and master-level workers to at least 10% by 2020. The current proportion of women among workers at the master level is just below 4%. In 2011, 25 women were helped in their effort to become master craftswomen through a targeted mentoring program. Personal development programs for women, an improved work/family balance and flexible working time models accompany the system used by Volkswagen to achieve the individual quotas.

Volkswagen specifically recruits female talent. We offer special “Information Days” for industrial and technical vocational training at Volkswagen and “Career Experience Days” for young women. The Company has participated for many years in the national “Girls’ Day” in Germany and in 2011 offered over 2,000 young women a behind-the-scenes look into careers in the automotive industry.