Employee satisfaction

It is increasingly challenging to attract and recruit employees who are the right fit in terms of personality as well as skills. This makes it all the more important to offer our employees development opportunities so they stay with the company. We create overall conditions that will maintain high levels of employee satisfaction and motivation. Given the shortage of skilled professionals, we decided back in 2020 to strategically align our talent management. We have made qualified personnel resources and additional financial funding available at Group level, and we have upgraded our processes and tools in line with the latest standards.

Employee engagement

All management functions share responsibility for supporting and empowering our employees. Our managers’ mission is to create a motivating environment for employees, to recognise talent, and to promote it. Employee engagement leads to a win-win situation: motivated employees contribute to a thriving company which is thus able to provide the resources needed to continue fostering employee engagement. Employees feel they are appreciated, and the company benefits from their productivity and innovative ideas – and this, in turn, ensures long-term economic success.

Our Human Resources department is putting the Group-wide Employer of Choice strategy into practice. Becoming an Employer of Choice forms an integral element of Vetropack’s Strategy 2030. Alongside the role of our HR department, which is primarily to provide the guidelines and tools, all our managers are tasked with implementing this strategy and playing their part in developing our employees’ engagement.

One key element of this strategy is the Great Place to Work® certification. We regard this award as a foundation on which we can continue to improve the quality of our workplaces. For this reason, the Great Place to Work® Trust Index is one of our most important KPIs, and is included in the scorecard Vetropack has developed for our Strategy 2030. The Bülach site was already awarded this certification in 2021, and we are aiming to obtain it for all our sites in the future.

Other relevant indicators for measuring employee satisfaction and engagement include staff turnover and employee retention, the results of employee surveys, statistics on training and ongoing education, and promotions of in-house employees.

Going forward, we intend to place more emphasis on standardised onboarding and offboarding processes. Systematically recording and evaluating the reasons why employees move away from Vetropack will help us to identify targeted improvement measures.

Learning organisation

To create a learning organisation, it is essential that employees can continue their development, and that they can access appropriate tools to support them as they evolve and acquire new knowledge. We encourage each and every employee to take on responsibility for their own development – and we make sure that the necessary overall conditions for them to do so are in place.

Our corporate vision emphasises continuous learning as one of our values. Our comprehensive learning infrastructure empowers managers to strengthen both their hard skills and their soft skills. We support what is known as ‘blended learning’. For this purpose, we develop various learning channels for our employees: these include classroom training, virtual training and eLearning, among others. One example of this is the Litmos platform, which enables all our employees to access over 1,500 courses for individual learning at their own pace.

Our company’s own Training Centre in Pöchlarn (Austria) equips the next generation of glassmakers with industry-specific glass production expertise, and offers them hazard-free opportunities for training.

Our Vetrocademy platform is intended to develop important soft skills. The first programme, targeted at managers, addressed topics such as strategy, market trends and leadership management. The aims of this interactive platform are to empower teams by equipping them with proven skills, to support Vetropack's sustainable growth, and to foster the development of leaders throughout the Group.

Because we have grown internationally, we are stepping up our investments in language and diversity training to facilitate interaction among our sites and promote knowledge transfer.

To recruit young specialists, most of our sites and departments offer places for apprentices or internships. To take one example: we offer school pupils the opportunity of gaining insights into our company’s activities by attending the ‘Day of the Future’ event held in Switzerland.

Employee recruitment and development

The environment for finding and retaining good employees is becoming increasingly competitive. This makes it a key concern for Vetropack to identify and develop employees with potential at every level, across all areas of activity, and to make sure they stay in our company.

Vetropack is facing a challenge because large numbers of the glass industry’s skilled professionals are reaching retirement age, and these long-serving technical specialists have to be replaced by new talents. Aligning the jobs on offer with the requirements of the working world helps with recruiting suitable employees.

We have responded to the worsening shortage of skilled specialists by strategically aligning our employee development activities and providing appropriate resources for them. They include the three strategic corporate functions: Talent Attraction and Acquisition, Learning and Development, and Talent Management.

In the Talent Attraction and Acquisition area, we have digitalised some parts of our recruitment processes. Examples of this include our remodelled website and a stronger presence on digital platforms. We are proud of our workplace culture, and we invest resources continuously to enhance the visibility of our Employer Value Proposition to the outside world so we can attract potential new employees.

As part of Talent Management, our Talent and Organisation Review (TOR) programme identifies employees with potential who are keen to continue their personal development. This annual process focuses on the company’s upper levels, and it comprises two parts.

• Talent screening: identifying employees with leadership potential or unique expertise to support the corporate strategy. A framework programme is in place to promote career development and offer targeted support for future leaders.
• Organisation review: evaluating the organisation’s long-term future viability, including organisational design and succession planning. This process identifies future requirements and allows us to adopt a strategic orientation.

Vetropack Training Centre in Pöchlarn

The Training Centre in Pöchlarn is a key element of our extensive learning infrastructure. This facility offers employees the opportunity to learn the craft of glassmaking in a controlled environment, free from the hazards that can emanate from hot glass. Supported by Virtual Reality (VR) technologies, employees and trainees can learn how to use tools or avoid critical situations. The Training Centre helps to pass on the art of glassmaking to new talents and to perfect the craft.

eLearning platform (digital learning)

The Litmos eLearning platform is a valuable – and highly appreciated – instrument for Vetropack as a learning organisation. Litmos offers our employees over 1,000 courses on a variety of specialist topics. Employees can independently select learning modules in their preferred subject areas. We have recently created eLearning programmes that provide employees with knowledge about Vetropack as a company (covering the history of our evolution and our products, etc.) or about our Code of Conduct. We believe this type of learning is an important priority because digital learning methods make high-quality content available to everyone, anywhere and at any time – a flexible and interactive approach that is in keeping with modern lifestyles.

Agility Scouts help to breathe life into our corporate culture

A supportive corporate culture is essential for the successes we aim to achieve with our Strategy 2030. This culture is entrenched in our company’s objectives, roles, values, processes and behaviour patterns. To continue our evolution as an Employer of Choice, we are working to develop our corporate culture – for example, by deploying a growing network of Agility Scouts that comprises about twenty employees from various sites and functions. They are committed to helping shape Vetropack’s corporate culture in keeping with the philosophy they have adopted: ‘For a working culture that is just as transparent, sustainable and natural as our glass.’ As ambassadors of our corporate culture, their mission is to seek out new pathways and try out new ideas. The Agility Scouts also play a key role by helping us to identify new talents, in view of the skills shortage and (as mentioned above) the challenges we face because more and more glass industry specialists are reaching retirement age.

Group-wide employee engagement surveys

Once every two to three years, we conduct a Group-wide employee survey to determine our employees’ satisfaction and engagement levels, and to obtain valuable feedback about the continuous improvement of our workplace culture. At the same time, we always invite our employees to express their opinions on the company’s strengths and weaknesses.

Guidelines, policies, supervisory and control instruments

• Code of Conduct
• Business Ethics Policy (BEP)
• Employee surveys conducted
• Advanced Education Guidelines
• Recruitment Guidelines
• Promotion Guidelines

Progress and events in the reporting year

Contribution to achieving the SDGs

We recognise that the ongoing development of our employees is important not only in terms of business, but also at the individual level. By offering a wide range of training programmes, we contribute towards UN Sustainable Development Goal 4.

Performance indicators

GRI 2-30 Collective bargaining agreements

About 90 percent of our employees are covered by collective bargaining agreements, which are formulated in various ways according to local legislation.

GRI 401-2 Benefits provided to full-time employees that are not provided to temporary or part-time employees

We adhere to the provisions of labour law and take account of customary remuneration practices in each country. In general, no significant benefits are provided to full-time employees that are not offered to part-time employees as well.

GRI 402-1 Minimum notice periods regarding operational change

Vetropack regards transparent communication as a top priority. All regulatory requirements for notification periods were observed in 2023.

Key indicators regarding employees 

New hires and employee turnover

Performance reviews

Our process for conducting systematic performance reviews currently covers our white-collar workers (without Austria). Since the integration of the “Performance and Goals” module in SAP SuccessFactors we have been able to track data on employees with regular performance reviews. This enables us to take action to increase in this number.