Annual Report 2019

Number of employees at prior-year level

On December 31, 2019, the Daimler Group employed a total of 298,655 men and women (2018: 298,683). Contrary to the forecast in Annual Report 2018, the number of employees remained at the prior-year level. (See table B.41)

B.41 Employees by division

The number of employees in Germany decreased from 174,663 in 2018 to 173,813 in the year under review. Whereas employee numbers in 2019 declined in the United States to 25,788 (2018: 26,310), they increased in Brazil to 11,128 (2018: 10,307) and in Japan to 10,056 (2018: 9,918). (See graphic B.42) Our consolidated subsidiaries in China had a total of 4,439 employees at the end of the year (2018: 4,424). At the end of the reporting year, the parent company Daimler AG employed a total of 6,887 men and women (2018: 149,797). The decline in workforce numbers at Daimler AG was due to the implementation of “Project Future,” which was approved by the 2019 Annual Shareholders’ Meeting. Within the framework of this project, the Mercedes-Benz Cars, Mercedes-Benz Vans, Daimler Trucks and Daimler Buses divisions were separated from Daimler AG and established as legally independent units known as Mercedes-Benz AG and Daimler Truck AG. Following this separation, Daimler AG was restructured into an operational management holding company that provides services to the Group companies.

Around the world, we have combined in-house services, such as those for financial processes, human resources (HR), IT and development tasks, sales functions and certain location-specific services, into shared service centers. Some of the shared service centers are not consolidated because they have a negligible affect on our financial position, cash flow or profitability; those companies employed approximately 13,400 men and women at the end of 2019.

The Group’s total workforce also does not include the employees of companies that we manage together with Chinese partners; on December 31, 2019, they numbered approximately 22,600 people (2018: 19,900).

Human resources strategy

The key aims of our human resources strategy are to further increase our appeal as an employer and to safeguard and further extend the competitiveness of our workforce. Because our executives should motivate their employees to achieve top performance and assume more personal responsibility, it is crucial that we further develop our management culture and establish outstanding leadership capabilities in our management. In addition, we want to take on social responsibility and let diversity flourish in our global company.

High attractiveness as an employer

Our activities and measures for enhancing our attractiveness as an employer are designed to enable us to recruit and retain specialized employees and qualified managers. In this regard, we also make use of external communication channels such as our Careers website and social media sites (e.g. Instagram and Facebook). We also develop target group-specific marketing campaigns. The most recent example of such a campaign is the “Next Big Thing,” an international campaign designed to make IT and artificial intelligence experts more aware of what Daimler has to offer as an attractive employer. Our primary objectives for such measures are to ensure attractive and fair compensation and to establish and maintain a work culture that promotes outstanding performance and a high level of motivation and satisfaction among our employees and management staff.

Our employees’ individual circumstances require working times to be flexibly organized. We therefore offer a varied range of working-time arrangements that include mobile working, part-time work and job sharing, all of which improve performance by helping employees reconcile their professional and personal responsibilities.

Diversity and inclusion

Diversity is one of the five corporate principles at Daimler and a firmly established part of our culture. We require and encourage a working environment featuring equal opportunities and a culture of appreciation and respect. With “Diversity Shapes our Future,” we are underscoring the importance of diversity as a strategic factor for success at Daimler. Diversity management enables us to reflect the diversity of our customers, suppliers and investors around the world.

Daimler’s approximately 300,000 employees provide the Group with a vibrant mixture of cultures and ways of life. We shape diversity and inclusion with targeted programs and measures for our employees. With staff from more than 160 countries and a workforce that spans five generations, our company is an organization made up of international teams — with members of all ages. We provide our employees with the opportunity to express their sexual orientation and identity. We offer equal opportunities to people with disabilities and also support their further training and qualification. We expressly promote equality of opportunity between the genders.

We have committed ourselves to raising the proportion of women in senior management positions at the Group to at least 20 % by the end of 2020. The proportion of women in such positions has continually risen in recent years to reach 19.8 % at the end of 2019 (2018: 18.8 %). Our instruments for supporting the targeted promotion of women include mentoring, special events and training courses, and employee networks.

In order to fulfill the requirements of legislation in Germany regarding the equal participation of women and men in management positions, the Board of Management has set targets for the proportion of women at the two management levels below the Board of Management and a deadline for achieving those targets. In setting all targets, we have taken industry-specific circumstances into consideration.

Further details are provided in the »Declaration on Corporate Governance« section of this Annual Report.

Securing young talent

Daimler takes a holistic approach to securing young talent. This begins with programs for children and teenagers (in our Genius initiative, for example) and extends to a broad range of activities such as social media campaigns, hackathons, competitions and internships that offer young talents the possibility to get in touch with the company. After university students graduate, we offer them attractive possibilities to join our company directly or launch their careers at Daimler by taking part in our global training programs.

Employee qualification

We provide our staff with training and continuing education opportunities throughout their entire careers in order to safeguard the long-term innovative capability and outstanding performance of our workforce. The rapid pace of technological change is making lifelong learning more important, especially as we must now assume that employees will need to make more major changes than ever before to their skills profiles throughout their careers. Our range of qualification measures for safeguarding our workforce’s employability includes practical training courses, e-learning courses, seminars, workshops, specialist conferences and financial support for employees who participate in a course of study while continuing to work. In 2019, for example, we offered training courses on new developments in the fields of electric mobility and robotics. During the year under review, around 45,000 employees throughout Germany participated in training programs relating to electric mobility.

Health management and occupational safety

Healthy and motivated employees are important for our competitiveness. We therefore promote the health and safety of our employees through numerous programs that focus on work safety concepts and standards, ergonomics, the provision of medical care, nutritional advice, individual exercise, measures to promote mental health and personal resilience, and much more. Our Health & Safety unit defines, coordinates and monitors measures that promote and ensure occupational health and safety at the company. The implementation of such measures at our plants is managed by corresponding experts.

Further information on employee matters can be found in the »Non-Financial Report«.