Demographic Change

Our business success depends on our being able to draw on a sufficiently large pool of highly qualified employees both now and in future. We are rising to the challenges posed by demographic change with long-term planning and a raft of measures.

RWE has identified demographic change and the increasingly fierce competition for talent as a matter of strategic importance. Since the pool of skilled workers and graduates is likely to continue shrinking, competition for the best of them is set to become tougher. Yet a diverse workforce and large pool of potential recruits are essential to our long-term business success. No less important is that women should be given the same career opportunities as their male colleagues.

Progress

RWE has assigned every job to a specific job family on the basis of the skills and qualifications required to do it. The demographic risks to which each job family is exposed have been assessed and appropriate countermeasures adopted for most of those at risk. Our workforce, especially in Germany, still has an imbalanced age structure in which the age group 40 to 55 is disproportionately large. The share of women in management positions rose from 9 % in 2009 to 10.8 % in 2010.

Objectives in Demographic Change

* The Demography Index (DEX) measures the age structure of the RWE workforce. The higher the DEX-rating, the more evenly distributed the age groups in the companies in the Group. There is a maximum score of 100.