Focus Topics – Employee-related issues
Attractive employer
Impacts, risks, and opportunities
Impacts
At Zehnder, we see ourselves as directly shaping the development, well-being, and satisfaction of our employees. By continuously fostering a positive work environment, we foster professional growth, boost employee engagement, and improve job satisfaction – all of which are vital for retaining talent, increasing customer satisfaction, and driving innovation. Our focus on work-life balance, learning and development opportunities, as well as a culture of open feedback, is central to maintaining high engagement levels.
Our strong commitment to sustainability extends beyond our operations to influence our employees’ behaviours, encouraging them to embrace sustainable practices that benefit both society and the environment. By offering competitive benefits and clear career growth opportunities, we reinforce our reputation as an employer of choice, crucial for attracting and retaining top talent in a highly competitive job market.
Risks and opportunities
Maintaining a positive and engaging work environment is crucial to our success. If we fail to provide ample development opportunities or a healthy work-life balance, we risk higher employee turnover, which would increase recruitment and training costs, not to mention the loss of valuable know-how. Low engagement could directly affect our productivity and stifle the innovation that drives our business forward. Dissatisfaction among our workforce could also tarnish our reputation as an employer, making it harder to attract skilled talent. Additionally, we must meet local labour standards to avoid regulatory risks and ensure fair treatment for all employees.
However, we see significant opportunities by focusing on employee well-being, professional growth, and inclusivity. A motivated and engaged workforce is a key driver of our long-term success. By fostering a positive company culture and encouraging open communication, we cultivate employee loyalty, reduce employee turnover, and enhance our position as an employer of choice.
Management approach
Zehnder’s strategy for being an employer of choice is founded on the core principles of employee engagement, growth, and well-being. The company conducts biannual employee engagement surveys to gather feedback and identify key areas for improvement, ensuring that the needs of the workforce are regularly assessed and addressed.
The Director of Group Human Resources (HR) plays a central role in coordinating efforts across the organisation, with local HR teams and line managers responsible for implementing strategies tailored to the unique needs of their regions. This approach ensures that actions derived from employee feedback are specific to local needs rather than adopting a one-size-fits-all approach.
Training and development
Zehnder places a strong emphasis on internal career growth. The company’s e-learning platform, launched in 2023, provides employees with access to a wide range of training courses, empowering them to develop new skills and advance their careers. The aim is for all employees to have access to this platform, reinforcing the company’s commitment to lifelong learning.
Sustainability training sessions
Zehnder integrates sustainability into its training initiatives (see target below), equipping employees to support the company’s environmental, social, and governance goals. The sessions cover:
- Fundamentals: Introduction to a series of relevant sustainability topics for Zehnder, explaining the topic and the relevance to our business, including an example of a project in that area.
- Employees: A detailed discussion of Zehnder’s employee-related topics, including wage practices, diversity, and OHS.
- Environment: A detailed discussion of Zehnder’s environmental topics, including climate, pollution, and the circular economy.
- Society: A detailed discussion of Zehnder’s societal topics, including sustainable purchasing, compliance, and supplier human rights.
- Transformation and Change: A summary of all training sessions, including instruction on essential tools for organisational and leadership development to enable leaders to manage this transformation successfully.
Feedback and dialogue
To foster a culture of continuous feedback, managers conduct regular performance reviews. To enable managers to provide effective feedback, Zehnder provides respective learning offers for them. This ensures employees are consistently recognised for their contributions and guided in their development. In the 2023 survey, 79% of employees reported receiving regular feedback, and the company aims to further improve this through updating its performance review process towards continuous feedback.
Well-being and sustainable lifestyles
Recognising the importance of a healthy work-life balance, Zehnder promotes well-being initiatives across its global locations. These initiatives are tailored to local cultures and needs, demonstrating the company’s sensitivity to regional differences. Zehnder also encourages participation in activities that promote health and sustainability, such as “Veganuary” and other programmes, which not only benefit employees but also align with the company’s broader sustainability goals.
Implementation and outlook
To implement the above management approach, we outlined three ambitions, each supported by one or more targets and monitored via specific KPIs.
Targets
Ambition: Maintain the level of engagement of our employees with Zehnder Group
Target: Address the top three improvement items from the employee engagement survey
- Status: The last biannual engagement survey was conducted in 2023. The category of employee engagement increased by 2 percentage points to 84%. Benchmarked against peers from the industry norm, Zehnder ranks with 6 percentage points above the norm. The survey was sent to all employees, out of which 83% responded. More than 9 out of 10 employees agreed that they understood how their work contributed to Zehnder’s business objectives and that they support our sustainability ambition, targets and actions. Regarding leadership, 86% felt supported by their line manager and saw them as a role model representing Zehnder values. These results show that employees appreciate our corporate culture and leadership philosophy. Despite the overall good results, the 2023 employee engagement survey highlighted three key areas for improvement: digital transformation, long-term confidence in the company’s future, and awareness of Zehnder’s products and services. To address these, several initiatives have been implemented, including “digital snacks”, digital best practice calls, and newsletters to enhance understanding of digital topics.
- Outlook: In 2025, product training sessions will be integrated into the global e-learning library to address the third focus area. Customer-oriented product training materials are currently being developed, which will also be leveraged for employee training to improve internal awareness of Zehnder’s offerings. Our specific goal for the 2025 survey is to keep the engagement level at a minimum of 4 percentage points above the industry norm and achieve a response rate of 85%. Additionally, the company’s Mission, Vision, Values, and Purpose statements are under revision and updates will be communicated in 2025.
Ambition: Invest in our people, upgrade their skills, promote a culture of lifelong learning for all genders, and aim to fill two-thirds of all vacancies through internal promotions for all roles with leadership responsibility
Target: Improve the results of the employee engagement survey question “I receive regular feedback”
- Status: The survey is conducted biannually and did not take place in 2024. Providing regular performance reviews and fostering open dialogue remains a priority. To achieve this goal, multiple e-learning courses are available to enhance managers’ feedback skills as well as to strengthen our employees’ courage to actively ask for feedback. This empowers both in their roles toward a culture of continuous feedback.
- Outlook: We aim to increase the survey result by 3 percentage points in the 2025 survey by enhancing feedback practices, revising our overall performance management process, further digitalising it across EMEA, and embedding a culture of continuous dialogue.
Target: Provide access to e-learning for all employees
- Status: To support employee development, Zehnder launched an e-learning platform in 2023, offering diverse, externally provided courses tailored to various learning needs, cultural preferences, knowledge levels, and in multiple languages. Currently, approximately 73% of employees have access to e-learning, with significant participation in EMEA and Canada. IT security issues in China have temporarily hindered the rollout there.
- Outlook: Plans are underway to extend the e-learning offering to all North American entities and remaining EMEA locations1 in 2025. Due to IT security challenges, China has been excluded from this rollout. They may eventually receive their own tool, but the focus is currently on regions without rollout obstacles.
Ambition: Promote health, well-being, and sustainable lifestyles, and become a role model for our employees
Target: Encourage employee engagement with the UN SDGs and the Zehnder Group sustainability ambition
- Status: In our 2023 employee engagement survey, 92% of the employees affirmed that they support our sustainability ambitions, targets, and actions. Initial sustainability training sessions have begun (see Management approach), with four sessions successfully completed and 44 employees participating. In addition to Zehnder specific training sessions, our e-learning platform covers multiple courses on sustainability topics, which positively support our target through promoting sustainable practices at work and at home.
- Outlook: Further training sessions will be rolled out throughout the year, along with the launch of the Sustainability Ambassador Programme to deepen employee engagement and understanding of our sustainability goals. Our aim is to sustain employee engagement for the SDGs and Zehnder’s sustainability goal at over 90% by 2025.
1Excluding Siber, to avoid overburdening the newly acquired company with Group projects.
Metrics
GRI 401: Employment 2016
Disclosure 401-1 New employee hires and employee turnover
New employee hires
Indicator description | Unit of measure | 2024 | 2023 | Change from prior year | |
Rate of new hires by age group – under 30 years old | % | 32.5 | 34.2 | –1.6 | pp |
Rate of new hires by age group – between 30 and 50 years old | % | 54.0 | 53.6 | 0.4 | pp |
Rate of new hires by age group – over 50 years old | % | 13.5 | 12.3 | 1.3 | pp |
Rate of new hires by gender – female | % | 25.8 | 32.4 | –6.6 | pp |
Rate of new hires by gender – male | % | 74.2 | 67.6 | 6.6 | pp |
Rate of new hires by gender – diverse | % | - | - | - | |
Rate of new hires by region – EMEA | % | 61.2 | 70.8 | –9.6 | pp |
Rate of new hires by region – Asia-Pacific | % | 17.1 | 10.1 | 7.1 | pp |
Rate of new hires by region – North America | % | 21.7 | 19.2 | 2.6 | pp |
Rate of total new hires | % | 11.1 | 11.1 | - | |
Total number of new hires: 391 new hires in 2024 and 407 new hires in 2023
GRI 401: Employment 2016
Disclosure 401-1 New employee hires and employee turnover
Employee turnover
Indicator description | Unit of measure | 2024 | 2023 | Change from prior year | |
Rate of employee turnover by age group – under 30 years old | % | 32.1 | 27.8 | 4.3 | pp |
Rate of employee turnover by age group – between 30 and 50 years old | % | 15.3 | 15.1 | 0.3 | pp |
Rate of employee turnover by age group – over 50 years old | % | 10.8 | 11.0 | –0.3 | pp |
Rate of employee turnover by gender – female | % | 17.1 | 14.7 | 2.4 | pp |
Rate of employee turnover by gender – male | % | 15.2 | 15.6 | –0.5 | pp |
Rate of employee turnover by gender – diverse | % | 100.0 | - | n/a | |
Rate of employee turnover by region – EMEA | % | 13.6 | 13.5 | 0.1 | pp |
Rate of employee turnover by region – Asia-Pacific | % | 26.3 | 18.2 | 8.1 | pp |
Rate of employee turnover by region – North America | % | 18.4 | 25.1 | –6.6 | pp |
Rate of total employee turnover | % | 15.7 | 15.4 | 0.3 | pp |
Total amount of employee turnover: 553 employees in 2024 and 564 employees in 2023
GRI 404: Training and Education 2016
Disclosure 404-1 Average hours of training per year per employee
Indicator description | Unit of measure | 2024 | 2023 | Change from prior year | ||
Average hours of training that our employees have undertaken, by gender – female | h | 21.0 | 17.3 | 3.7 | ||
Average hours of training that our employees have undertaken, by gender – male | h | 15.3 | 20.7 | –5.4 | ||
Average hours of training that our employees have undertaken, by gender – diverse | h | 40.0 | 8.0 | 32.0 | ||
Average hours of training that our employees have undertaken | h | 16.8 | 19.8 | –3.0 | ||
GRI 404: Training and Education 2016
Disclosure 404-3 Percentage of employees receiving regular performance and career development reviews
Indicator description | Unit of measure | 2024 | 2023 | Change from prior year | ||
Percentage of total employees who received a regular performance and career development review | % | 93.4 | 89.7 | 3.8 | pp | |
Internal promotion
Indicator description | Unit of measure | 2024 | 2023 | Change from prior year | |
Rate of internal promotions vs. external hiring by employee category – management positions (L1–L4)1 | % | 50.0 | 33.3 | 16.7 | pp |
Rate of internal promotions vs. external hiring by employee category – non-management positions2 | % | 23.4 | 31.7 | –8.2 | pp |
Rate of internal promotions vs. external hiring for employees with leadership responsibility3 | % | 63.4 | 47.9 | 15.5 | pp |
1 L1–L4 refers to leadership levels 1 to 4. The newly acquired company Siber is excluded from this KPI as no leadership levels have been assigned to Siber employees as yet.
2Non-management positions are positions beyond leadership level 4.
3An employee with leadership responsibility is formally responsible and supervising at least three other employees.
Employees with access to e-learning
Indicator description | Unit of measure | 2024 | 2023 | Change from prior year | |
Rate of employees with access to e-learning | % | 73.3 | 73.6 | –0.3 | pp |
In 2024, Zehnder Group divested its Climate Ceiling Solutions business and acquired Siber. Employees from Climate Ceiling Solutions business, who previously had access to e-learning, are no longer included in the latest statistics. Siber employees have not yet been granted access to e-learning.
Employees that support the Zehnder sustainability ambitions and targets
Indicator description | Unit of measure | 2024 | 2023 | Change from prior year | |
Rate of employees that support the Zehnder sustainability ambitions and targets | % | n/a | 92.0 | n/a | |
The rate of employees that support the Zehnder sustainability ambitions and targets is based on the employee engagement survey.
The survey is conducted biannually and did not take place in 2024. The next one is scheduled for 2025.