OUR PEOPLE

WE BELIEVE OUR PEOPLE ARE THE KEY TO UNLEASHING PUMA’S FULL POTENTIAL. OUR AMBITION IS TO PROVIDE NOT ONLY AN ATTRACTIVE WORKING ENVIRONMENT THAT ENCOURAGES THEIR PERFORMANCE AND PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT, BUT ALSO A UNIQUE CORPORATE CULTURE.

We are committed to improving our employees’ wellbeing, both during and outside their working hours.To pursue our mission of becoming the world’s fastest sports brand and with the aim of establishing PUMA as a top employer, we have drawn up a set of employer values to communicate our unique way of working and act as a guide for our people. Under the label SPEED AND SPIRIT, we encourage our people to BE DRIVEN, BE VIBRANT, BE TOGETHER and BE YOU, thus allowing us to make full use of the individual talent and experience within the company. In 2017, we focused on defining our HR communications strategy and creating a clear identity and voice for each of our HR programs. We intend to position PUMA as an attractive employer to potential candidates, while ensuring we recruit the right talent to push PUMA forward. Through our employer values, we aim to give potential candidates an insight into what working at PUMA is really like and what makes our brand special. We have selected some of our people to become ambassadors and tell their own PUMA story on social media to audiences internal and external to PUMA.

Our particular focus is on two areas: the health of our employees and our community engagement work, which helps us make a positive impact in communities wherever PUMA operates. Following a decision by our Board of Directors, we have recently established the necessary reporting systems for this task, as well as introducing the relevant targets and bonuses.

A MILESTONE IN PEOPLE MANAGEMENT

In 2017, HR achieved a major milestone by implementing Workday, a leading human capital management system, on a global scale. All HR-related information is now available on one single platform across all global entities, enabling us to run nearly all our processes digitally. This software solution covers all HR processes and functions, including recruitment, talent and performance management, payroll, time tracking and absences, as well as remuneration and benefits in Canada and the USA. It also gives our HR teams worldwide real-time access to relevant data.

Our employees will greatly benefit from this new system, as it has also become easier and quicker for them to access pay slips, organizational charts, leave balances and reports. At the same time, we also offer them the opportunity to handle their own personnel profile and to update their work experience and qualifications at any time. This keeps them visible within the organization, ensuring that their full employment history can be considered for potential vacancies during talent conferences.

CAREERS@PUMA

GROWING TALENT

Growing tomorrow’s talent is a key pillar of PUMA’s development strategy. We are particularly focused on recruiting graduates we can train and successfully equip with the relevant skillsets for various roles in the PUMA Group. We offer a wide range of options within an international working environment, creating the perfect conditions for people starting their careers.

Last year, 18 dual-program students and apprentices joined PUMA headquarters in Herzogenaurach. In total, PUMA had 63 apprentices and dual students by the end of 2017, majoring in a range of subjects, from International Business to Warehouse Logistics. Specialist vocational training allows them to gain knowledge and expertise which will serve them well in their careers at PUMA.

Our intention is to raise awareness of PUMA as a top employer and ensure that we attract the best talent on the market to work for us. To identify that talent, we have strengthened our cooperation with universities in Germany and abroad. One of our key initiatives involved a business simulation, during which business students were provided with some industry insights to help them work on a case study. Design students across Europe were offered the opportunity to take part in design challenges, supported by our Global Design Leadership Team. The winners were invited to present their designs at our headquarters in Herzogenaurach.

We also established a mentoring program for students as an additional tool for identifying talented people at an early stage in their careers and to involve them in internships, apprenticeships or as working students. This means we give them the chance to get to know PUMA and to gain initial working experience in a fast-moving environment.

TALENT MANAGEMENT

Professional talent management and succession planning are essential for our company’s long-term development and success. Systematic talent conferences, assessing the entire PUMA workforce, were conducted worldwide with managers at all levels, up to and including board conferences at Managing Director level. We constantly review our talent on the basis of criteria including individual performance, potential, ambition, career progression and mobility. This analysis of employee profiles at PUMA allows us to prepare individual development plans at the same time as providing an overview of talent across all areas of the business. We can identify internal candidates for key positions at an early stage by matching internal talent with vacancies, helping us find potential successors with the necessary skills. This process also provides attractive career and development opportunities for our employees and ensures professional talent management and succession planning.

Our new personal development program SPEED UP² was successfully continued this year. By taking on interdisciplinary projects and tasks, targeted training, mentoring and coaching, as well as job rotations, a group of top talents receives intensive preparation for the next step in their careers. Other essential components of the program include increased visibility at top management level encouraging cross-functional cooperation and building strong networks.

PEOPLE@PUMA

DIVERSITY

At PUMA we believe the diversity of our people is one of our great strengths as a company and that it makes a major contribution to our unique culture. We are convinced that our success and competitiveness depend on our ability to embrace diversity by bringing together people of different nationalities with a variety of backgrounds and experiences and helping them to turn their individual talents and ideas into innovative solutions that respond to ever-changing market and customer demands.

It was this belief that led us to commit to the PUMA Code of Ethics and our Diversity Charter more than ten years ago. We implemented the Diversity Charter to ensure a fair working environment and equal opportunities for all PUMA employees, regardless of gender, nationality, ethnicity, religion, disability, age or sexual orientation.

The people working together at our global headquarters in Herzogenaurach come from 62 different nations. To ensure that new employees gain an understanding of cultural differences, something which will make their working lives easier and more productive, we offer a one-day cultural awareness course to all new employees based at the headquarters.

The gender distribution of employees at PUMA worldwide is well balanced; with a male to female ratio of 52%:48%. These figures have remained stable in recent years.

In 2017, the proportion of women across all levels of management group-wide was 38%. Although this number has increased in recent years, we aim to further increase the number of women in executive positions, especially at senior management levels. To achieve this in 2015, we committed ourselves to raise the quota of women in the two management levels beneath the managing directors to 20% and 30% respectively. These targets were achieved (and, in some cases, slightly exceeded) at the group level by the end of June 2017. This year we have set ourselves ambitious new goals and are aiming to increase the proportion of women at the two management levels beneath the managing directors to 30% and 40% respectively. PUMA intends to constantly empower women and to support their development in management positions. That’s why we offer them specific training and access to inspirational networks. Contact with experienced female executives is designed to encourage our female employees and motivate them to take on leading roles within the company.

WORKS COUNCIL

In 2017, the European Works Council of PUMA SE represented employees in 9 countries. Men and women are equally represented on the council. The chairperson is a German national and the other members of the Executive Committee are from Austria and Italy.

The German Works Council of PUMA SE has 15 members; 10 men and 5 women. The chairperson and the vice chairperson are both German nationals.

The interests of employees with disabilities are represented by a designated member of the Works Council.

OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH AND SAFETY

We strive to keep our people healthy and safe by providing a work environment in which health and safety issues are taken seriously. Our goal is to constantly reduce the average injury rate. In 2017, we aimed to stay below an injury rate of 1.5 (OSHA). We conduct safety-related training courses all over the world, including online training programs, to prepare employees for potential emergency situations and reduce the number of accidents.

We provided a total of 12,242 hours of safety training in 2017. In the past year, 5,669 employees have been trained in fire evacuation and 2,327 in first aid. The overall number of safety training hours has increased by 29% compared to the previous year, demonstrating PUMA’s continued focus on this issue.

Worldwide, only 84 occupational accidents which required worked to be stopped were recorded in 2017. This is a decline of 12% compared to the previous year and continues the positive trend evident in recent years. According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), this corresponds to an injury rate of 0.72 compared to 0.84 in 2016, meaning we met the target we set ourselves in 2017. The (OSHA) injury rate for PUMA SE was at 0.83 in the past two years.

A further indicator of employee engagement and the health of our workforce is the rate of sickness absence, which was again below 2% in 2017.

Our Health and Safety Committee, based at our global headquarters in Herzogenaurach, includes members of the Works Council, representatives of Human Resources and in-house service departments, our company physician and a health and safety engineer.

COMPENSATION AND BENEFITS

PUMA offers an attractive set of compensation and benefit programs worldwide, designed to attract the best talent on the market as well as to retain and reward talented employees.

Collective bargaining agreements are in place at many of our facilities and stipulate both an above-average salary by industry standards and a generous annual leave allowance. PUMA also offers a variety of benefit plans, including defined contribution and deferred compensation retirement plans. Regular compensation and benefit reviews ensure PUMA remains competitive in the market, in accordance with our corporate goals.

Since we believe that strong performance should be rewarded, we aim to a compensation program in line with individual and/or business performance. Short-term and long-term incentives or bonus plans are available to employees at certain levels of management. Short-term incentive plan payouts are linked to business performance and sustainability targets.

WORKING CONDITIONS AND FLEXIBLE WORKING MODULES

At PUMA, we focus on creating an attractive and pleasant working environment in order to positively influence employee engagement and foster loyalty and commitment to the company. Our goal is to minimize the number of employee-initiated exits and to keep the percentage of employees in permanent employment above 80%. Last year, 87% of our employees worldwide held permanent contracts and the employment terms of over 30% of our employees were covered by a collective bargaining agreement. Staff turnover is strongly dependent on the share of retail business in individual regions and markets. The total turnover rate in 2017 was 22%, which was again 3% lower than in the previous year. The average age of all PUMA employees was 33.

Flexibility in the workplace allows our workforce to arrange their working conditions to suit their individual needs. This ultimately leads to a more productive and engaged workforce. This is why flexible working modules are available in most of our locations around the world. This is also reflected in the proportion of employees employed on a part-time basis, which was 23% at the end of 2017.

After a successful initial testing phase, we decided to test our innovative office concept in even more departments to help define how our employees’ state-of-the-art workplace should look. We found that designated areas for individual work and for socializing were indispensable in an open-plan environment, as they allowed our employees to focus and engage in teamwork. Our new offices in Hong Kong, Korea, Mexico, South Africa and the Netherlands were all furnished on the basis of this research in 2017.

“To highlight one of our greatest successes in 2017, I think of PUMA Hong Kong moving to a new office last summer. The flexible environment offers open spaces to encourage interaction and most importantly, it means our sales team and sourcing team are together.”

SARA NG, REGIONAL DIRECTOR, HUMAN RESOURCES APAC, HONG KONG

SOCIAL MEDIA

At PUMA, we are looking for the most qualified and talented people to help us push sports and fashion forward. Sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Glassdoor offer us a tremendous opportunity to connect with candidates and find great talent. Since 86% of professionals in their first decade of employment use social media to look for jobs and research employers, leveraging our corporate social media pages for recruitment purposes has become a key aim for PUMA. We strategically promote our vacancies using social media, utilizing powerful tools like targeting, segmentation and promotion. We have also leveraged these platforms for active sourcing, allowing us to connect with candidates directly.

However, recruiting via social media goes beyond posting vacancies reported in company records. It is essential that we share content which promotes our motto of SPEED & SPIRIT and reflects PUMA’s employer values, as part of our goal to present the company’s culture to candidates around the world.

Our efforts to create an environment that nurtures and motivates our employees were rewarded with multiple prizes in several regions in 2017. Based on employee feedback on Glassdoor, PUMA was ranked the 5th best place to work in Germany. FOCUS magazine rated PUMA as providing the best career opportunities for IT specialists in the fashion industry. Other PUMA facilities, for example in Boston, China or Malaysia, have been honored in their own countries.

LEARN@PUMA

At PUMA, learning is not only part of our culture but the consistent professional development and training of our people is key to PUMA’s strategy. As the world changes at an ever-increasing pace, bringing with it digitalization and social change, only highly-qualified and motivated professionals will enable us to reach our goals. To ensure our people are able to make full use of their talents and develop their skills and expertise, PUMA offers a wide range of fixed and tailored training courses and workshops, both on-site and online. We place a particular emphasis on introducing and conveying the attitudes and methods found in agile organizations. In 2017, 12,225 employees worldwide participated in training courses and workshops over a total of 174,568 hours. This is a significant increase compared to the previous year.

PUMA LEARNING PLAZA is our learning platform providing access to a host of online content available to all employees and managers. In addition to internal PUMA content, employees can access selected business books, articles and TED videos. Our employees also have access to the interactive learning platform lynda.com, which includes more than 6,300 video tutorials and self-study courses.

Our main tool for establishing a consistent leadership approach at a global level is the modular International Leadership Program (ILP). It supports managers in their leadership skills and day-to-day decisions and is conducted globally with groups of participants in the EMEA, APAC, LATAM and North America regions. ILP², a further-development of the previous ILP program, was launched in 2017. Its innovative content focuses on leadership in a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world, providing managers with new tools to manage themselves better and to become even more strategic and effective leaders.

One module deals with mindful leadership, which is defined as the practice of self-observation without judgment, along with a focus on our minds and inner voices. Managers learn to understand their own stress patterns and become familiar with effective methods for avoiding stress and ensuring clear-thinking when confronted with complex decisions.

We place particular emphasis on organizational agility. Managers become familiar with tools and agile methods such as stand-up meetings or design thinking. Implementing agile ways of working will strengthen PUMA’s ability to react quickly and adapt to changes on the market.

WELLBEING@PUMA

At PUMA, providing a positive workplace and promoting the wellbeing of all our people is a top priority. Under the umbrella of Wellbeing@PUMA, we have combined the four topics Flex, Social, Finance and Athlete. This concept has been awarded the German audit berufundfamilie (audit job and family) certificate. Pioneered at our headquarters at Herzogenaurach, the Wellbeing@PUMA concept has been embraced by various PUMA subsidiaries around the world and adapted to local needs and regulations.

With flexible working hours, mobile working, sabbaticals and parent/child offices as well as a range of family services and childcare opportunities, we are supporting our people’s work-life balance. In line with our sporting heritage, we offer a variety of sporting events and activities throughout the year, as well as regular internal sports classes using our own sports facilities. No fewer than 20 events and 17 weekly sports classes were organized for our people at our headquarters in 2017, with a total of 1,551 registrations. Similar initiatives and courses are being adopted worldwide.

“I started my career at PUMA as an intern in Human Resources. After I had the opportunity to help shape a lot of exciting projects, PUMA offered me a permanent position at the end of my studies. Inspired by the chance to become a real part of the PUMA family, I didn’t have to think twice! New position, same team – a perfect match!”

PATRICK EGLMAIER, JUNIOR MANAGER LEARNING & DEVELOPMENT, GERMANY

ENGAGE@PUMA

CHARITY CAT

2017 was a very prolific year for Charity Cat. The non-profit organization established by a group of PUMA employees in 2004 continues to grow and is supporting projects all over the world. Charity Cat works on local and international projects and supports long term collaborations as well as short-term work for good causes.

Last year Charity Cat was particularly proud to establish a new partnership, supported by PUMA, with a Colombian NGO that uses football as a vehicle for training and mentoring children in one of the poorest areas of Cartagena. For projects like these, the members of Charity Cat organized a series of fund-raising events throughout the year, raising significant amounts of money for those who needed it most.

Charity Cat also gathered donations for Mexico after the country was hit by devastating earthquakes. Charity Cat joined forces with PUMA employees in every region to collect donations for TOPOS, the main NGO supporting the disaster relief effort in the area. The full donation campaign was helt during our 360 meeting in Herzogenaurach and was extremely well-supported. Our staff raised over 2,000 euros, making a significant contribution in support of the victims.

Besides the international projects, Charity Cat also continued to maintain its long-term collaborations with a number of German non-profit organizations, such as the Bolle childcare center in Berlin and the Sozialtreff in Erlangen, which supports socially and economically disadvantaged people in the surrounding area.

Another example of Charity Cat’s long-term projects is its partnership with an orphanage in Haiti, an initiative that has been ongoing for more than six years and that will be further developed in the future.

Charity Cat is also involved with organizations linked to sports. Charity Cat participated in the Run against Cancer that takes place annually in Erlangen.

Another notable project was its work with the sports therapy department of the university hospital of Erlangen to provide better equipment for the treatment of long-term illnesses at the hospital.

In October 2017, Charity Cat organized a clothing donation from PUMA employees, who donated over 150kg of clothes to the Red Cross in Nuremberg.

“TODAY I GOT A CHANCE, ALONG WITH MANY OTHER VALUABLE COBRA PUMA GOLF EMPLOYEES, TO GIVE BACK TO OUR LOCAL COMMUNITY BY HELPING CLEAN UP THE AGUA HEDIONDA LAGOON TRAIL IN CARLSBAD. WHAT A FANTASTIC DAY!”

ERIC LOGAN, COO COBRA PUMA GOLF

COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT

Thanks to our employees all around the world, we were able to continue our engagement with local communities this year. Our goal was to reach the total number of hours spent on community engagement was the equivalent of one hour per average FTE (Full Time Equivalent) per year. We reached out to all our people worldwide to inform them about this work and encourage them to participate. In addition, an online platform has now been set up on which projects and engagement can be recorded. Local Human Resources departments found new partners in their communities and initiated a variety of projects. In total, initiatives led by our subsidiaries on five continents led to a total of 17,471 hours (1,425 for PUMA SE) of community engagement focused on protecting the environment, promoting health and fitness, fighting discrimination and supporting children with their education, while working alongside local non-profit organizations. Considering that the number of FTEs in 2017 was 11,389 (975 for PUMA SE), we far exceeded our target.

On a global level, we started a new three-year partnership with the international organization Right To Play, which uses sports and play-based learning to support underprivileged children. After all, there is no better teacher of life skills than sports.

Last but not least, we engaged alongside our brand ambassadors in 2017, such as Cara Delevingne who worked together with the United Nations High Commissioners for Refugees, Rihanna and her foundation, and the Daily Paper label, working together with Right To Play in Ghana to make a positive impact on communities.

Together with our parent company Kering, which offers additional solidarity leave and mentoring programs, we aim to raise awareness of human rights challenges and connect our employees to their communities. We know that sports has the power to change the world and we are proud to be part of the game. Achieving a positive impact while becoming ever-faster is an important part of our company culture.

A BIG THANK YOU TO ALL OUR EMPLOYEES WORLDWIDE FOR THEIR WHOLE-HEARTED ENGAGEMENT THROUGHOUT THE YEAR.

“My greatest success in 2017 was the launch of our new global people management tool – Workday – in record time. Moving from Canada to Herzogenaurach to work on this intensive project was a big challenge and brought me greater knowledge, relationships and opportunities. I am looking forward to working on new projects!”

CAMILLE HOEVEN, HUMAN RESOURCES BUSINESS PARTNER HRIS & PROJECTS, GERMANY