Culture

Diversity & Equality are the most important ingredients for PUMA’s growth. Diverse teams with different skill sets and backgrounds are the most successful resource when it comes to creative thinking, decision making and driving innovation forward. They ensure that we design and develop products that meet the requirements of our consumers around the world. The people working together at our global headquarters in Herzogenaurach come from 70 different nations. PUMA’s unique company culture reflects, embraces and respects the individuality of every single employee by giving the opportunity to everybody to achieve their full potential.

To ensure a fair work environment and equal opportunities for all PUMA employees, regardless of their gender, nationality, ethnicity, religion, disability, age or sexual orientation, we committed ourselves to the PUMA Code of Ethics (2005) and to our Diversity Charter (2010).

A well-balanced gender distribution across all locations is one of our strengths. The male to female ratio is 51 percent to 49 percent. This ratio has been stable over the past years, proving that we provide an equally attractive work environment for all genders.

At PUMA, our goal is to achieve gender balance at all management levels. We continue our efforts to raise the proportion of women in leadership positions. In order to empower women, we offer specific training and access to inspirational networks. The interaction with experienced female executives should encourage our female employees to aim for leadership positions in our organization. In 2019, 41% of management positions across the group were held by women.

We have already reached our target to have at least 30% of women on the Supervisory Board and 20% on the Management Board. We are on track to reach our ambitious targets to have 30% of women at the first management level below the Management Board and 40% of women at the second management levels below the Management Board, both until October 2021.

For 2020, PUMA’s ambitions regarding diversity and equality were recognized by the Financial Times with the “Leader in Diversity” award for Europe.

We invest in a range of services and benefits to improve the health and wellbeing of our employees. We believe that employees are more motivated and perform better if they feel well and keep a healthy work-life balance. Our Wellbeing concept was started at our headquarters in Herzogenaurach and was adapted to local needs and regulations elsewhere. Today, it plays an important part at all our PUMA subsidiaries globally.

Our wellbeing program includes four components: flex, athlete, finance and social.

As a sports company, we of course offer a wide range of sports and workout opportunities, such as regular internal sports classes, sports events, free gym access and our different outdoor courts for football, volleyball and basketball. Our courses range from meditation and yoga, to TRX and HIIT. For employees at our headquarters, we offered 34 events and 23 weekly sports courses in 2019, with a total of 1,478 registrations. Through regular “Be Well Weeks,” we promote a healthy lifestyle, covering a variety of topics such as nutrition, health checks and information about the latest trends in exercise and sport.

Being committed to our people’s wellbeing, we offer great working conditions which are rooted in our unique culture. To enable our employees to balance their professional and private lives, we have different models such as flexible working hours, mobile office, part time work and sabbaticals. Our employees can choose from these models at different stages in their careers. Offering a parent-child-office, day care spots and summer camps for children during school breaks, our headquarters in Herzogenaurach was awarded the German “Audit Beruf & Familie” (audit job and family) certificate. Special treats for our PUMA kids included the “BVB Kids Football Camp 2019” which was conducted by professional coaches of German football club Borussia Dortmund as well as a “digital day” held during the summer camp. The latter was supported by German organization Haba “Digitalwerkstatt,” which teaches digital skills to kids.

Our goal is to minimize the number of employee-initiated exits and to keep the percentage of employees in permanent employment above 80%. In 2019, 87% of our employees worldwide had a permanent contract and the employment of over 34% of our employees was covered by a collective bargaining agreement. The turnover rate is strongly dependent on the share of the retail business in the respective markets and the region. In total, the turnover rate was 25% (9% for non-retail employees and 42% for retail employees). The percentage of employees working part-time was 22% at the end of 2019.

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 2019, we aimed to stay below an injury rate of 1.0 (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 15,665 hours of safety training in 2019. In the past year, 6,454 employees were trained in fire evacuation and 2,402 in first aid. The overall number of safety training hours increased 30% compared to the previous year, demonstrating PUMA’s continued focus on this issue.

Worldwide, only 57 occupational accidents which required work to be stopped were recorded in 2019. This is a decline of 43.7% compared to the previous year and continues the positive trend seen in recent years. According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), this corresponds to an injury rate of 0.37 compared to 0.81 in 2018, meaning we did not only meet the target we set ourselves in 2019, but also sharply improved our performance. The (OSHA) injury rate for PUMA SE stood at 0.22 and was at 0.90 in the previous year.

A further indicator of employee engagement and the health of our workforce is the rate of absence due to sickness, which was 1.55 % in 2019. The rate of occupational diseases is zero.

Feedback from inside and outside PUMA is very important to us. It shows if we are moving in the right direction and it helps us to constantly improve. This way, we are able to regularly compare ourselves with other companies and receive valuable insight from our employees.

In the past year, we conducted a global employee survey with the assistance of the external provider Willis Towers Watson, to get feedback from our employees and involve them in shaping their work environment. More than 9,750 employees participated and used the opportunity to share their opinion on their workplace and work life. We are proud of the result of 91% employee engagement and appreciate the high level of commitment of our employees and their loyalty to the brand. Coming from 67% in our last survey this is a great improvement. The results were communicated on a global, local and departmental level, and necessary improvement measures were defined.

We encourage our employees to give constant feedback and one way is through the external rating platform Glassdoor.

We are especially proud that our offices in Europe, including UK, Spain, Italy, France and Germany, were audited and received the European Top Employer award, participating the first time. With its certification, the Top Employer institute recognized PUMA’s efforts to provide an outstanding culture and work environment.

During 2019, PUMA also received several other awards for its outstanding work culture and for embracing diversity.