2022 was dominated by geopolitical tensions in Europe and the far-reaching social and economic consequences. After years of the COVID-19 pandemic, the worldwide economy gradually recovered and has increased the demand for highly qualified specialists and managers. Consequently, many employees have been looking for job opportunities and therefore the global staff turnover has increased following an overall global trend which is called the “great resignation”. To ensure our competitiveness in this environment and promote growth, it is essential that we continue to have competent and committed employees who we can retain for the long term. Our focus therefore remained particularly on talent acquisition, development and retention. This also included our continued efforts to increase our global employer attractiveness and to promote our unique work environment, corporate culture and diversity. In this way, we will become even more resilient to unpredictable external influences. As part of our strategic work force planning, we continued to hire foreign talents to work against demographic developments in local labor markets and to promote further diversity.
One important task, especially in the first half of 2022, was to overcome the challenges associated with the war in Ukraine. We helped our employees and their families by providing them shelter in a rented sanatorium. From the first minute we supported Ukrainian charities with PUMA products, groceries and cash donations both from PUMA and their employees. PUMA employees from Germany drove several times to Ukraine delivering urgently needed goods. On their way back they took PUMA employees, relatives, friends and PUMA athletes with them to Germany and Poland. A total of 128 people from Ukraine have been safely accommodated in Germany and 15 in Poland. We provided free accommodation in 2022 and helped the people to go through the registration process. Further we integrated them by offering jobs at PUMA and making sure their kids are integrated in local childcare facilities and schools. Towards the end of the year, we supported the group in finding permanent employment and own accommodation. After the suspension of our business in Russia, we took care of our employees in Russia by securing their full pay.
The attractive performance-based compensation system at PUMA includes a fixed base salary, the PUMA bonus system, profit-sharing programs and various social benefits and intangible benefits. We also offer long-term incentive programs for the senior management level that honors the sustainable development and performance of the business. The bonus system is transparent and globally standardized. Incentives are exclusively linked to company goals.
Ensuring fair and non-discriminatory compensation at PUMA is one of our strategic priorities. Our compensation framework is based on analytical job evaluations and a global grading system. Since the criteria to be evaluated relate exclusively to characteristics of the job – not to the job holder – the remuneration system as such is gender-neutral. This enables us to rule out any gender-specific discrimination emanating from the compensation system.
In addition, we have continued our cooperation with the Fair Wage Network and are able to access benchmarks for all our subsidiaries and analyze them in terms of living wages as defined by the Fair Wage Network. For the year 2022 we can confirm, with regards to the Living Wage Adjusted Mean benchmark as defined by the Fair Wage Network, that all our employees are earning a living wage or more.
Furthermore, we have conducted a Gender Pay Gap Analysis for all German employees in collaboration with the hkp/// group in 2022.
With the same parameters such as partial retirement, length of service, recruitment, children, part-time, performance appraisal, job family group, management responsibility, nationality and grade, women at PUMA in Germany receive the same direct remuneration level as men. Therefore, we collaborated with the FPI Fair Pay Innovation Lab and became certified as a Universal Fair Pay Analyst. After adjusting the methodology and excluding potentially discriminatory factors such as part-time work and children, the analysis still showed a slight pay gap, which we aim to close by next year. The regression analysis also showed that nationality does not have a significant impact on the wage gap. We will conduct further analyses of the gender pay gap in our subsidiaries in 2023.
In order to make our business processes even simpler and faster worldwide, we are once again placing a high focus on further digitization. Since 2017, we have been using the „Workday” software solution for many of our HR processes. This gives employees and managers access to all the processes and tools they need for day-to-day HR management tasks. In addition, user-friendly dashboards provide the information and data-driven insights that managers need for planning and steering. Analysis of our centralized global data provides a sound basis for decision-making and measurable results. In 2022, we placed particular emphasis on further analyzing data as part of People Analytics and incorporating the results into our strategic decisions. This helps us provide evidence-based answers to specific questions and make forecasts.
2022 was a very successful year for community engagement at PUMA. With the support of our employees, we increased the engagement with local communities through a variety of different projects all around the world.
Here are a few examples:
In August, PUMA North America hosted its annual Field Day Frenzy in conjunction with the Boys and Girls Club of Dorchester. Field Day Frenzy was a day full of community, culture and fun. Over 400 PUMA employees volunteered their time and spent the day with members of the Dorchester Boys and Girls Club. Everyone participated in outdoor activities such as basketball, kickball and football, as well as games and crafts. Activities focused on being active and creative. This volunteering opportunity brought together community and our PUMA employees which created an unforgettable day.
PUMA Taiwan teamed up with a local farmers' association and helped with the harvest with their own hands. We not only helped the elderly farmers, but also donated the harvested rice to low-income families affected by the earthquake. The big PUMA cat jumping into the green rice field shows the world the spirit of PUMA and our team's love and commitment to the local community.
We have set ourselves the ambitious goal of spending at least twice as many hours on social engagement as our average full-time equivalents (FTE) this year. We encouraged all of our employees around the world to participate and recorded projects and employee engagement on an online platform. In total, initiatives led by our subsidiaries on 5 continents contributed a total of 43,316 hours (3.874 for PUMA SE) of community engagement. With the projects, we helped protect the environment, promote health and fitness, fight discrimination or support education for children in need. Often these projects were carried out in cooperation with local non-profit organizations. Considering that the number of full-time employees (FTEs) in 2022 was 18,071 (1,168 for PUMA SE), we significantly exceeded our target.
Our charity organization Charity Cat e.V., founded by PUMA employees in 2004, supported the people in Ukraine with various fundraising campaigns and projects in 2022. In total, more than 70,000 euros were collected. A part of these donations was used to support a project of the Civil Crisis Staff Network in Ukraine. Charity Cat was also able to use these donations to partially finance food transports to Ukraine and to provide clothing and shoes to refugees from Ukraine.
Charity Cat also supported projects in other countries. For example, Charity Cat has been working for many years with the association FONMEH e.V. in Haiti, which supports children in an orphanage in Les Cayes. Charity Cat's financial support ensures that the children continue to be cared for even in the current very difficult situation in Haiti. Together with PUMA's logistics partner Maersk, a container with building materials, sportswear, bicycles and musical instruments was safely delivered to Haiti.
It was also possible to continue the long-standing financial support for a project of the association „from heart to heart” in 2022. This organization helps needy families and children in remote areas of Samar Island in the Philippines by providing them shelter or schooling.
Other organizations with which Charity Cat cooperates include the Berlin-based association Straßenkinder e.V., which, among other things, offers a place to go for children and young people living on the streets or at risk of ending up there with its children's home "Bolle" in Berlin. Currently, this association is also in charge of a partner project in Znamianka in the Ukraine. Charity Cat also cooperates with Himalaya Friends e.V. This association helps disadvantaged children and protects them from human trafficking. Last year, for example, a community room in Kathmandu was renovated with the help of donations.
Further information on the projects and initiatives can be found at www.charity-cat.de.
