Employees

NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES

The global number of employees on a yearly average was 18,023 in 2023, compared to 16,669 in the previous year. Personnel expenses increased by a total of 6.4% from € 846.5 million to € 900.6 million in 2023. On average, personnel expenses per employee amounted to € 50.0 thousand, compared to € 50.8 thousand in the previous year.

As of 31 December 2023, the number of employees was 18,681, compared to 18,071 in the previous year. This corresponds to an overall increase in the number of employees of 3.4% compared to the previous year. The development in the number of employees per area is as follows:

Talent Recruitment and Development

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‎Our PUMA family is the key to our success. Our human resources strategy forms the basis of our unique working environment and corporate culture. These help us to attract the best talent worldwide and secure the future success of the company. The three core elements of this strategy are "People First", sustainable human resources practices and digitalisation.

People First means understanding employees' needs, values, and potential and putting them at the centre of our decision making. It helps us create an inclusive culture that respects diversity, promotes health and well-being, and encourages personal and professional growth.

Sustainable people practises create a workplace culture that prioritises employee health and happiness, diversity, and inclusivity, and offers ample opportunities for career growth. Our sustainable people practices are central to building a resilient organisation. By thinking ahead and equipping our employees with the future skills and leadership qualities necessary, we ensure the long-term success of PUMA.

Digital tools in Human Resources improve the work experience of our employees and help us stay competitive and agile in a fast-changing business landscape. By using digital technology, we are improving efficiency, data-driven decision-making, and candidate and employee experiences. We deploy easy-to-use digital tools that enhance collaboration and productivity and offer digital literacy programmes to ensure all employees are equipped to thrive in a digital environment.
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To attract external applicants, we use digital platforms and social media in addition to our careers website in order to pursue proactive recruitment strategies that are tailored to our specific target groups. Having a range of on-site and online initiatives at universities both in Germany and abroad creates opportunities to approach potential employees and identify suitable candidates. Our extensive networks and applicant pools enable us to fill vacancies quickly. In a competitive labour market, it's essential for us not only to present ourselves as an attractive employer, but to be viewed as such by our current and potential employees. PUMA's attractiveness is evidenced by its top rankings as an employer and numerous awards. We are very proud that 24 of our PUMA subsidiaries across the regions (Europe, APAC, LATAM and North America) won a coveted Top Employer award in the year under review in recognition of our outstanding corporate culture and working environment. We can therefore continue to call ourselves a "Global Top Employer". We were also named one of the "World's Best Employers" by Forbes and a "Leader in Diversity" by the Financial Times, and awarded the "Great Place to Work" seal in numerous countries.

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‎In 2023 we continued to work on simplifying, accelerating and harmonising our business processes worldwide, and intensified the digitalisation of our processes. We have been using the "Workday" software solution for a wide range of HR workflows since 2017. This gives our employees and managers the processes and tools they need to make everyday human resources management efficient. Furthermore, easy-to-use dashboards provide managers with important information and data-driven insights that are essential to their planning work and managerial duties. Analysing our centralised, globally available data provides a solid foundation for making strategic decisions and delivers measurable results. Our objective is to use this digitalised infrastructure to increase operational efficiency and continuously improve our HR practices throughout the employee life cycle at PUMA. This in turn facilitates PUMA's overarching goal of optimising workflows and employees' experiences. It also gives us the means to deal more effectively with the dynamics of demanding labour markets.

We empower our employees to shape their own career paths proactively and independently, promoting their professional development both within Germany and internationally. This is how we succeed in inspiring their loyalty to the company in the long term. As part of our talent management initiative, we use Workday not only to assess performance and set targets, but also to make systematic and forward-looking succession plans for key positions. We identify talent within the company during annual performance reviews and global talent conferences, and foster their development through tailored development plans. This approach to talent management opens up attractive career and development opportunities for our employees. As in the previous financial year, this year we were again able to fill the majority of key positions worldwide via internal promotions or horizontal moves, which confirms that our talent management and employee development strategy is solid.

The ongoing personal and professional development of our employees is crucial to ensuring that our team has the skills they need to guarantee us continuous growth and market competence, particularly in times of great uncertainty and change. Workday helps us to avoid skills shortages and maintain a clear overview of the existing competencies in our team. In 2023 we examined this issue more closely, delving deeper in particular into the competencies that we will need in the future. The insights we gained from this deep dive are essential for us in terms of strategic human resources planning. They form the basis for our recruitment activities and for the development of new training programmes.

The range of training that we provide includes a number of online and offline training courses and workshops, which are either standardised or tailored to individual needs. With "LinkedIn Learning" and "Good Habitz", there are now over 23,000 different training courses available for our employees. They also have a wide range of learning categories to choose from for self-directed personal and professional development. Like last year, we focused particularly on the topics of mental well-being, resilience and mindfulness this year, providing our employees with a wide range of services to best support them in dealing with the increased mental strain that can often arise in this politically and economically difficult environment.

We have a proactive strategy for engaging learners. This includes putting on entertaining activities about various topics, gamification and internal learning competitions, not to mention the quarterly Top Learner Award for the most active learners worldwide. Thanks to this approach, PUMA was nominated for the "eLearning Journal" Award 2024 in the "Learner Engagement" category. We further expanded the Digital Agile Coach programmes that we offer to various target groups.

We have a global Busuu licence that provides access to 13 languages. This enables all our employees, including retail staff, to learn new languages online in a flexible way that meets their needs. They are supported by live lessons with qualified trainers. Learning is undertaken both via an app and in direct contact with others. There is a particular focus on English, but Busuu also facilitates the learning of other languages for personal or professional purposes.

With a range of dual-study programmes and apprenticeships, as well as study-related internships, we offer adequate entry-level and development opportunities for talented individuals at all levels.

We offer our managers numerous training and development opportunities. All managers worldwide complete our internal global leadership training programme, consisting of the ILP (International Leadership Programme) and ILP² seminar series. The programme ensures a uniform understanding of leadership at PUMA and promotes development among participants over the longer term. It offers intensive training and coaching, including interactive learning, role play simulations, and best practice learning, as well as joint projects. The key topics include coaching, mindful leadership, and agile working methods. The PUMA Leadership Expedition training programme aims to empower our managers to lead effectively in the VUCA world (VUCA is an acronym for volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambivalent). The programme is completely virtual, easily accessible, and designed as a self-directed and tailor-made learning format. It includes self-selected virtual training sessions with a trainer, regular communication with other international participants in smaller working groups, and coached sessions, as well as individual learning sprints and check-ins with the trainers. This innovative training programme received the eLearning AWARD 2023 in the "Agile Learning" category.

Our training from employee to manager is intended to prepare employees who are taking on a management position for the first time specifically for their new role. In addition to the training module, the programme also offers individual coaching.

Our "Speed Up" and "Speed Up²" development programmes are aimed at employees across different levels of the organisation. These programmes help to fully prepare employees for the next stage of their career, covering interdisciplinary projects and deployments, targeted training, mentoring, coaching and job rotations. They are designed to actively promote selected top talent. Another essential aspect of these programmes is increasing the visibility of participants through to the highest level of management, promoting multi-disciplinary cooperation and developing a strong professional network.

Feedback from our employees is of the utmost importance to us. Our listening strategy comprises various methods of receiving feedback and aims to capture and understand the opinions and needs of our workforce. To gather their views and suggestions, we prepare questionnaires, regular short surveys, focus groups, interviews and mood analyses, often using systems such as Amber and Workday. The resulting feedback affirms our commitment to continuing and further developing the initiatives that have been launched.

Since 2009 we have been conducting regular global employee surveys to obtain feedback from our staff on a variety of topics and to measure their engagement. A total of 15,339 employees took part in the global survey we carried out in 2023 and took the opportunity to tell us what they think about their workplace and their day-to-day work. This equates to a participation rate of 85% (2021: 86%). We saw an increase in positive ratings in two categories. Four categories remained at their already high level and seven categories saw a slight decline of 1% compared to the previous survey. We compare our survey results with various sets of market data, including high-performance data that we surpass or are equal to in up to four categories. High-performing companies are those that outperform the market in financial terms and regularly achieve excellent employee survey results. This positive feedback encourages us to continue and strengthen the measures we have already introduced. The survey results were communicated at global, local and departmental level, and follow-up measures were defined.

Works Council

Our trust-based, constructive collaboration with the Works Councils is an important part of our corporate culture. In 2023, the European Works Council of PUMA SE represented employees from 14 European countries and had 18 members. The German Works Council of PUMA SE consisted of 17 members and represented the employees of the PUMA Group in Germany. A designated member of the Works Council in Germany represents the interests of employees with disabilities.

Compensation

We at PUMA offer our employees a targeted and competitive compensation system, which consists of several components. In addition to a fixed base salary, the PUMA bonus system, profit-sharing programmes, and various social benefits form part of an attractive and performance-based compensation system. In addition, we offer our employees comprehensive services in the areas of further development, employee motivation, health management, and well-being. We also offer long-term incentive programmes for the senior management level that honour the sustainable development and performance of the business. The bonus system is transparent and globally standardised. Incentives are exclusively linked to company goals.
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