Diversity

Employees of the Rheinmetall Group identify with a distinctive corporate culture that focuses on professional performance, initiative, responsibility and a shared understanding. They cooperate across functional, organizational and national boundaries.

All of our approximately 22,000 employees have different talents, different ways of life and come from varied ethnic and social backgrounds. They can contribute their abilities throughout our Group without prejudice or discrimination on the basis of gender, skin color, religion or sexual orientation. Positions in the Rheinmetall Group are filled in accordance with the criteria of specialist expertise, development potential and individual performance.

With sites in 24 countries on five continents, supply relationships in 73 countries and 9,799 employees abroad, diversity is a reality. Daily practice shows that this diversity in languages, eduction and training, abilities and ways of thinking and working has a positive impact on cooperation and helps to secure the future viability of the companies in the international competitive environment.

Openness to foreign cultures and exchange between the sites is also encouraged through secondments. Assignments outside their home countries enable employees to acquire new skills and strengthen their cross-cultural competence. This also leads to a greater transfer of knowledge within the Group. At present, some 100 German employees are on assignments abroad.

Women at Rheinmetall

The Defence and Automotive sectors are traditionally dominated by men, a trend that can already be observed among trainee intakes and scienctific and technical students. The proportion of female graduates in the engineering courses that interest Rheinmetall is approximately 20%. The improvement in the employer attractiveness in the labor market initiated by Rheinmetall is starting to reap benefits in that more young women are choosing careers with the Rheinmetall Group.

When appointing people to management positions, the Executive Board is guided by the requirements of the position in question and looks for the best person who meets these requirements. If more than one candidate with the same qualifications is available, the Executive Board focuses on diversity and the need to maintain an appropriate male/female balance within the company.

The proportion of female managers in Germany rose from 8% in 2008 to 14% in 2010; the proportion in the Rheinmetall Group worldwide rose by 4 percentage points to approximately 11% in the same period.

The proportion of women in Senior Management, which includes some 270 people, is 5%.

7% of participants in the Young Manager program and 6% in the Executive Development program are women.

Rheinmetall supports employees returning to work after parental leave in finding childcare solutions, for example through increased cooperation with providers of crèches and day care centers, or through flexible organization of working hours with the option of part-time work.

Equal opportunities for everyone

People with severe disabilities and employees with health challenges are fully integrated into working life at Rheinmetall where they can make full use of their abilities and ideas. The focus is not on physical or mental impairments but promoting strengths and potential. To do this, it is necessary to have customized workplaces which offer good scope for development and lead to work results which are every bit as good as those of non-disabled employees.

The Group' representative body for employees with disabilities in Germany cooperates with the company to ensure the general conditions for employing severely disabled people and provides consultancy on the issue.