Sustainability Report 2015
(Further) Training
Hannover Re offers its workforce a diverse programme of (further) training, both in-house and in cooperation with external suppliers. In our Sustainability Strategy 2015-2017 we have set ourselves the goal of expanding our further training activities for specialist and executive personnel. We shall achieve this aim by, among other things, extending the range of training offered to our seasoned employees.
Training
For a number of years now we have participated in the Fair Company initiative, a campaign supported by the publications Handelsblatt and Wirtschaftswoche for the fair employment of interns. As a "fair company", Hannover Re undertakes to comply with various fundamental principles, including for example not filling full-time positions with interns, volunteers, student employees or long-term temporary workers.
As an avenue for obtaining vocational qualifications, Hannover Re offers up to six places each year to study for a Bachelor of Arts in business management with an insurance concentration as part of an integrated degree programme.
Hannover Re assists all new members of staff with their career start through special basic seminars. These help the employees to navigate their new scope of duties.
Further training
Our programme of further training, which is open to all Hannover Re employees, encompasses in particular offerings in the fields of information technology, reinsurance, social and methodological skills as well as language courses. These opportunities were again well received in 2015. On average, each employee of the Hannover Re Group participated in 4.4 days of further training.
As far as the systematic expansion of our human resources development activities is concerned, we are currently putting a clear emphasis on further training for our professionally seasoned staff. The most recent local employee survey carried out in Hannover had highlighted a concrete need in this regard, to which we are responding with the newly designed seminars "Primary insurance know-how for reinsurers" and "Mastering complexity: Making sound decisions in complex situations". The courses launched in 2014 were successfully continued in 2015; based on the positive feedback, they have undergone targeted enhancements and been included in the seminar programme on a permanent basis. These systematic learning stimuli equip our experts even better to keep pace with changing (market) requirements and to continue to act with assurance in the face of growing complexity. By way of these opportunities we also foster what we consider to be an important propensity towards life-long learning.
In the year under review we successfully launched our new learning management system HannoverReAcademy. This makes it possible to view and book all in-house training offerings from the areas of human resources and IT. HannoverReAcademy also serves as the platform for delivery of our e-learning programmes. For some years now we have successfully provided these in a so-called blended learning format, i.e. a combination of online study and face-to-face events, which is used inter alia for the international basic training of our new staff members. Administrative processes have also been simplified by the roll-out of HannoverReAcademy. For example, the system automatically books a package of suitable entry-level seminars for every new member of staff. This can be done on a worldwide basis because our international entities also have access to the HannoverReAcademy. We are thereby able to assure the consistently high standard of training received by our workforce.