United Internet aims to be a fair and attractive employer. Its goal is to recruit managers and employees with specialist skills and technological know-how, to support their continuing development, and to retain them at the Company.
One core principle of its human resources work is always to see its staff as individuals first, and not just as employees. It creates a high-performance corporate culture by ensuring that its Corporate Values are reflected in strategically important human resources issues such as compensation, continuing education and training, and occupational safety. Regular dialogs are held with the Management Board on these issues.
In addition to the Group’s general, overarching strategy, the Access and Applications divisions and the individual segments within them pursue specific human resources strategies. United Internet has established centralized, topic-specific centers of competence to regulate overarching HR governance issues and offer Group-wide services, allowing requirements and staffing levels to be coordinated at Group and divisional level. This ensures an overarching approach and equal treatment on the one hand, while also freeing up the segments to focus squarely on their operational business.
Responsibility for key elements of human resources development, recruitment, and HR marketing has been transferred to the segments concerned, guaranteeing this operational focus and ensuring that the HR strategy in the segments is close to the business. By contrast, the core “UI Learning and Organizational Development” center of competence promotes topics such as continuous professional development and learning on a Group-wide basis so as to provide a framework for knowledge sharing, innovation, and productivity. This helps foster new ideas and innovative potential, enhances the Group’s competitiveness, and offers opportunities for all.
United Internet aims to offer tailored personal development formats, recruit managers from within the organization, and retain employees for the long term. Metrics used to track effectiveness include the management positions that have been filled internally (2023: 62.6 %; 2022: 66.2%) (1) and the staff turnover rate (2023: 7.5 %; 2022: 9.8%). (2) In addition, the Company has set itself the goal of appointing more women to management positions.
The following tables give a breakdown of the workforce by location (Germany and abroad) and segment:
(1) The figures relate to the number of active core employees, i.e., active employees including apprentices and trainees, but not including student workers, interns, school students, thesis students, and temporary staff, and staff with inactive employment contracts (mainly employees on parental leave).
(2) The figures relate to the number of active core employees, i.e., active employees including apprentices and trainees, but not including student workers, interns, school students, thesis students, and temporary staff, and staff with inactive employment contracts (mainly employees on parental leave).
Germany
8,199
8,550
8,981
Abroad
1,776
1,924
1,981
Total employees
9,975
10,474
10,962
Employees by location (Germany and abroad) (1)
2021
2022
2023
(1) The figures relate to active employees as of December 31 of the fiscal year concerned.
Consumer Access
3,167
3,163
3,320
Business Access
1,238
1,336
1,522
Consumer Applications
1,004
1,036
1,072
Business Applications
3,998
4,247
4,364
Corporate HQ
568
692
684
Employees by segment (1)
United Internet’s Corporate Values and Leadership Principles make up its system of values. The Code of Conduct shows how staff act in line with them. All employees are provided with the system of values and the Code of Conduct when they join. The employee onboarding procedure also refers to both documents.
Managers are prepared for their responsibility as role models, so to ensure the Group also walks the talk with its values in its day-to-day work. This responsibility is set out in the Leadership Principles, which are currently broken down in greater detail in individual segments, for example in IONOS’s Business Principles. Small groups of managers discuss the meaning of leadership in the two-monthly (virtual) manager onboarding meetings, and break this down to establish what this means for their day-to-day work.
Management Board members from the individual divisions kick off the topic, and actively reach out to new managers on it.
It is then discussed in more detail and put in an operational context in the obligatory four-part “Leadership Training – Leadership Foundations” program, which all new managers are required to take.
United Internet uses assessments by external institutions and independent sector rankings in addition to internal surveys so as to obtain as objective a view as possible of its activities in the staff and management area. In 2023, the Top Employers Institute again recognized United Internet as a “Top Employer” – an accolade it has received every year for more than a decade. This certification is awarded to companies that offer their employees attractive working conditions. Criteria used in the evaluation are career opportunities, employer benefits, working conditions, and training and development opportunities.
Paying employees fairly and in line with performance is an important part of United Internet’s human resources strategy. The aim is to provide staff with market-driven, fair, and transparent compensation and benefits that are aligned with corporate strategy. The internal compensation policy forms the basis for United Internet’s comparable, fair, and legally compliant compensation system. This document defines the rules and procedures to be observed throughout the Group when making salary adjustments.
Some positions and levels of responsibility offer performance-based variable compensation components. In addition, United Internet offers employees in Germany a number of benefits above and beyond the financial compensation it pays; these include a company pension, capital formation benefits, prevention programs forming part of the occupational health system, and discounts on the Company’s products.
The salaries paid, and the way in which these progress over time, are independent of employees’ gender or other factors that are not related to the position in question or the skills required. Fair, appropriate compensation is ensured by comparing functions internally at least every six months, taking market developments and analyses into account, and consulting external benchmarks. To do this, the salaries for more than 7,000 staff in six countries are compared with benchmark data on normal market remuneration from a well-known survey provider, which is updated every year. The results of the comparison are made available to the HR business partners and are used as input in the salary formation process for both regular salary reviews and extraordinary salary adjustments.
Civil society organizations and NGOs have noted that companies in the Philippines frequently do not pay the minimum wage. Regular salary reviews are intended to ensure that Group staff in Cebu are paid more than the minimum wage.
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