Rentenbank attaches importance to reconciling its employees’ professional lives with their home lives and caring responsibilities. We tailor personal development plans to our employees’ needs and provide our managers with special training courses. We also attach particular importance to the health of our employees. This involves not only eliminating any stress or strain at work but actively taking preventative measures to promote the good health of our employees.

As an employer and a customer operating exclusively in Germany, Rentenbank respects human and employee rights. For this reason, we do not consider there to be any significant risks regarding employee rights. Freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining are key to the protection of employment rights.

Respect for employee rights and employee participation
Rentenbank is a member of the Association of German Public Banks (Bundesverband Öffentlicher Banken Deutschlands, VÖB). Accordingly, it applies the collective pay agreement agreed on with the respective trade union for private and public banks.

Within the framework of employee participation at work, a staff council was elected based on the Federal Employee Representation Act (Bundespersonalvertretungsgesetz, PersVG). It represents the interests of all employees. Employer and staff council work in consideration of the laws and pay agreements in a confidential and collaborative way. The staff council exercises its rights to participation on codetermination, cooperation and consultation. In addition to the works council, the Equal Opportunities Commissioner and the representative for the severely disabled represent the interests of the employees. Furthermore, the responsible committees and the affected employees are fully involved in the development of strategy. This takes place by means of one-to-one meetings with line managers, internal informative events, and digital information channels. The implementation of strategic sustainability management specifically involves employees from across the entire bank and all management levels in the work groups, steering committee and our cross-divisional ‘Ökoprofit’ team. Employees are being asked to come forward and discuss their ideas and suggestions for change with the relevant contact person.

In order to navigate our way through the changing world of work with its increasing demands for speed, volume and complexity, Rentenbank updated its ‘Guidelines for management and cooperation’ in 2019/2020 as a result of several workshops in which employees from all divisions participated. The following six core elements make up the joint output of these workshops:

• Open to change
• Working as one
• Good communication
• Making the right decisions
• Solution-oriented error culture
• Exercising a positive management culture

Occupational health management and job security
Through programmes based on physical and mental health, Rentenbank prioritises the systematic management of the health of its employees. This includes regular health days, contributions towards memberships of gyms of the employee’s choice, individual health training sessions, corporate sport groups as well as corporate integration management, among other things. We also offer the advisory service 'pme Familienservice' (life coaching, care for the elderly, addiction prevention etc.), which all employees can use free of charge.

Affordable meals which are healthy and balanced are available from our own canteen.

'Health as a management task' forms part of the compulsory training programme for all managers. Rentenbank’s organisational structure for dealing with occupational health and safety creates the framework for protecting employees from dangers at work. Rentenbank has set up a staff safety committee, which is made up of members of the staff council, the Health and Safety Officer, the representative for the severely disabled and Rentenbank’s HR management, among others.

Objectives
Objectives towards reconciling professional and personal lives as well as equality and other standard employee rights are in most cases regulated by law, and are firmly-established at Rentenbank. We prioritise the following activities over and above our statutory duties:

• Creating awareness among employees about the importance of a good work-life balance while reconciling their work with their families and caring responsibilities
• Facilitating mobile working
• Improving gender equality
• Increasing the number of women in management and specialist roles
• Expanding and quality-checking the training options for our employees
• Promoting and sustaining good physical and mental health among our employees