Employees

Empowering people. Advancing care. Inspiring with our purpose and values.

Our around 111,500 employees are our most valuable asset in bringing Fresenius Medical Care’s vision to life. That is why we give top priority to:

Fostering an attractive, fair, and trusting work environment
Growing and helping others to grow
Together working to remain a successful, leading health care company

Employer attractiveness and employee retention

We aim to continuously attract, select, onboard and retain the right people for the right roles to enable us to translate our vision into reality and achieve our business goals. Thousands of new employees join us every year.

Our efforts to strengthen our position as an employer of choice include:

Creating and implementing a “one global employer” brand based on our global employment value proposition
Harmonizing and integrating our external and internal job boards and career sites in the course of implementing our Human Resources Information System
Regularly tracking our employee turnover rate and monitoring our progress in this area

Employee engagement

The ability to attract, but also to retain talent, is essential for our Company’s success. So that our employees remain committed to our corporate targets and values and contribute to our long-term success, we have put various measures in place to encourage and improve employee engagement.

Our goal is to establish an ongoing dialogue with our employees with the aim of boosting commitment, increasing performance, and ultimately improving patients’ quality of life. To this end, we conduct regular engagement surveys, including pulse surveys, to gather feedback and assess employees’ engagement levels, tracking the overall engagement score.

Learning and development

Our ability to continually learn and quickly apply the knowledge we have gained not only gives us a competitive edge, but also drives excellence in patient care and promotes employee engagement – now and in the future.

This is why we invest in our employees on an ongoing basis:

Participation in programs at world-class business schools for our senior managers
Leadership development programs aligned with our business strategy and focused on future capabilities
Regular training for our nurses and healthcare professionals
Structured, on-the-job training for our manufacturing staff
Access to high-quality digital content available 24/7 for all employees worldwide

In 2023, Fresenius Medical Care will launch a new global learning platform that integrates our existing systems and content to give all employees the opportunity to learn, develop and grow. This new system will also increase our reporting and learning analytics capabilities.

Further opportunities for learning include mentoring, coaching, short-term assignments and project experience to build expertise.

Respecting human rights

As a global health care company, we are committed to saving lives, promoting health and improving our patients’ quality of life. Our products and services help to improve access to good and affordable health care in many countries. Respecting human rights and upholding labor and employment standards are an integral part of our corporate responsibility.

In 2023, the Management Board renewed our Human Rights commitment by adopting a Human Rights Statement, that supersedes previous statements, namely the Global Human Rights, Workplace Rights and Labor and Employment Principles from 2019 and Fresenius Group Human Rights Statement from early 2023. This statement builds on our commitment to respect human rights as stipulated in our Code of Ethics and Business Conduct (“CoC”) and complements our other relevant policies and guidelines.

This document outlines our approach to embedding respect for human rights in our worldwide business activities – both in our own operations and in our supply chains. It is guided by relevant international standards including the principles described in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, as well as the International Labor Organization’s 1998 Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, and applicable legislation such as the German Human Rights Due Diligence in Supply Chains Act (Lieferkettensorgfaltspflichtengesetz).

Diversity, equity, and inclusion

We want our employees to feel empowered and appreciated, which is why we attach great importance to diversity, equity, and inclusion – not just as a smart thing to do, but as the right thing to do.

Diversity is defined in a broad way, including – but not limited to – age, gender, nationality, cultural and ethnic origin, sexual orientation, disability, educational background, and work experience. Diversity can only be effective in the context of inclusion. We define inclusion as giving people the feeling that they are respected and valued as unique individuals. Consequently, our global diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts focus on enhancing the sense of belonging of all our employees worldwide.

We do this at a global, regional and local level through:

Communication and events
Training, for example on unconscious bias
Creating and reviewing policies
Metrics, such as the questions in our engagement survey (example: “I feel a sense of belonging at work”), and the number of employees engaged in Employee Resource Groups
Leadership engagement programs
Employee resource groups such as LGBTQIA & Allies ERG or the Women in Technology ERG in North America or the Women’s Leaders Network in Asia Pacific.

The Management Board of Fresenius Medical Care drives and supports all diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts and monitors their progress on a regular basis. It has also defined female leadership participation targets for the first two management levels until 2025.

Diversity in governance bodies at Fresenius Medical Care has greatly increased in recent years.

Our diversity, equity, and inclusion commitment includes applying fair pay and compensation principles to our workforce.

The difference is feeling confident throughout the entire treatment.

The more diverse we are, the more we can learn from each other, and the more successful we will be as a team. To be able to feel we belong and develop our full potential, we need to respect and value each other. That way, we can contribute most effectively to creating a future worth living for our patients across the globe.

Helen Giza

CEO

Occupational health and safety

The health and safety of our employees and contractors is one of our top priorities. Occupational health and safety measures include identifying, mitigating and preventing potential work-related hazards and risks.

In 2021, we defined a global Occupational Health and Safety Policy that outlines our commitment to providing a healthy and safe workplace for our employees and contractors. This is also incorporated in our Code of Ethics and Business Conduct

As part of our Global Sustainability Program, we aim to facilitate the sharing of best practices across all of our regions to identify the root causes of incidents and take appropriate corrective and preventive action.