Diversity and equal opportunities

All employees should have the same opportunities at Helsana, whatever their gender, age, religion, culture, sexual orientation and physical or mental capacities. Discrimination is something that Helsana does not accept. We promote accessibility, a workplace free from discrimination, job/top sharing and a good work-life balance. Our employees have to feel valued as individuals.

More women in management positions

Equal pay and career opportunities send out a clear signal against gender discrimination and are important factors when it comes to retaining qualified employees. To this end, we took the following measures in the reporting year:

• At the beginning of 2023, we introduced a new remuneration system and largely abolished variable salary components. We also disclosed all functions and their salary bands to all employees. This allowed us to create the basis for transparent and fair remuneration.
• To ensure equal pay, we once again carried out an equal pay analysis in the summer of 2023. Our analysis identified an unexplained gender pay gap of 3.7%. The results serve as a basis for the measures we need to adopt to allow us to achieve the target we have set ourselves: within the next three years, the unexplained gender pay gap will be eliminated. This will mean that we have successfully achieved equal pay.

Helsana values diversity among its leaders and managers, and one of its current priorities is increasing the proportion of women in those positions. In particular, the proportion of women in top management is to be raised from 16% to 25%, and from 33% to 35% in the management level below top management (middle management), in the next three years. To help us achieve this, we are raising awareness among our managers, for example, and we are gearing our recruitment, succession and career planning more towards women.

We have also taken the following measures to promote diversity and equal opportunities:

• Based on the results of the “DisAbility Kompass 2022”¹ external analysis, we have developed measures related to “Working with a disability”. By way of example, we checked all of Helsana’s online channels for accessibility and optimised the recruitment process accordingly.
• To raise awareness among managers, we offered training courses such as “Leadership with a generational mix – understanding and bringing together different generations” and “Fairer leadership – exploring unconscious bias and stereotypes”.
• In terms of work-life balance, we offered top sharing models and courses for parents, and organised a “Lunch & Learn” session on work-life balance from a father’s perspective.

We also take part in the University of St. Gallen’s² annual diversity benchmarking programme, including a sector comparison, analyse the results and develop measures to promote further improvement. We will see whether the measures bear fruit in 2024 when we are set to undergo the UND³ recertification process for work-life balance. Helsana was awarded the UND rating for the first time in 2018 and was recertified in 2021.