Clariant expanded the number of full-time equivalents by 4% to 18 135 in 2017. By fully integrating all people processes into one digital platform, Clariant is able to carry out a long-term planning for talents and key positions. The high priority it ascribes to the health, safety, and well-being of its employees is reflected in the low, stable Lost Time Accident Rate.

The regional distribution of FTE at Clariant remained almost unchanged compared to 2016, with slight increases in Asia-Pacific (+1.7 percentage points) and North America (+0.9 percentage points) and decreases of the same magnitude in Europe (–1.7 percentage points) and Latin America (–0.9 percentage points). The age and gender structure of Clariant employees remained constant. In 2017, 14% of employees were younger than 30 years, 60% were 30 – 50 years old, and 26% were older than 50 years. The total workforce consisted of 79% men and 21% women.

001 FTE by region

¹ Middle East/Africa

002 Age Diversity

GRI Online Report
Management Approach Talent Attraction and Development

1.1. Talent attraction and development

Talent attraction and development is seen as one of the core elements for future success in Clariant’s materiality assessment with stakeholders. It is also a key pillar in the strategies. At the same time, Clariant aligns all people processes from recruitment, on-boarding, performance management, development and deployment to ensure an integrated approach to talent management. All processes are linked on the digital platform »My Success« and provide transparency on key performance indicators achievements and will allow to predict future requirements to line management.

Clariant’s objective is to attract those people who fit with its values and who meet the defined role requirements. In 2017, Clariant hired 1 983 new employees (571 women and 1 412 men) to support its profitable growth strategy. With 31% of new hires, Europe accounted for the largest share of new employees, followed by the Asia Pacific region, accounting for 25% of new hires. Dedicated candidate attraction teams were established to identify high-potential candidates in the market. The social media campaign #RealPeopleofClariant showcases Clariant’s innovative approach to recruitment. As a result we significantly improved the »time-to-fill« vacancies.

#RealPeopleofClariant
clariant.com/real-people

A standardized on-boarding process ensures a quick integration into the organization. The on-boarding process is supported by the digital platform »My Success«. It supports the integration of newly hired or promoted employees into the new role by assigning role specific trainings and other measures during the first six to twelve months.

Clariant’s performance management process ensures that strategic business objectives are translated into the employee’s day-to-day actions. In 2017, more than 10 000 employees followed a standardized performance management process. This reflects approximately 54% of the entire workforce. To guarantee consistency in performance ratings, Human Resources leads calibration sessions for all management levels in 2017 to create a common understanding and language regarding performance expectations and rating. This calibration process covered approximately 900 employees in 2017 and will be further rolled out in the next years.

Development of skills is imperative to remain agile and drive innovation in fast evolving markets, which continuously demand new competencies. Competency development initiatives should support employees to meet current and future role requirements and should be aligned to business requirements. Therefore competency requirements are defined for key job families and key roles in the organization and employees are being evaluated against these requirements. Thus the company gets a concrete view on individual’s and organizational strengths and gaps which need to be closed. After a structured evaluation of the commercial organization in 2015 and 2016, the innovation leadership was evaluated in 2017. Each evaluated individual will receive an individual development plan. In addition, new trainings were launched in 2017 to complement Clariant Academy programs: 230 production shift leaders engaged in the »Frontline Leadership Program« and 240 individual contributors acting in a matrix organization participated in the »Leading without Formal Authority Training«. The »Pioneer Program« was launched: 25 high potentials have participated in the program, have worked on defined strategic experiments and have enjoyed a mentorship program.

Overall, 9 720 employees participated in a training recorded in the central learning management system for a total of 192 000 training hours. The average training hours per employee that has participated in trainings has increased by 4% to 20 hours per employee.

Talent Management integrates all activities from workforce planning, to attracting, developing and deploying talent. A robust Talent Management process is key for a sustainable organizational development and long term company’s success. A strong performance in the current role is a prerequisite to be nominated for the Talent Management process. Assigned talent managers lead this process across the whole organization and support line management to identify local, regional and global talents in order to plan their careers and to accelerate their development. More than 1 400 talents were discussed in 45 talent reviews across the organization and concrete development steps and career measures were defined and will be implemented in 2018. A reward for Clariant’s systematic Talent Management activities is a talent retention quote of 97% in 2017, increasing the high level of former years. For 58% of senior management positions Clariant has promoted talents, whereas overall 85% were filled with internal population.

Integrated Talent Management requires a stable technical solution that enables reliable people analytics. In 2017, Clariant has enlarged its existing digital human resource management system to create a fully integrated tool. All people processes from recruitment to onboarding, learning, talent and performance management are now managed through the »MySuccess« platform. In the meantime, the data of 19 000 employees was migrated to the system and 1 300 employee self-service workflows were completed. »MySuccess« captured 32 000 applications, 8 200 performance forms were created, and 1 500 employees were using the personal development plan functionality. These numbers illustrate the great potential of an integrated human resource platform to increase efficiency and contribute to improving Clariant's talent attraction and development practices. For more information about the digital Human Resource journey (chapter Transforming Journeys).

GRI Online Report
Management Approach Employee Engagement

1.2. Employee Engagement

In November 2016, Clariant conducted its second employee engagement survey in order to listen again to the voices of the employees and to assess what matters most to them. Almost 90% of the global workforce (2016: 17 442 FTE) were invited to participate, and 69% of those invited – representing nearly 11 000 employees – took part. In 2017, Clariant performed an in-depth analysis of the survey results. On a global level, the results show that Clariant has significantly increased its engagement score compared to the results of the first survey in 2014, reflecting that the various initiatives taken after the first survey are paying off. The Business Area Natural Resources performed exceptionally well, resulting in an engagement score increase of 12 percentage points compared to 2014. One factor that fostered this positive trend, was the increased visibility of senior management as well as the continuous improvement in employee safety and protection. These developments show that active leadership remains key in sustainably engaging an organization’s workforce.

Oliver Kinkel, Head of Region Europe, restructured his on-site visits in 2017 to address the concerns and needs of his employees. Therefore, he did not only meet local management teams and junior executives, but also organized various town hall meetings to inform employees about current issues, products and innovations. In addition to this, he invited employees to directly engage in open discussions and hence organized several meetings, for example between more than 50 young talents and the Executive Committee. A similar approach was taken in China, where ten focus group discussions with 172 employees from five different Business Units were held and led, for example, to the proposal of more non-monetary recognition programs.

Both Clariant Argentina and Indonesia reached very high scores in the engagement survey, also being mirrored by the fact that the Human Capital and Management Consultancy Aon Hewitt recognized both subsidiaries as »Best Place to Work« within their respective country in 2017.

Satisfied and motivated employees commit to themselves, their teams and to the company. They strive to improve the status quo and aspire the extraordinary. Clariant emphasizes on approachable and authentic leadership, transparent communication and appreciating the voices of employees to build a high-performance culture.

GRI Online Report
Management Approach Occupational Health, Safety, and Well-Being

1.3. Occupational health, safety, and well-being

Maintaining a safety-oriented leadership culture at all levels and across regions is a core priority for Clariant as demonstrated by its ambitious objective of zero accidents. A range of multifaceted health and safety programs, such as the AvoidingAccidents@Clariant program, underscore its commitment to the Occupational Health, Safety, and Well-being of its diverse and hard-working employees.

In 2017, there were two fatal accidents in Clariant production sites: one at the production site Cileungsi in Indonesia, and the other at the production site Jianping in China. Clariant deeply regrets these incidents and will do its utmost to pursue its objective of zero accidents in 2018. Some other people were fatally injured in traffic accidents, which Clariant also deeply regrets.

The number of lost-time accidents slightly increased from 37 in 2016 to 38 in 2017, with two cases concerning supervised (non-Clariant) workers. In addition, eight lost time accidents involved contractors, which represents a decrease of three cases compared to 2016. 79% of all occupational accidents required first aid measures, 13% medical treatment, and 8% of recorded injuries were restricted work cases. The most frequent injury types in 2017 were sprains, bruises, and contusions (31%), bone fractures (24%) and open wounds (10%). Burn injuries, chemical burns and internal injuries each accounted for 8%, poisonings for 5%, and injuries due to electrical incidents for 3%. In 3% of the cases a limb was lost.

Clariant managed to stabilize the lost time accident rate (LTAR) at a low level of 0.2 accidents per 200 000 hours of work, as compared to 0.19 in 2016. While the rate slightly increased the second time in a row (from 0.17 in 2015), it represents the third lowest level since the beginning of the monitoring. One key factor that prevented the rate from rising further, was the Leadership Improvement Initiative.

002 Lost Time Accident Rate
(accidents with at least 1 day lost/200 000 working hours)

This includes measures like site tours conducted by members of the Business Units’ management committees to ask safety related questions and deepen awareness, so called »safety moments« at the beginning of meetings, and the mandatory involvement of site managers and their next level managers in Incident Investigation Reviews.

The total number of lost workdays decreased significantly from 1 955 in 2016 to 1 135 in 2017, including 221 lost workdays carried over from 2016. This represents an improvement of 42% and indicates that the injuries became less severe. Clariant also managed to reduce the lost workday rate to 5.95 work days lost per 200 000 hours of work. Compared to 2016, this is a reduction of 39%. In 2017, Clariant’s efforts regarding Occupational Health, Safety and Well-being also resulted in excellent performances at four sites in the South-East Asia & Pacific, North America, and Greater China regions, which were awarded the Clariant Outstanding Safety Achievement Award.

Another priority area in 2017 was safety in the Business Units’ operations. Clariant’s occupational health and safety experts worked closely with sites across all regions to develop new tools that support them in fulfilling health and safety requirements. For example, Clariant has adapted their reporting requirements on Process Safety Events to the International Council of Chemical Associations. The internal guidelines and reporting templates have been modified and changes communicated accordingly. Due to the change in our Process Safety Event reporting limits starting 2018, many trainings and webinars have been carried out which have impacted the reporting culture increasing the total number of reports from 40 in 2016 to 66 in 2017. We expect that this trend will continue in the following years. The Occupational Health and Safety Department has also been working with the Business Unit Masterbatches to improve an existing tool for high-quality workplace risk assessments. The roll-out in other Business Units has already started.

Since 2017, Clariant started to enhance the monitoring of occupational accidents by distinguishing between different injury categories as first aid, medical treatment and restriced work cases at Group level. This will make it possible to concentrate on severe injuries in incident investigation and will minimize production disruptions, contributing to Clariant’s long-term profitability.

AVOIDINGACCIDENTS@CLARIANT

Occupational Health, Safety, and Well-being at Clariant means much more than wearing necessary safety gear. It is a commitment to tackle safety in a comprehensive way and ensure that every employee returns home after work as healthy as they arrived at the workplace. The most effective way to prevent occupational accidents and achieve the goal of zero accidents is by implementing a set of cohesive management programs and leadership measures. AvoidingAccidents@Clariant is a global program that creates safe working environments, raises awareness of safety, and illustrates Clariant’s focus on prevention. Since the start of the program in 2007, the lost time accident rate (LTAR) has declined from 0.92 to 0.2.

Clariant’s »Safety Counts!« cards also play an important role in ensuring health and safety, helping employees record critical safety situations and the circumstances that led to them. Improvement measures taken are shared locally, enabling the production teams to build best practices and promote a preventive mindset throughout the entire company.