Diversity as a competitive advantage

Intercultural competence is a clear advantage in global competition. Diversity means variety and incorporates all facets that an employee brings to working life at BASF worldwide. We understand and appreciate the diversity of our employees at all levels of the hierarchy as a major gain. Diverse cultural backgrounds, individual perspectives, expertise, mindsets and approaches help to ensure greater creativity, a faster pace and more innovative solutions in responding to the challenges of our business. Therefore, further internationalization is one of the key focuses of our personnel development. We recruit specialists and mana-gers worldwide, and provide intercultural training to support the integration of employees from other countries. Such programs are offered by 81.4% of Group companies (2006: 73%).

We have set ourselves the goal of increasing the proportion of international senior executives. In 2007, the percentage of non-German senior executives was 29.3%. Moreover, we want over 70% of our senior managers to have had international experience. In 2007, the percentage was 73%.

We are committed to the equal treatment of women and men. We do not make any distinction between male and female employees when it comes to setting salaries. One of our goals is to increase the proportion of women in top management positions, which amounted to 5.6% in 2007.

In the various regions, project teams are working on measures to promote diversity. In Brazil, for example, we have established an advisory committee on diversity and have drawn up specific diversity guidelines. In order to anchor diversity even more firmly in the company, we set up a global project at the beginning of 2008. It is our goal to strengthen BASF’s fundamental orientation toward employee diversity. We are assessing the significance of diversity for BASF at the regional and global levels, are developing global measures and goals accordingly.
More information can be found at: corporate.basf.com/diversity_e