Slight drop in number of employees
As of December 31, 2001, the Group employed a total of 276,235 people, representing a drop of 0.9% on the previous year. On average over the year, the total workforce amounted to 323,298 employees including trainees. The increase in the EXPRESS and LOGISTICS Corporate Divisions resulted from the first-time inclusion of newly acquired companies. In the other corporate divisions, we continued to reduce the number of employees as planned.

Performance-related remuneration for our employees
Since January 1, 2001, Deutsche Post AG has been operating a new non-civil service collective pay agreement. Since this agreement came into effect, we have been able to pay our employees on a more performance related basis using variable pay components. The simplified conditions of the agreement also helped to bring pay in line with the standard logistics industry level. The resulting considerable cost savings will continue to be reflected in income over the coming years.

We rewarded the motivated work of both salaried employees on collective pay scales and civil servants with efficiency bonuses.

Our corporate executives have considerable influence on the increase in the value of our Group. When we went public, we launched a stock option plan for around 1,000 executives globally, allowing them to take clear entrepreneurial responsibility. The exercise of the options is linked to set conditions following a three year lock-up period. More information on the stock option plan can be found in the chapter “Deutsche Post Stock”.

Employee ideas pay off
The creativity of our employees is one of our greatest assets: employee ideas implemented at Deutsche Post AG over the past year generated a calculable benefit of more than 34 million, almost treble the previous year’s figure of 12.4 million. Once again, our employees have proven that what appear to be small improvements can lead to substantial savings.

The ingenuity of our employees led to record participation in the employee suggestion system: the number of proposals rose by more than 40% to 85,000.

Additional element of occupational pension
Since January 1, 2002, we have been offering our Group’s employees in Germany subsidized capital accumulation for old age provision, the so-called Riester pension products. For this purpose, Postbank’s insurance arm PB Versicherung has established a pension fund. Our employees can pay contributions into this fund as part of the subsidized program, and in return they will receive a pension for life.

New concepts for health and safety
As a responsible employer, Deutsche Post World Net makes every effort to ensure the safety of its employees. The main emphasis of our occupational safety program focuses on preventative measures, so that accidents never happen. As a part of this, our workforce has been given intensive training on key points. An issue that caught the attention of the media in 2001 was the threat of letters that supposedly contained anthrax spores. To date there has been no evidence of anthrax spores in letters in Germany. However, we have taken all imaginable precautions as part of a comprehensive security scheme – including the provision of appropriate equipment, such as protective gloves and breathing masks – in order to protect our employees and our customers.

During 2001, the proportion of employees taking sick leave fell to 6.4% – the lowest level in the history of the company to date. We see this as more than just an indication of job satisfaction among our workforce; we also see it as a confirmation of our large range of health care offers. In addition to the annual “employee health day” at our headquarters in Bonn, our health truck also visits employees at our branches. Our employees can receive expert on-site advice on health and fitness and undergo a fitness check supervised by a doctor.

Forward-looking training
In 2001, we raised the number of training categories we provide in Germany from nine to eleven: new additions include training as IT systems clerks and warehouse management specialists. We offered unlimited full-time positions to the around 2,200 trainees who completed their training with us in the middle of the year.

The first class of IT specialists who chose a combination of traineeship and study at the Berufsakademie (university of cooperative education) has successfully completed its training with us.

In the modern world of work, soft skills such as teamwork and conflict management are playing an increasingly important role. IDEAL, our innovative training program for life skills in the work place, offers our trainees the opportunity to train these skills; last year a total of 800 people made use of this opportunity.

Professional university marketing
To help us in the competition to attract young graduates we operate – primarily in Germany – a professional university marketing program. In addition to attending various graduate job fairs, during the year under review we struck alliances with universities, held specialist presentations and conducted joint research projects.

By working together with the world’s largest student organization,AIESEC (Association internationale des étudiants en sciences économiques et commerciales) we can offer internships on every continent. In 2001,we responded to the increase in demand for internships from students in Germany and the rest of the world, and we now offer around 250 placements on our internship marketplace. The most successful interns are then included in a talent pool; we help them choose a topic for their thesis or dissertation and offer them specialist support.

During the year under review, 20 people of both sexes took part in our graduate- trainee program.Using a combination of demanding project work and training,we specifically prepare college and university graduates to assume executive positions within the Group.

Management policy
The purpose of our executive development program is to discover and promote existing management qualities within our own ranks. As part of this, in 2001 we harmonized and bundled our Group-wide activities. In future, our executive development program will consist of three steps; the first step is the annual review of potential by direct supervisors, which is then followed by a session at an assessment center and interviews in order to obtain a more objective opinion. This process culminates in measures for individual development and – for particularly suitable candidates – admission to special talent groups.

Group-wide succession planning for executives helps us to promote employees and to determine our recruitment requirements.

For senior executives, this involved combining all our development measures in the Deutsche Post University, an important platform for Group integration. Working together with leading business schools such as the Wharton Business School, we prepared business-oriented development programs. The concept is highly practical in nature thanks to the close integration with Board of Management project requirements. The first complex tackled is the topic of “value-based management”.

The increasing internationalization of our Group means that the demand for employee mobility is also growing. To help with the planning of international staff deployment, we have created a central human resources office that helps executives when switching between Group companies.