9.1 Employees

Employee Data		[Table 3.35]
	Dec. 31, 2008	Dec. 31, 2009
	FTE	FTE
Employees by region
Europe	55,500	54,500
North America	17,000	16,300
Asia/Pacific	20,800	21,600
Latin America/Middle East/Africa	15,300	16,000
Employees by corporate function
Production	49,100	47,800
Marketing and distribution	38,000	38,900
Research and development	12,300	12,400
General administration	9,200	9,300
Total	108,600	108,400
of which trainees	2,900	2,700
	%	%
Percentage of women in Bayer Group senior management	4.7	5.5
Number of nationalities in Bayer Group senior management	23	22
Proportion of full-time employees with contractually agreed working time not exceeding 48 hours per week	100	100
Proportion of employees with health insurance	97	95
Proportion of employees eligible for a company pension plan or company-financed retirement benefits	76	74
Proportion of employees covered by collective agreements, particularly on pay and conditions	57	56
The total number of employees with permanent or temporary contracts is reported in full-time equivalents, with part-time employees included in proportion to their contractual working hours.

Employee data

On December 31, 2009, the Bayer Group had 108,400 employees worldwide, compared with 108,600 at the end of 2008. Thus headcount remained virtually steady even in the crisis year 2009. In Germany we had 36,700 employees (2008: 37,400), who made up 33.9% of the Group workforce.

HealthCare employed 53,400 (2008: 53,100) people, CropScience 18,700 (2008: 18,300) and MaterialScience 14,300 (2008: 15,100). The remaining 22,000 (2008: 22,100) employees worked mainly for the service companies. This figure also includes the 600 (2008: 600) employees of Bayer AG.

Personnel expenses rose in 2009 by 3.8% to €7,776 million (2008: €7,491 million), mainly due to exchange-rate effects and the higher contributions to the German pension assurance association.

Employees by Region (2008 in parentheses)

Sustainable human resources policy

Bayer pursues a sustainable human resources policy focusing on diversity, equality of opportunity, support for our employees’ personal and career development, and social security. Our social responsibility is reflected in the fact that 74% of our workforce has access to a corporate pension plan of some kind. Nearly all of our employees throughout the world either have statutory health insurance or access to health insurance through the company. High social standards, performance- and market-oriented compensation with numerous additional benefits, and a wide range of career development options make Bayer an attractive employer. The fluctuation rate for the Group as a whole in 2009 was 7%.

Another feature of our corporate policy is dialogue with the employee representatives in a spirit of partnership. The working conditions for more than 55% of our global workforce are set forth in collective or company agreements. A flexibility clause in the collective bargaining agreement for the chemical industry enabled MaterialScience to cushion the effects of the global economic crisis on employees in Germany. Invoking this clause, working hours and pay were temporarily reduced for the period from February through October 2009, making official short-time working unnecessary. Moreover, in December 2009, the existing agreement under which Bayer Group companies in Germany refrain from dismissing employees for operational reasons was extended to run for a further three years.

Diversity and flexibility

The members of the Bayer Group’s top management level are drawn from 22 countries. In 2009, women made up 35% percent of the global workforce.

Bayer Group Workforce Structure	[Table 3.36]
	2009
	%
Senior managers	1
Other managers	27
Skilled employees	69
Trainees	3

Bayer provides an attractive working environment for its employees by accommodating their different needs in a number of ways. Flexible worktime models allow many employees to organize their work on a largely individual basis. In November 2009 we added to our range of employee childcare services with the inauguration of a new children’s daycare center at the site in Monheim, Germany.

Employee compensation and benefits

A largely standardized system of compensation for all employee groups and their regular participation in the company’s financial success have long been firm features of Bayer’s human resources policy. More than €460 million is earmarked for bonus awards to employees for the year 2009 under the Group-wide short-term incentive (STI) program. The individual bonuses to be paid out in the spring of 2010 will be determined for the first time according to a new system that places greater emphasis on rewarding the personal performance of the approximately 25,000 participants.

Complementing our extensive range of benefits in many countries are a variety of stock participation programs that enable employees to purchase Bayer stock at a discount, giving them a further opportunity to share in the company’s economic success. Since 2005 we have offered senior and middle managers throughout the Group uniform stock-based compensation programs known as “Aspire” that are based on ambitious earnings targets and – in the case of Group Leadership Circle members – require an appropriate personal investment in Bayer stock.

Vocational training and recruiting

Vocational training and advancing the talents of prospective young employees are crucial to the company’s future viability in view of demographic change and an anticipated shortage of skilled employees in many areas. Bayer therefore upholds its traditionally strong commitment in the area of vocational training. At our German sites alone, more than 900 young people again entered the vocational training programs offered in 2009 to prepare for careers in more than 20 occupations. They included 156 youngsters who were first given preparatory courses to improve basic skills. We also offer systematic vocational training in numerous other countries. For example, 16 young people entered our dual training programs in Mexico, 30 in Argentina and 35 in China.

Bayer aims to gain the interest of talented students through the diverse career opportunities it offers, and attract them to the company at an early stage. In 2009 Bayer Group companies once again awarded more than 1,230 challenging occupational internships to students of various disciplines worldwide. Our company’s student support activities helped us to recruit some 5,000 academics to Bayer companies as technical or managerial employees in 2009. China accounted for the largest number of newly hired employees with an academic background, at about 1,500, followed by the United States with 965 and India with 525.

Continuing education and knowledge retention

The average age of our employees worldwide in 2009 was 41. Central to our strategy for addressing demographic change is continuing education for employees in all age groups. In 2009 we spent more than €60 million in Germany alone to advance our employees’ occupational skills and help them meet changing requirements. Supported by our activities in occupational health management, the continuing education we provide is instrumental in retaining experienced employees for as long as possible and keeping their skills at a high level.

Realigning the human resources function

In 2009 Bayer continued the global realignment of its human resources (HR) function by way of the “Transforming Human Resources” project. The aim of this reorganization is to increase the value the HR function contributes to the business and enhance the quality and efficiency of HR processes throughout the Group. With the transformation in Germany successfully completed at the beginning of 2009, the country organizations in Spain, Belgium, Mexico and Brazil implemented the new operating model during the year.