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Recruiting
New hires
In 2021, in spite of the Covid-19 pandemic, about 23,000 new employees (including vocational trainees and dual-degree students) in Germany completed their first working day at DB Group (previous year: about 26,300). These new hires include about 3,600 maintenance technicians, more than 2,000 mainline locomotive drivers and about 1,600 signal station employees.
In 2021, we had 18,450 external new hires, excluding young professionals (previous year: 21,700). This is an important contribution to the implementation of our central strategic HR objective and to the robustness of DB Group..
NEW HIRES BY GENDER (EXCLUDING YOUNG PROFESSIONALS) AS OF DEC 31 / NP | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | |
<30 years | 7,161 | 8,247 | 8,693 | |
Share of women (%) | 30.5 | 29.3 | 28.8 | |
30 –49 years | 8,892 | 10,600 | 10,922 | |
Share of women (%) | 21.9 | 21.4 | 21.9 | |
≥50 years | 2,397 | 2,853 | 3,143 | |
Share of women (%) | 18.9 | 21.1 | 20.4 | |
DB Group | 18,450 | 21,700 | 22,758 | |
Germany (companies with about 98% of domestic employees).
This does not include the acceptance or hiring of vocational trainees and dual-degree students
The number of newly hired employees in Germany remains at a high level.
| EMPLOYEE TURNOVER / % | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | |
| Retirement-related turnove | 1.7 | 1.6 | 1.5 | |
thereof women | 1.4 | 1.4 | 1.5 | |
| Other employee turnover | 5.1 | 4.3 | 4.8 | |
thereof women | 4.6 | 3.8 | 4.5 | |
Total | 6.8 | 5.9 | 6.3 | |
Germany (companies with about 98% of domestic employees).
The figures indicate non-restructuring-related turnover of permanent employees.
Part-time working in the lead-up to retirement is also included in retirement-related employee turnover.
The rise in turnover under other employee turnover is largely due to personnel members leaving to become “extended” personnel members (for example parental leave, long-term or permanent illness).
Employer attractiveness
In 2021, we continued our major recruitment campaign. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, job interviews and events predominantly took place online (virtually).
The Covid-19 pandemic has forced companies to partially restructure and reduce their personnel. We offer affected people prospects, and fill positions using both direct hiring and lateral entry. As part of our recruiting strategy, a process standard and procedure was established and an end-to-end approach was enabled in business partnerships, covering the entire process from identifying potential candidates to hiring. DB Group cooperated with a total of 56 companies in 2021, including eight from the aviation industry. Since the end of 2020, about 1,250 applications have been received from the cooperating air carriers, which led to about 200 hiring commitments. Most of the hires were on-board train attendants, followed by lateral entries (such as drivers, traffic controllers or car inspectors). Positions were also filled in the vehicle maintenance division (for example electronics technicians, mechatronics technicians).
We have once again carried out numerous image and recruitment campaigns. The ongoing employer branding campaign “Welcome, you are one of us.” was further developed. The image campaign for students “No stress. Do something. At DB.” won a trendence Award in the category “Best Employer Brand Campaign for Students,” the German Prize for Online Communication in the “Employer Branding Campaign” category and the HR Excellence Award in the “Em-ployer Branding” category. In addition, our “Jobs for Germany” image campaign for skilled employees received the Bronze award in the “Employer Branding & Recruiting” category at the Effie Germany Awards.
We further developed our women’s recruitment strategy to improve our visibility as a leading employer for women and achieve the target of 30% women in leadership by 2024. One of the 30 measures is to celebrate World Women’s Day in the form of a DB World Women’s Month. With over 200 digital campaigns and events, 474 recruitments of female candidates were made in March 2021. In addition, two Guinness World Records™ titles on equal opportunities were created, in which more than 6,200 people participated. The world women’s month was awarded by trendence as the best digital recruiting campaign/event, and also received an HRExcellence Award in the “Recruiting campaign” category.
We have improved our employer rankings:
- In the trendence Expert Barometer, we improved by 15 places to 7th place.
- For academic professionals, we moved up the rankings to 9th place on the trendence Professional Barometer.
- In the trendence Student Barometer, we were able to improve our ranking to 15th place.