The METRO Group encourages an open-minded, tolerant and international corporate culture in its operations and stores in order to meet the most diverse expectations of customers from many different cultural backgrounds. The company’s international expansion is supported by increasing mobility and international posting, ensuring a nondiscriminating working environment and promoting intercultural skills among qualified employees and executives. In addition to that, maintaining a constructive dialog with employees, workforce representatives and unions on a national and international level contributes to a fair accommodation of interests, creates a solid basis for the company’s long-term success and secures jobs.

Guidelines on social partnership

Social responsibility is a significant element of the METRO Group’s corporate culture. It reflects a commitment to fair and equitable working conditions and a constructive social partnership with employees, their representatives and trade unions. It is in this spirit that the company adopted the "METRO Group Guidelines on Social Partnership" in June 2004. The group thus commits itself to strict principles, which form the basis for cooperation between both sides of industry in the different countries where the METRO Group is active. These guidelines include, inter alia, the recognized right to collective bargaining and the freedom of association of employees.

Euro-Forum as the European works council of the METRO Group

The METRO Group Euro-Forum has been an important partner in social dialog on a European level since 1999. It is a pan-European information and consultation platform with currently around 30 employee representatives from 16 countries. The Euro-Forum serves as the European works council of the METRO Group, which is to promote the social dialog also on this level with a view to the company’s internationalization strategy. For this purpose, the delegates meet with the employer’s representatives on a regular basis for a cross-border exchange of information, giving input and consulting the group’s Management Board.

Female executives establish European network

Approximately 65 percent of the METRO Group’s employees are women. Compared to this, the share of women in executive positions could well be increased. As an employer who is dedicated to equal opportunities for all employees, the METRO Group is systematically raising the share of women in executive positions. With sustained success: since 2002, the share of women in executive positions has grown by 4.3 percent on group level to reach 19.2 percent in 2005. With considerable support from its Management Board the METRO Group established a network of female executives as an initiative to promote career opportunities for women in the group. Following its launch in Germany in 2004, the network has been further extended to the European level. Female executives from all sales divisions and cross-divisional service companies of the METRO Group met in 2005 to exchange information on manifold career options, role models, ideas and their work in the context of a European platform. In future, the METRO Group will increasingly rely on the potential of its female employees in order to cover its demand for qualified employees and executives.