Disclosure 103-1 Explanation of the material topic and its Boundary
SFS strongly supports employee training and education. This material topic is embedded into SFS Group’s strategy, which underscores the high importance that company management accords to this topic. In the Group's strategy, SFS commits itself to a long-term partnership between employer and employee, underpinned by a strong emotional connection and mutual trust. For their part, employees take responsibility, live the same culture and values, and strive for continuous improvement. SFS views its innovation capacity as a key element in ensuring its sustained success. Consequently, it is also written in SFS’ Corporate Principles that these goals are to be achieved by, inter alia, nurture of a highly skilled workforce. SFS is therefore committed to employee empowerment and to growing and developing its employees’ professional competence. Dual education is also vital to SFS’ efforts to maintain and expand its competencies in its core production technologies, as this system is an effective means of selectively building and developing an internal pool of skilled workers.
The disclosures below are based on data that covers approximately 88% of the company’s workforce. Employees whose work is controlled by SFS, but who do not have a permanent employment contract with SFS (temporary employees) are not covered in these disclosures. Not every site has fully implemented Group reporting processes (for example, because they were acquired during the reporting period), so some employee data is still lacking or is incomplete. The survey results reported for each site are based on the applicable site-specific legal basis.
The means and methods by which SFS promotes training and development are determined locally by each site or at the respective country-level subsidiary. In Switzerland, for example, a country-wide Group document defines the scope and content of training and development policies, the financial support and paid leave provided for training purposes, and repayment obligations.