Fraunhofer-GesellschaftFor us, diversity management means open appreciation, recognition, and productive utilization of the diversity and uniqueness of all our employees. This includes equal participation and development – regardless of ethnic origin, gender, religion, ideology, disabilities, age, or sexual identity.
Fraunhofer aims to successively expand its diversity management, comprehensively and holistically. This means that the aspects are integrated into all current strategic topics – be it career or competence management, executive qualification measures, or health management.
Diversity management is a cross-sectional task and will thus be considered and promoted across the different departments and work areas in the long term. For us Diversity is a number of different dimensions, like age, gender, family structure, job position or workplace.This involves several dimensions and fields of action. In particular, Fraunhofer focuses on the fields of equal opportunities, compatibility, inclusion, and international human resources work.
Equal opportunities
The aspect of equal opportunities for women and men in the workplace is an important corporate objective – a means to ensure long-term innovation, team intelligence, and scientific excellence. We focus on recruiting female students and graduates through various recruiting measures, such as the Science Campus, in order to get more young women interested in doctoral studies and a career entry at Fraunhofer Institutes. Career advancement of female researchers and female executives is a particular focus of our diversity management activities. The TALENTA career program, which aims at structured career development, is an important tool to increase the proportion of women in management positions. Further means to promote the development of our institute’s culture at the structural level are regular monitoring, internal and external communication, and efforts to raise awareness for the aspects of unconscious bias and gender-sensitive language.
Compatibility
Through a variety of support measures to reconcile private and professional life – and by means of the Fraunhofer family logo, which emphasizes that the Fraunhofer Institutes are family-friendly – we aim to create attractive framework conditions by enabling women and men to balance professional and private life.
Inclusion
For us, "inclusion" means that people with and without disabilities can work together and conduct research at Fraunhofer as a matter of course and on an equal footing. This goes beyond the concept of "integration", aiming to identify fields of action and to develop specific measures to facilitate and promote career entry and cooperation at Fraunhofer.
International personnel work
International mobility is becoming increasingly important for science and research at Fraunhofer. On the one hand, international personnel work is intended to support employees who go abroad for a certain period of time in the context of international projects or collaborations, aiming at further qualification – and on the other hand, it helps foreign employees to get settled, take up their work smoothly, and become part of Fraunhofer. The approach helps to actively strengthen and expand global exchange and international networking.