Employees & Society – AT&S Explains

At AT&S, employees are of the utmost importance. “We care about people” is a statement we have found to be true many times over – especially throughout the course of the pandemic.

Many of our readers may remember how we helped our Chinese colleagues when Covid-19 first broke out, and how they helped us when the virus arrived in Austria. Even now, when India struggled with rising infection rates once again, we tried our best to help. Be it by setting up a COVID vaccination camp in Karnataka, India, and offering vaccinations for all employees or producing the printed circuit boards needed for life-saving ventilators – We, genuinely, Care About People.

However, these efforts alone are not what make up the strategic field of action “Employees & Society” – there are many more.

The SDGs we are contributing towards in this strategic field are illustrated below.

At AT&S, we do not tolerate any kind of misconduct, whether it is abuse of human rights, suspected corruption, inadequate working conditions or other violations of our Code of Conduct. Therefore, we have put a few items in place to ensure these rules are followed, such as the “We Care” whistleblowing platform, accessible for all our employees to put forward any issues anonymously and our zero tolerance policy known as the “Anti-Corruption Guidelines”. Due to the secrecy needed in many cases for projects within the company, many employees additionally undergo special anti-corruption training depending on their positions and activities.

Then there is the matter of diversity or what we like to call “the value of uniqueness and how we promote it”. As a globally operating company, people of different ages, ethnic or national origins, cultural and religious affiliations, political beliefs, marital status and education levels constantly meet, mix and mingle. We consider this diversity an immeasurable enrichment, as previously touched upon as part of our International Women’s Day Campaign as well as our series of “Success Stories”. These have helped shed some light on those whose career journey has been decidedly less traditional, such as our R&D Superstar Anke Steinberger or Jeffrey Reyes, our man who thinks outside the box and many more. Having such a large amount of employees with unique backgrounds offers opportunities for development, while increasing innovative strength, creativity and problem-solving skills. Think about it: If you’re surrounded by people with the same education and background, ideas tend to be the same, but what happens when you encounter new people with completely different approaches? New ideas are born and solutions are found to problems you never thought could be solved – all because of this diversity stimulating your mind.

The initiatives surrounding our employees do not end there, of course, as the AT&S diversity strategy focuses on four areas: gender, culture & ethnicity, age & generations, and skills. Our goal is to be an attractive employer to women, people of any age, culture or ethnical background as well as for people with disabilities. The first quantitative goal here is to achieve a total share of female employees of 45% by 2025, with a share of women with management responsibility of 30%.

Furthermore, we are constantly working on overcoming barriers, from physical constraints to restricted mobility. Often, we find that language and cultural characteristics can pose problems in communication. With the various locations of our plants in India, China, Austria and Korea we have a wide spread of cultures constantly interacting with each other. Therefore, we offer intercultural training and language courses to convey the differences in values, culture and behavioral patterns of these different countries, thereby ensuring a mutual understanding for each other.