Equal Opportunity and Diversity
The principle of equal treatment at DWI
The principle of equal treatment at DWI aims at ensuring equal opportunity for all employees and to support and instate their wide-ranging diverse competences and potentials. To promote equality of women and men and to create and ensure equal opportunities, target achievements, strategic specifications and approaches are identified. Transparent personnel planning and development generate the conditions for recognizing and counteracting mechanisms of disadvantage and for developing measures that have a positive effect.
The principle of equal treatment is compulsory related to all areas of responsibility and decisions of DWI. To this end equal opportunities can be implemented and sustainably secured as consistent guiding principle and cross-sectional task as laid down in Gender Mainstreaming.
Using an active policy of gender equality DWI aims at improving career options for women in science and at enhancing the number of women especially in leadership / management positions. Based on the analysis of the workforce structure at DWI a principle of equal treatment with flexible target rates (cascade model) is drawn, which in four-year intervals is evaluated and updated.
The management at DWI is primarily responsible for equal opportunity, supported by the equal opportunity commissioner.
To implement equal opportunity and measures to reconcile work and private life is the task of all employees with management and supervisor positions and of the personnel management. At the same time it is part of the organisational culture.
DWI aims at:
- Consideration of family obligations and reconciliation of private and professional life for all employees
- Sustainable strengthening oft he proportion of women in specialist and executive positions
- Improving the access conditions and career opportunities of women
- Use of gender-appropriate language to ensure that women and men are addressed equally and are perceived as equally valid; in order to avoid gender-specific stereotyping and role definitions and to adequately communicate the principle of gender equality internally and externally.
Measures
It is the aim of DWI to design the working and organizational structures in ways that enable women and men to organize their way of life. To this end measures to reconcile, evaluate and ameliorate work and family.
Family-friendly environment at DWI is defined by individual measures such as flexible working hours, part-time work, temporary cessation of compulsory attendances, mobile working, family-friendly meeting hours, family leave (need for care of close relatives), agreement to parental leave and re-entry into working life, and assistance in searching for a suitable childcare. In addition, DWI has established a “Parents-Child-Bureau” and offers a mobile Parents-Child Box to support parents in times without external child-care.
The equal opportunity commissioner accompanies staffing, social and organizational measures regarding gender equality and is contact person for individual questions of members of the institute.
The DWI has also been a member of the "Success Factor Family" corporate network since September 2023. This is the central platform for companies in Germany that are interested in or already committed to family-conscious HR policies. It is a joint initiative of the Federal Ministry for Family Affairs and the German Chamber of Industry and Commerce.
Diversity
To develop diversity DWI has the following goals:
Realization of equal opportunities - DWI realizes equal opportunities in all areas by designing structural framework conditions in that way that all employees independently of their individual starting position are given equal access and success chances.
Promoting talented people - DWI promotes potentials of all members of the institute and thus contributes to implementing equal opportunity and excellence.
Protection against discrimination - DWI will not tolerate discrimination and ensures compliance with the General Equal Treatment (AGG). It promotes an organizational culture, where respect and appreciation remain a high priority.
As initiative to promote diversity in January 2019 the working group “Equal opportunities and diversity” was installed. Its tasks include: to identify needs for measures, to establish goals and benchmarks and to develop effective measures (e.g. welcome culture, information for new employees, buddy system, handling of discrimination).