Merck’s success is significantly influenced by the competence and dedication of its employees. Due to intensive competition, it is increasingly difficult to recruit and retain qualified specialists, particularly in the pharmaceutical sector.
We are meeting this challenge by continuously enhancing our range of international personnel marketing measures. Merck addresses specialists and executives by means of a Talent & Succession Management process established throughout the Group. This process helps to identify internal talent for management positions and facilitates the objective assessment and development of talent, thus enabling positions to be quickly filled with suitable employees as a result of targeted selection via an internal talent pool. Vacancies arising over the short term are managed by means of clearly defined, appropriate deputizing arrangements. Key factors for employee retention and satisfaction are identified and evaluated by means of regular, corporate-wide employee surveys. We derive measures from the results of these surveys and monitor their efficacy in follow-up surveys. A performance management system applicable to the whole Merck Group was introduced to better measure employee contributions to the company’s success. This is to facilitate a consistent evaluation of the degree to which personal goals are achieved and for measuring the degree to which the Merck Values are lived. On this basis, individual HR development measures are identified and implemented. This ensures the targeted preparation of employees for new business challenges and their motivation to solve these challenges for the benefit of the company. The Rewards Policy system complements this process by ensuring that performance-related payment components are handled consistently throughout the Group. The Merck Long-Term Incentive Plan offers eligible executives and experts a long-term, profit-related compensation component. More information can be found in Note (32).
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