Responsible employer

As a company providing services, it is the Zurich Airport Group’s employees who hold the key to its success. The daily efforts of 1915 employees in over 70 different occupations have a major influence on the quality of the services and the long-term success of the company.

Relevance

The Zurich Airport Group has a major responsibility towards its own staff, and its conduct also has an influence on the working conditions of the employees of its airport partners. The company maintains a collaborative and respectful relationship with its workforce. This applies to all employees, irrespective of their background and their position in the company. Owing to the still ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, the year under review was challenging for all employees of the Zurich Airport Group as well as for the aviation industry as a whole. Along with keeping the airport running, the health and wellbeing of its workforce was therefore a key priority for the Zurich Airport Group.

Approach

Safeguarding rights and health

The Zurich Airport Group respects the international standards of the ILO (International Labour Organization) and all the labour laws applicable locally at its airports. It offers fair pay, higher than the respective minimum wage, and does not tolerate any child or forced labour, neither in the company itself nor at its suppliers, contractors and airport partners. Measures and precautions relating to human rights are described in a separate section.

Participation rights

There are no collective bargaining agreements at Zurich Airport or in India and Chile. In Brazil on the other hand, 100% of employees with a local contract of employment are legally entitled to the conditions negotiated annually in collective bargaining agreements.

A comprehensive employee survey is carried out at Zurich Airport at regular intervals. The last survey was conducted in 2016. Scores for work satisfaction and having a sense of belonging to the company were very high. It was intended to hold a new employee survey in 2020, but that had to be postponed due to the pandemic. A new employee survey is planned for 2022.

Health management

Flughafen Zürich AG’s health management policy is aimed at promoting and maintaining the health of its employees, both at the workplace and in their private lives. On the one hand this includes occupational safety (see Occupational and aviation safety section), that is to say the prevention of accidents and other negative health impacts resulting from work. On the other hand, Flughafen Zürich AG offers its workforce an extensive range of opportunities to improve their physical and mental health. For instance, the company offers free sport benefits and free vaccinations against flu and – for personnel exposed to them – tick-borne encephalitis (FSME), Hepatitis A and B, as well as specific travel vaccines for staff who are sent to work abroad. Flughafen Zürich AG also regularly informs its workforce about certain issues through campaigns – on workplace ergonomics, on preventing accidents, on healthy eating, and much more besides.

If they have any personal issues or work problems, employees at Zurich Airport also have the option of contacting an external advice center for free and confidential advice. The center can be contacted 24/7 and is completely confidential – Flughafen Zürich AG cannot determine who has made use of this service.

At the airports in Brazil, employees must be allowed to participate in a “CIPA” forum (Comissão Interna de Prevenção de Acidentes de Trabalho). As well as promoting good health, such forums seek to prevent workplace accidents and occupational illnesses. Employees choose the members of this body themselves.

Attractive and secure jobs

An airport is a unique working environment involving an enormous variety of jobs. The jobs Flughafen Zürich AG offers are attractive to applicants and cover a wide range of occupations: both highly qualified specialists and less-qualified individuals can find jobs with the company. This also applies to the other companies operating at Zurich Airport – a total of 270 firms employing some 25,000 people between them.

Flughafen Zürich AG was a reliable partner for its employees during 2021 as the year continued to be overshadowed by the Covid-19 pandemic. The short-time working at the Zurich site that came into effect in March 2020 continued into the reporting year. However, the company made up the difference in pay resulting from the reduced working hours so no one suffered a drop in earnings.

As the instrument of short-time working does not exist there, it was not possible to maintain such stability at the airports in Latin America so unfortunately it proved necessary to cut some jobs there.

Flughafen Zürich AG attaches importance to fair, market-based remuneration: it pays bonuses above the statutory minimum for working at night and over weekends and holidays. It also awards bonuses for work in especially unpleasant, dirty or noisy environments.

At the airports in Latin America, the company contributes to employee health insurance premiums. While arranging and paying for health insurance policies for workers is mandatory in Brazil, in Chile the subsidiary voluntarily pays 70% of these costs.

Pay survey

From 30 June 2021, new legislation required businesses in Switzerland to compare remuneration using a pay equality tool provided by the federal government (Logib). According to its method of calculation, there was a gender pay gap of 3.5% in favour of men in the reporting year, which is within the Confederation’s tolerance threshold of 5%. Taking a more granular look at the individual hierarchy levels during the reporting year yields a more detailed picture of the pay disparities between men and women. Flughafen Zürich AG distinguishes six function levels, with 1 to 3 being management levels. At +/-1.5%, pay disparity at the management levels is minimal. On function level 4, women receive 3.4% more pay. At the lower function levels 5 and 6, on the other hand, women are paid 7.0% and 4.1% less respectively.

Pension fund

In Brazil, the subsidiaries match the amount of any additional payments into a private pension plan.

Discounts

All Zurich staff enjoy a range of benefits and discounts at the airport such as discounted prices in cafes and shops.

As in Zurich, employees in Brazil benefit from discounts in stores at the airports. Certain deals for employees have also been negotiated with schools, shops, pharmacies, etc.

Work-life balance

Employees can produce first-rate work not only in an office, but also increasingly at other locations too. In the wake of the pandemic, there has been a significant upsurge in remote working, i.e. working from home or at another place away from the company. Wherever feasible and expedient, Flughafen Zürich AG can provide the necessary equipment and organisational structures to facilitate remote working. Meeting face-to-face in person on site remains important too, however. Moreover, many employees cannot work remotely as their particular job requires their physical presence on site.

All Zurich-based staff benefit from flexible working time models. These enable them, for instance, to work around family commitments, devote time to important public or political office, have time for further education, or simply pursue social activities. The annual hours working time model provides a basic level of flexibility for most employees. 32% of Zurich-based employees with open-ended contracts worked part-time in the year under review. To encourage more part-time working, the company offers the option of a trial reduction in working hours for three months. It also supports unpaid leave, allowing employees to pursue life goals such as world travel, longer courses of study, extended maternity or paternity leave, or for any other reason they wish a leave of absence. After such time spent on personal development, they will return to their jobs with renewed energy and all the more motivated.

The ability to combine work with family life is especially important to Flughafen Zürich AG. In addition to the enhanced flexibility options outlined above, new mothers receive 16 weeks paid maternity leave, two weeks more than the statutory minimum. Fathers are entitled to the statutory 10 days paternity leave.

Education and professional development

The provision of apprenticeships is both an investment in the company’s future and a contribution to wider society and the economy in general. The company employed 40 apprentices in 13 different vocational education schemes in the year under review. Additionally during the reporting year, a total of 3 interns received work experience over several months. In total, the number of trainees represents around 3% of the overall workforce.

A 14-month programme for trainees is offered at the Florianópolis, Vitória and Macaé airports, with a total of five people being trained during the reporting year.

The company offers a very wide range of training courses at its Zurich headquarters. Employees and managers can deepen or extend their technical, personal and social competences in a variety of seminars and training courses. Overall approximately 450 courses are offered. While a large number of training courses are mandatory for certain groups to enable them to continue practising their professions, there are also a wide variety of other learning and development opportunities for employees. Flughafen Zürich AG furthermore contributes funding and/or time for specific external training courses, on average for some 60 employees each year.

As the operator of several airports around the world, the Zurich Airport Group furthermore offers suitable personnel the opportunity to take up airport-related posts abroad so they can develop their skills in an international environment.

Key data