CIE PEOPLE

At CIE Automotive we place importance on people by respecting their fundamental rights, providing them with fair working conditions and fostering their capacity for initiative, creativity and innovation, participation and teamwork, their ability to achieve objectives and add value, and their positive attitude to change and continuous improvement.

Relations are based on mutual trust, respect and recognition of everybody’s dignity, as laid down in the group’s Code of Professional Conduct.

Statistics about our workforce

Job map at CIE Automotive (at year-end 2023)

Distribution of the workforce

Different geographical talent

At year-end 2023, CIE Automotive had 25,294 employees in 19 countries on four continents. In all countries, it complies with prevailing labour legislation and adapts to the customs and practices of each area, in line with its Human Rights Policy. The management of this diversity is a priority for the company, which strives to find common points of cooperation between people from different cultures, to promote a sense of belonging and to achieve the assumption of a shared identity throughout the group. The search for cooperation between different cultures and the valuing of talent regardless of its place of origin is evidenced by the fact that 89% of the group's managers are nationals of the country of the plant they manage and 1% of the members of the plants' Management Committees are local personnel.

People with disabilities

People with differing abilities account for 1% of the workforce. Inclusion of these people is heavily influenced by the sensitivities and legislation of each country. Europe and Brazil stand out, reporting considerably higher percentages. In addition to its employees with differing abilities, CIE Automotive purchases a range of services from special employment centres and similar entities that support the integration of people with differing abilities into the workforce.

Gender

A truly representative Diversity Committee

Diversity management is one the company’s most important challenges as it strives to bring together people of different cultures, genders, generations and abilities. As a result, the 2025 Strategic Plan sets the target of carrying out diversity & inclusion assessments at 100% of its factories so as to get a global snapshot of diversity across the group and take the opportune measures.

At year-end 2023, those assessments had been completed at 98 factories around the world, 93% of the 105 factories under the scope of the Plan (all except those acquired after 2020). Each factory establishes an action plan on the basis of the information obtained and conclusions it yields. Note that CIE Automotive manages diversity using the same decentralised approach as it applies to the rest of its management efforts and it is therefore up to each factory, based on the hard data, the environment in which it operates and the knowledge of the local managers to establish which areas of diversity they want to work on and set their own measures and action plans. Execution of the action plans is monitored by the factories themselves and by the corporate Human Resources Department.

The assessments are being conducted using a shared diversity and inclusion tool which evaluates diversity in terms of gender, age, culture and abilities. Diversity is measured using specific metrics and improved using practices related with talent such as recruiting, selection, promotion, training, remuneration, performance evaluation and job mobility, among others. There is also a questionnaire to analyse each factory’s specific sensitivities.

The Diversity, Equality and Inclusion Committee, set up in 2021, made up of 14 professionals representing all divisions and regions, is responsible for the performance of these assessments.

To the extent that the assessments identify common problems, the Committee is considering the possibility of launching corporate actions in the coming years for either several factories or even the entire group.

Members of Diversity Committee

CIE Automotive offers its employees decent working conditions, remuneration in line with the work they perform and the training and safety conditions needed to do their jobs. It respects its employees’ right to exercise freedom of association and to collective bargaining, regardless of the country they are working in.

These commitments are formally enshrined in the company’s Human Rights Policy, which is signed by all factory and HR managers, and is worded in conformity with the International Labor Organization’s fundamental conventions and the labour principles set down in the United Nations Global Compact.

To ensure those rights are upheld, the company conducts a survey every year to identify the factories at risk of breaching them, taking opportune measures as necessary. In 2023, 100% of the group’s factories reported that they had identified no such risks.

Labour relations at CIE Automotive are governed by moral principles and respect for people.

CIE Automotive values and respects its employees’ right to exercise freedom of association and encourages collective bargaining, engaging in constant dialogue with its workers’ representatives at its European factories as well as in less unionised countries. In 2023, 56% of the group’s employees were covered by collective bargaining agreements.

Over the course of the year, the company entered into 39 collective bargaining agreements (regional, sectoral and some factory-specific) at a number of facilities in the following countries: Mexico, Brazil, Spain, France, Italy, the Czech Republic, Romania, India and China.

These agreements feature specific obligations on the part of the company negotiated with the workers’ representatives at each factory although they all tend to emphasise essential matters such as occupational health and safety.

• See Human Rights Policy. »
• Go to Ethical Channel »
• See Harassment Prevention and Resolution Policy. »

CIE Automotive guarantees the provision of safe and healthy working conditions for its employees, working actively to protect their health, in strict compliance with its Health and Safety Policy, which us approved at the senior management level. Expansion of this policy has yielded very encouraging results, as borne out by the fact that the group achieved record safety results in 2022, and then again in 2023.

Occupational health and safety is managed on a decentralised basis. CIE Automotive has an outside safety service that covers the four legally-stipulated areas of accident prevention expertise and a health and safety officer at each of its productive facilities, more than 100 people worldwide in total.

That effort is shored up by a corporate health and safety department which regularly audits the factories and serves as contact point for issues related with occupational health and safety.

At the factory level, the safety staff inspect the adequacy of the company’s facilities, conduct emergency evacuation drills, provide training, assist with incident investigations and carry out awareness drives.

Health and safety training

Employees receive safety training tailored to the risks posed by their jobs. In 2023, CIE Automotive provided 194,509 hours of health and safety training to 12,681 employees (9,327 men and 3,354 women).

Accidents and injuries

Certifications

Under its 2025 Strategic Plan, CIE Automotive is aiming to have 100% of its factories ISO 45001-certified by 2025. This is the benchmark international occupational health and safety management system standard designed to protect workers and visitors from accidents and workplace illnesses. In 2023 the group certified four factories in Portugal, India and China, bringing the total number of factories certified to 95, which is 94% of the total.

CIE Automotive has a people management model in which the skill profiles of the workforce are defined and the performance of managers, supervisors and experts is assessed, at the same time identifying areas for improvement and designing career and training plans through a personal development programme.

On the basis of the company’s values, employees’ skills are assessed in eight categories: Focus on results, customer relations, proactiveness and innovation, teamwork, decision-making, flexibility and leadership.

Employee remuneration

Employees are paid a fixed salary, in line with the nature of the job they perform and the assessment of their performance. Nearly 7,000 employees also received a variable salary or bonus as a result of the positive assessment of the objectives set, excellence in their duties or higher performance, which is assessed through the Professional Development Plan (PDP) tool.

The remuneration of CIE Automotive's employees meets and, in many cases, exceeds the minimum salary requirements in each country. This is verified by the Corporate Human Resources Department when an acquisition takes place in order to corroborate compliance with the law and to bring employees' rights into line with those of the rest of the Group.

Aside from wages, the company supports its employees with a series of company benefits which enhance their and their families’ quality of living and generate a sense of belonging. These benefits entailed an investment of close to €35 million in 2023.

Continuous employee training is essential for CIE Automotive, not only because it allows its employees update their skills and knowledge but also because it contributes to their productivity and efficiency, as well as increasing their ability to innovate in an environment being shaped by technological advances and competitiveness.

The company imparted 807,806 hours of training in 2023. The breakdown by employee category was more than 96,000 hours for executives, over 228,000 hours for university graduates and over 483,000 hours for factory workers.

Although the majority of employees who benefitted from training programme were men, reflecting the company’s predominantly male workforce, the number of training hours received by female employees (46 hours per female employee trained) was higher compared to their male colleagues (38 hours per male employee trained). That phenomenon was common to all regions.

Job training is aimed at facilitating acquisition of the skills needed to enable effective job performance. A good part of the company’s training effort is decentralised, taking place at each factory, in keeping with the guidelines set down in the Training Plan Procedure. That plan indicates the phases each factory’s training programmes need to follow: identification of training needs, planning, definition, execution, evaluation and feedback.

ESG training

Social, Environmental and Governance (ESG) training for plant management teams is one of the priority objectives of the Strategic Plan, which envisages training 100% of the members of plant management committees worldwide by 2025.

At 31 December 2023, virtually all of the group’s managers had received ESG training (97% of the members of the factory management committees, excluding the factories acquired this year, trained on ESG considerations)

EXPANSION OF THE ULYSSES PROGRAMME, A BET ON INCLUSION AND MOBILITY

CIE Automotive strives to foster a shared culture across all of its markets and encourages employees to progress at the company through mobility programmes, in line with the targets set down in its 2025 ESG Plan.

Among these initiatives, the Ulysses Programme, which combines mobility and talent attraction, stands out. Thanks to this initiative, young professionals from different plants and of different nationalities attend an excellence training centre in the Basque region before going on to build their skills at the group’s emblematic factories in Spain and Italy.

This programme delivers four key objectives: embedding the group’s values; facilitating cross-country communication going forward; fostering intragroup relationships; and providing the group with highly skilled professionals.

Since resuming the programme in the wake of the pandemic, it has been expanded to the point of exceeding the Strategic Plan target. Currently, 17 students from four countries (Brazil, Czech Republic, India and Mexico) are participating in the newest edition of the Ulysses Programme, which began in October 2023, so topping the figures established in the 2025 Strategic Plan, which called for 15 participants from three different markets. Moreover, the retention rate, two years after completing the programme, currently stands at 90% for the first edition and 100% for the second edition, likewise delivering the related Strategic Plan retention rate target of at least 80%.