Precious to Us: People – Our Goals & KPIs

Targets and Key Figures

Increasing Diversity on Management Level

Diversity begins at the top. By year-end 2025 our Global Management Team will consist of at least 40% women and at least 50% international employees (non-Germans).*

*While we fully stand behind our approach to diversity, we also aim to comply with local regulations. We therefore do not apply diversity quotas in our employment practices at our sites in the USA from 2025.

Reducing Work-related Injuries

Our ultimate objective is zero work-related lost time incidents. To achieve this target, we have numerous measures in place. As a milestone, we aim to reduce the lost time incident rate (LTIR) for our workforce to below 2* by 2030.

* number of lost time incidents per one million hours worked

Fostering Supply Chain Transparency and Progress

We are expanding our activities from the workers in our value chain to include surrounding communities and the environment.

Our ultimate aim is to ensure that all our mining partners have concrete sustainability-related targets and measures in place and track their progress and target achievement. As a milestone, we aim for 80% of our mining partners to have sustainability-related targets by end of 2026.

100% of our mining partners with targets, measures, and progress

Our employees worldwide are our most important asset. Their skills, knowledge, and dedication – as well as their diverse experience and personalities – shape our company and its success. We strive to offer attractive salaries as well as opportunities for development and are committed to providing a modern work environment in which all employees feel appreciated and can realize their full potential.

Employee Satisfaction and Benefits

We offer competitive salaries and benefits. The aim is not only to show our appreciation but also to enhance employee retention. The numbers point to our success: The average employee has been with us for 12 years, and our global voluntary turnover rate is 5.6%.

We also offer a variety of benefits at all our sites, which differ by country. Examples include insurances, housing funds, subsidized public transport, fitness courses, retirement funding, and paid leave.

Training and Education

We are committed to offering professional development opportunities to all employees throughout their career. We are aware that continuous learning and development are instrumental for attracting new employees, retaining them, and ensuring our workforce remains agile in a dynamic, global work environment. Our range of learning opportunities includes, for example, mentoring programs, in-person seminars, workshops, leadership trainings for new or experienced managers, or online training courses. In addition, we invest in our future workforce by offering apprenticeship programs, a management trainee program for graduates, internships during university programs, work-study schemes, and scholarships. For example, in Germany we employed 98 apprentices and work-study students in 2024.

Talent Management

We have been running talent programs for many years. Their purpose is to enable talented employees to take on more responsibility and fill key positions internally. In 2024, employees from our own company were appointed to 73% of our vacant Global Management Team positions, with the majority having previously participated in our talent programs. For our talent programs, we continue to aim for 50% women and 50% international employees (non-Germans).*

*While we fully stand behind our approach to diversity, we also aim to comply with local regulations. We therefore do not apply diversity quotas in our employment practices at our sites in the USA from 2025.

We are aware of the significant impact our business has on people along our value chain and recognize our responsibility for their welfare. We systematically assess our precious metals suppliers’ and business partners’ social and environmental actions, particularly with regard to protection of human rights, and engage with them to foster improvements.

Applying Strict Due Diligence

Heraeus Precious Metals takes all humanly and technically possible steps to ensure that the precious metals in its value chain originate from legitimate and responsible sources. We also do this to make sure that these metals are not associated with crime, armed conflict, or human rights abuses, and that they are not connected with money laundering, terrorism financing, tax evasion, fraud, or any other crime.

The objective of our due diligence process is to prevent the violation of human rights and ensure compliant business conduct. It therefore puts a clear focus on identifying and assessing associated risks and, if any are identified, the management of such – either by engaging in mitigation and corrective measures or, as a last resort, by terminating business relationships.

Our efforts to protect human rights along our value chain are based on recognized international industry standards. We supplement these with our own even more stringent guidelines.

Learn more about our responsible precious metals sourcing

Collaborating With Our Mining Partners

We believe that our mining partners themselves have the greatest potential to continue improving the conditions for their workers and nearby communities and encourage them in their progress, supporting them where necessary. Our ultimate aim is that 100% of our mining partners have sustainability-related targets and measures in place and track their progress and target achievement.

By the end of 2024, we successfully completed the first milestone and obtained transparency on where our mining partners stand in their ESG journey. We are now working toward the next milestone: that by the end of 2026, 80% of our mining partners will have sustainability-related targets in place.

a roadmap with milestones for transparency, improvement and progress assessment in relation to the impact of our mining partners

We value the important role of NGOs, civil society, academia, and industry associations in improving the conditions for workers and communities in our upstream value chain. Therefore, we actively engage with a broad group of different stakeholders.

Diversity at Heraeus Precious Metals

Diversity is essential to our identity and culture. We actively encourage different perspectives, put together diverse teams, provide equal opportunity, and insist on real cultural change toward a truly inclusive work environment.

More about diversity

Sustainability Report 2024

Read more about how we approach our impacts on the climate in our Sustainability Report 2024.

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Precious to Us – Our Commitment to Responsibility

We strive to realize the potential of precious metals as responsibly as possible and underline this commitment with our pledge to responsibility: precious to us.

Climate Is Precious to Us

Our business activities result in carbon emissions at our company and along our value chain. We pledge to our responsibility by putting a high priority on a significant and timely reduction of our carbon footprint.

Resources Are Precious to Us

Our business activities rely on precious resources. We live up to our responsibility by improving our processes and products so that they require fewer and fewer resources and by adopting circular approaches wherever possible.

People Are Precious to Us