Equal pay for men and women

This issue of compensation at VAUDE is not primarily a question of whether men and women are paid unequally, but whether the same or similar activities are compensated for unequally. Employees performing similar activities should receive comparable compensation regardless of their gender.

To achieve this and to balance existing pay differences, we began developing and defining a payroll system in 2012, which was introduced in 2014 with an option to make additional adjustments.

The goal of the payroll system is to reward comparable activities equally and non-comparable activities at different levels.

As a basis of the system, all sites were evaluated in the company using a point-based system and divided into different functional levels. For each of these functional levels, compensation ranges were defined.

As a further measure, we decided to introduce a minimum wage and implemented this in 2014. This is above the mandatory minimum wage introduced in 2015. A cafeteria model for non-monetary additional benefits will be defined and gradually implemented in 2015.

The respective compensation value of each employee within a functional ranking is based on various aspects such as performance, seniority, experience and age. The functional ranking and compensation ranges are published on the intranet in order to increase the transparency of our salary structures.

When comparing salaries it is clear that, except in the Functional Stage 8 within the team leader and department head level, salaries and total compensation are distributed roughly equally between men and women at VAUDE.

Salary comparison of the executives

The largest deviation of 13 percent / 21 percent in the functional stage 8 will be analyzed in greater detail in 2015 and responded to as required. For this purpose we are also using the data of the Logib-D (program "Pay equality in companies - Germany" of the Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth), which has been available since 2013, but could not previously be analyzed in detail due to its complexity in dynamics and its broad range of topics. 

Furthermore, we are planning to analyze the wages of our executives in 2015 and to gradually expand the scope to our entire company.

In 2014 we didn’t have a deliberate approach for dealing with unequal pay in general or for comparable compensation for men and women. We started to close this gap with the introduction of the wage classification system in 2014.
The wage classification system provides us with a basis for detailed analysis of possible salary differences and possible action that would need to be taken. 

The defined pay range for employees in different positions is transparently presented. This classification system clearly demonstrates that within our compensation system, no differences based on gender or other criteria such as origin or skin color are permitted – see

„Diversity in a world that’s worth living in“.