Annual report 2005 - Dexia.com

DexiaWomen, men, a groupPlace of women:the measures introducedin the Group as a whole• Making the executive aware ofthe issues of diversity.• Forbidding direct or indirectdiscrimination.• Promoting the recruitmentof female talents: not positivediscrimination but recruitmentagencies and HR teams mustimplement the means to presentmale and female candidates equallyto operational heads.• Creating a better balancebetween private and professionallife: in order to enable greaterflexibility in the management oftimetables, Dexia undertakes toincrease the opportunities of accessfrom a distance to professionalmails or computer files.• Ensuring the maintenance ofa link and facilitating return: toCommitting to diversityDevelopment also relies on good integrationof human resources and on their diversity.For Dexia, the idea of diversity encompassesenable women to maintain a linkduring maternity leave so as tofacilitate their return when it hasended.• Enabling non-linear careerdevelopment: “double ambition”.The Group undertakes to developa mechanism which enableswomen officially to take a break intheir career during times when theywant to dedicate themselves tobringing up their children.• Succession management:promoting the detection ofpotential female executivesby increasing the number ofwomen presented by entities tothe assessment procedure.• Assessing performances:integrating female values intothe executive assessment process.extremely broad fields such as language,culture, training, origin, age or handicap.In 2005, Dexia made commitments in thesefields and principally developed actions onthe themes of sexual equality, ethnic diversityand handicapped workers (in France).In 2004, Dexia launched the project ‘The placeof women in the Dexia Group’. The objectiveis to have mentalities evolve and to enablegreater advantage to be taken of the pool ofskills vital to the development of the Groupin the long term. Following publicationof the White Paper, a series of actions wasdecided upon in 2005 and progressivelyimplemented in the Group.In France, the policy of integratinghandicapped people entered a new phasewith the introduction of a specific actionplan in March 2005. It relies on internalcommunication and awareness actions,on a better knowledge of the world ofhandicapped people, and partnerships withspecialist associations. These initiatives mustpermit an increase, from 2006, of the numberof handicapped people in the workforce.Sharing growthThe development of the employee shareholderstructure is also a major factor in integration.To date, Dexia is still the only companyunder Belgian law to offer an internationalshareholding plan including a range of threeoffers enabling its members of staff to invest,depending on their means, in the shares of theircompany. In 2005, 4.82% of Dexia shares wereheld by its members of staff, which representeda stock market value as of December 31, 2005of more than a billion euros.102