Employee representatives are part of the DNA of the German governance system. New to the DAX 40 since our 2023 survey are Siemens Energy and Porsche AG. Both are co-determined and replace HelloFresh and Puma, who were not co-determined.
Diversity
Germany’s quota law stipulates that there must be at least 30% of both genders among supervisory board members of listed companies in companies with equal co-determination. With 279 employee representatives observed overall, the proportion of women (109) among them stalled at 39%.
In comparison, the proportion of women amongst shareholder representatives in co-determined companies accounts for 38% (114).
Meanwhile, the balance of the gender quota between employee representatives (which was higher in the past) and shareholder representatives has equalised.
International employee representatives account for around 9% (24); which represents an increase from 7% in 2021. The range of nationalities has remained stable over the past four years.
Average age and tenure
Like their shareholder counterparts, employees mainly elect more seasoned colleagues for the supervisory board. The average age of employee representatives has remained at 54 since 2021, after gradually rising from the 53 in previous years.
In the review period, female employee representatives average 53 years old, while their male counterparts average 55. Although the average age of male employee representatives has stabilised, the average age of female representatives increased significantly from 35 in 2022 to 53 in 2023.
However, one company in the DAX 40 did not disclose the ages of their employee representatives.
It is frequently hard to determine tenure because companies rarely disclose this data for their employee representatives who are elected internally.
Union representatives
About 25% (71) of all employee representatives are representatives of the various German unions, an increase of 25% from last year.