Attractive working conditions: for the well-being of patients and employee satisfaction

Every day and every night, our employees make sure that our patients receive excellent medical care and thoughtful attention. They are the reason that Helios is the leading provider of inpatient and outpatient medical care in Germany. That is why we are doing everything in our power to offer our employees a job that they can identify with and that motivates them to develop both individually and within their teams. Our focus is firmly on respectful collaboration as equals, attractive working conditions, and comprehensive advanced training opportunities at all career stages.

Human resource indicators at Helios

In addition to our workforce employed on a permanent basis, we also employed agency staff during the reporting period. This allows us to compensate for temporary shortfalls in nursing staff and doctors, and thereby to avoid the closure of wards due to staff shortages.

At the same time, we are facing enormous challenges in recruiting human resources, ranging from a shortage of skilled staff, to demographic change, and an aging society. These challenges require human resource management at Helios to focus on fields of action such as recruitment of skilled staff, training and development of Helios qualified employees, and proactively fostering staff loyalty.. We are seeking to present attractive jobs and offerings to attract potential candidates. This approach is intended to assist us in appealing to talented employees and securing their loyalty.

Collective agreements govern fair working conditions and pay

Helios uses collective agreements to ensure more attractive working conditions, a high level of quality in care, and employee satisfaction. Working conditions are regulated in collective agreements for 83% of the 77,924 (2022: 76,255) people working at Helios in 2023.

(German language only).Our Helios Group collective agreement for non-medical staff was first concluded in 2006. Since then, it has been continuously updated and refined, and it applies at 34 of our hospitals. A company-specific collective agreement covers a further 36 hospitals, while the collective agreement for the public sector (TVöD) is applicable at ten locations. A further seven Helios hospitals are governed by the employment contract guidelines of Caritas Germany. As far as medical staff are concerned, 62 hospitals are subject to the Group collective agreements TV Ärzte Helios and TV Ärzte Helios Rhön. In seven hospitals, there are individual company-specific collective agreements for doctors, and a further ten hospitals come under the collective agreement for the public sector (TVöD) drawn up by the Association of Local Authority Employers’ Associations (Vereinigung der kommunalen Arbeitgeberverbände).

All of the collective agreements ensure equal pay, in other words the same pay for the same type of work, irrespective of gender. Under the collective agreements, Helios regularly engages in pay negotiations and these generally take place every two years. The Works Constitution Act (Betriebsverfassungsgesetz) also grants to works councils rights of co-determination and opportunities for exerting control. We pay market rates to those employees not covered by collective agreements.

Promising career opportunities with the Helios training programs

Excellent patient care thrives on well-trained staff and young people who contribute new ideas to actively shape the working day. We continued to lay the foundations for this with our training programs in 2023:

• A total of 6,008 people completed a vocational training in 2023 (2022: 5,587) at Helios, with 4,387 (2022: 4,103) of these completing a nursing training.
• In terms of our nursing apprentices, we offered employment to 80% (2022: 85%) of our program graduates during the reporting period.
• Helios had a total of 893 (2022: 985) medical students in clinical traineeships, 1,000 (2022: 971) medical students in clinical internships and 4,528 (2022: 4,357) physicians in residencies.
• Helios offers development programs for assistant nursing directors and assistants for hospital management in order to fill nursing director and hospital management vacancies more independently of the general labor market.

Further information on our apprentices is provided in the Key figures chapter.

6,008 apprentices and 84 students are in a dual study program in nursing, medicine, IT, and management

Helios provides training in a wide range of clinical settings. During the training period generally lasting three years, apprentices are paid under a collective agreement. Helios delivers training at a total of 36 company training centers or in collaboration with external training partners.
Find out more (German language only).

4,528 doctors in advanced training

Doctors rotate within a planned and structured course program for specialist training. They pass through all specialist areas and are supervised by doctors authorized to provide advanced training.
Find out more (German language only).

1,000 medical students in internships

Helios offers medical students high-quality training at a total of 58 teaching hospitals. Alongside their practical experience, students can also prepare for their exams using the Helios online library and the AMBOSS and UpToDate databases.
Find out more (German language only).

893 medical students in clinical traineeships (mandatory internship between the pre-clinical examination and the clinical internship year)

During the course of their clinical internships, medical students receive a comprehensive insight and are able to identify which specialist discipline they are most interested in.
Find out more (German language only).

38 trainees in management, nursing management, controlling and finance, human resources, marketing and communication, procurement and logistics, and IT

Helios offers trainee programs in management, nursing management, controlling and finance, marketing and communication, procurement and logistics, and IT. Over a period of two years, university graduates find out all about hospitals of different sizes in various regions.
Find out more (German language only).

Effective recruitment in an era of shortage of skilled staff

Recruitment to vacant positions in some areas is particularly challenging in the medical and healthcare sector. Competition for nursing staff is strong, especially in metropolitan areas, and specialist settings such as intensive care medicine and neonatal care. The situation is reversed for doctors, and it is more difficult to recruit staff for vacancies at smaller hospitals in more rural areas. Helios has therefore developed a number of tools to counter the shortage of skilled staff. The medical sector is one area where we are building up structured talent pools for the position of chief physician. In view of the challenges involved in the search for new employees, human resource marketing has gained increasing importance over recent years. HR Marketing works at the interface of marketing, HR management, and recruitment to continuously develop relevant offerings for potential new colleagues at Helios along their employee journey. In 2023, we were able to recruit 4,075 (2022: 3,100) new nurses. The national nursing recruitment campaign #EchtesLeben (“real life”) – launched by us in 2021 – contributed to this success.

Helios trains around 6,000 young people in approximately 50 company-owned training centers or as part of our collaborations with external training partners. This makes an important contribution to securing talented young people in skilled positions. Around 4,400 people received training in the field of nursing.

A total of 15% (2022: 15.1%) of our total workforce were recruited in the reporting year. Further data about our new recruitments is given in the chapter Key figures.

Welcome and integration programs for international nursing professionals

Alongside training in-house staff and recruiting skilled workers in Germany, Helios also recruits trained nurses from the international labor market. We are guided by the criteria of the Quality Seal Fair Recruitment Nursing in Germany (German language only). As a matter of principle, Helios does not recruit staff from countries that are themselves located where there is also a shortage of nurses according to the World Health Organization (WHO). When choosing countries to recruit from, a decisive factor for us is that the local professional qualifications must be recognized in Germany. In 2023, we succeeded in recruiting 1,475 international nurses.

Fast and positive integration of international skilled staff is crucial for achieving our goals of patient well-being and employee satisfaction. A comprehensive program has been put in place to achieve this.

Integration program for international staff

Offers before arrival

We provide digital integration and welcome offers even before arrival. These include a welcome course with subject-specific training and regular digital class meetings with representatives of the departments and the clinics’ integration teams. Through providing targeted language training concepts, recruits can start language training for hospital operations and everyday life before their arrival.

Offerings upon arrival

• Specialist language training and onboarding: After their arrival in Germany, we accompany and support our new colleagues with additional specialist language courses and onboarding concepts.
• Advisory offerings: We give advice and support to new international employees when they arrive in Germany, during integration into their new workplace, and when dealing with government authorities.
• Integration managers: In addition, Helios has also trained employees to be integration managers. They are supported by practical instructors, mentors and learning buddies.
• Cultural ambassadors: to promote a culture of openness and understanding within the teams, 14 additional employees were trained to be cultural ambassadors in 2023.

In 2023, Helios recruited more than 300 refugees, primarily in medical and nursing positions. As an employer, Helios is fundamentally committed to successful integration of refugees who are unable to return to their country or do not want to. Early integration of refugees into the daily life of hospitals enhances their chances of staying in Germany over the long term. We would like to make a contribution to this.

In 2023, our employees created a recipe book of cultures as a milestone for a sustainable, open society. The recipe book collects international and national recipes that are regularly swapped between members of our teams at Helios. This is a way for colleagues to get to know each other better and learn about other cultures and ways of life.

Investing in the professional development of our employees

As well as training our own employees, we believe it is crucial to facilitate further development and qualification options for staff. This ensures the continued high quality of healthcare and continuously opens up perspectives and career opportunities for our personnel. In order to achieve this, we offer numerous opportunities for further training. These training options are coordinated centrally by the Helios Academy, but many of these opportunities are planned and implemented on a regional basis to ensure a local offer tailored to the target group. Hospitals are expected to reinvest up to 0.4% of their annual revenue in the training and professional development of their employees each year. In 2023, the actual amount invested by our hospitals in continuing education and professional development averaged 0.43% (2022: 0.31%). This is equivalent to a total of €29.47 million. Furthermore, Helios invested €534,000 in innovative career training projects as part of the qualification initiative Kick-off Training. In order to assess our training and development measures, our managers are required to offer a development meeting to each of their employees at least once a year.

Digital formats for easy access to learning offers

We primarily use digital formats in all areas of training and career development. Over the course of 2023, we registered a total of 984,115 log-ins on the Helios “Lernbar” learning management platform. The trend toward digital learning is also continuing in mandatory instruction sessions for our employees, for example on the subjects of data security and brand protection. To enable continuous knowledge management in addition to the training courses, the Helios central library provides access to some 33,000 e-books and more than 1,300 different journals online. In addition, all employees have access to the UpToDate, PubMed, AMBOSS and “Rote Liste” databases. Each year, all employees are able to undertake online training relating to two Helios knowledge goals. Two new topics are defined on an annual basis. In 2023, “Child protection at Helios” and “We live diversity” were defined as the knowledge goals for employees.

Strengthening leadership competencies: The Helios Academy for Executives

Managers at Helios have a high level of responsibility. In their function as role models, they practice honest, transparent, and dependable social interaction with their employees. This also entails explaining decisions, dealing openly with errors and learning from them, and adopting a constructive approach to the resolution of conflicts. The Helios Academy for Executives launched in 2021 is intended to support this target group in their work by offering orientation and expanding competencies as necessary. The focus is on the three areas of corporate culture, leadership culture, and specialized expertise. In 2023, more than 4,000 managers took up to 51 training offers provided by the academy for executives.