Com­mit­ment

De­mo­graph­ic change and ac­company­ing pro­cess­es of social up­heaval are plac­ing new de­mands on the world of work. Under the head­ing of "NewWork@Helaba" we are driv­ing for­ward new work­place con­cepts and modern forms of man­age­ment and team­work in the bank. We regard trust, re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and com­mit­ment as the basis for suc­cess­ful col­lab­o­ra­tion that tran­scends hierar­chies.

It is under­pinn­ed by a Group-wide trans­forma­tion process called "Helaba on the Move", in which we want to in­clude everyone who works for us on this journey to change the bank. Our aim is to create a work­ing en­vi­ron­ment where mem­bers of staff can make rapid de­ci­sions, assume in­di­vid­ual re­spon­si­bil­­ity, organise them­selves and actively par­tic­i­pate in de­velop­ing their skills.

The sus­tain­abil­i­ty of our value chain and product range is an integral part of Helaba's busi­ness strat­egy. We operate in a way that con­serves re­sources as ef­fec­tive­ly as possible and support our clients in min­imis­ing their eco­logical foot­print with green finan­cial products.

• Prop­er­ties: Over 90% of the elec­tric­­ity used in our office build­ings comes from re­new­able energy sources. The MAIN TOWER, Helaba's principal head­quarters, has even been awarded the highest-possible rating as a sustain­able and energy-efficient build­ing ac­cord­ing to the stan­dards of Leader­ship in Energy and Environ­mental Design (LEED).

• Mobil­ity: If busi­ness trips cannot be avoided by using video or telephone confer­ences instead, we use public transport. Our fleet of company cars is also becoming in­creasing­ly greener: guide­lines on company cars specify low-consump­tion and low-emission vehi­cles; high-powered models are not permitt­ed. It also sets an upper limit for CO2 emis­sions.

• Waste man­age­ment: Beyond emis­sions, our busi­ness ac­tivi­ties have a com­par­a­tive­ly low im­pact on the en­viron­ment: we do not use dis­posable coffee cups or can­teen pack­ag­ing. We raise aware­ness among our staff to con­serve re­sources when printing docu­ments. Inter­nal and exter­nal cor­respon­dence is largely digital and any printed material is almost ex­clu­sive­ly on certi­fied recycled paper.

• IT ser­vice pro­viders: Because the IT infra­struc­ture is crucial for the suc­cess­ful opera­tion of our bank, we in­creasing­ly take sus­tain­ability criteria into account when select­ing IT con­trac­tors.

As a credit insti­tu­tion with a public ser­vice remit and as a central S-Group bank of the German sav­ings banks net­work, we bear a re­spon­si­bil­­i­ty to society as a whole. We sup­port entrepreneurs who want to make the financial sector greener and we have always tra­di­tion­ally sponsored a large number of cultural projects and in­stitu­tions.

• The Green and Sus­tain­able Finance Cluster Germany pursues the goal of harness­ing exist­ing finan­cial market exper­tise in the field of sus­tain­ability and for­mulat­ing specific ap­proach­es for the industry with regard to sus­tain­able finance.

• The Tech­quartier is a hot­spot for start-ups and in­nova­tors in the finan­cial sector. Our focus is par­tic­ularly on the GreenTech Hub, which provides support, among other things, for start-ups in the areas of green tech­nolo­gies, clean energy and sus­tain­able finance.

• The Mu­se­um of Modern Art (Mu­se­um für Mo­der­ne Kunst, MMK) and the Städelsche Kunst­institut in Frank­furt

• The Dom­stufen-Festspiele theatre festi­val in Erfurt, the Rhein­gau Music Festi­val, the Helaba CLASSICnights at the Alte Oper concert hall in Frankfurt and the Ruhr Piano Festi­val

• Sport­hilfe Hessen, the Bundes­liga football team Eintracht Frankfurt as a premium partner, the luge world cup in Oberhof, Thuringia, and runn­ing events such as the Düssel­dorf Marathon and the Iron­man Night Run in Frankfurt

• In our art col­lec­tion we con­cen­trate on the works of intern­a­tional, up-and-coming con­tem­po­rary talents.

We have adopt­ed a Code of Con­duct in order to trans­fer the prin­ci­ples of sus­tain­ability through­out the bank and to provide every­one who works here with a bind­ing frame­work to act as a ref­er­ence for ori­en­ta­tion. It defines in a trans­par­ent man­ner for em­ploy­ees, cus­tomers and the public how we want to achieve our goals and work together, both within Helaba and vis-à-vis our stake­­hold­ers. Regular train­ing courses are con­duct­ed in ac­­cor­dance with reg­u­la­to­ry re­quire­ments and all mem­bers of staff are obliged to take part in them at least every three years.

Here are some of the main points at a glance:

• We do not want to work with com­pa­nies or in­sti­tu­tions that are known to vio­late fun­da­men­tal human rights or damage the en­vi­ron­ment. If we out­source ac­tiv­i­ties or processes, we only com­mis­sion providers who have a verifiably sus­tain­able busi­ness policy.

• We rig­or­ous­ly comply with local, national and in­ter­na­tion­al reg­u­la­tions and statu­to­ry pro­vi­sions. Thanks to our com­pli­ance man­age­ment, which is geared towards pre­ven­tion, we actively combat white-collar crime: All forms of bribery and cor­rup­tion are strictly pro­hib­it­ed at Helaba.

• A whistle­blow­er system en­ables anyone to report po­ten­tially un­law­ful trans­ac­tions and to contact an external om­buds­person on a con­fi­den­tial basis.

• A tax com­pli­ance man­age­ment sys­tem helps us to adhere to tax-related obli­ga­tions and to monitor tax-relevant busi­ness pro­cess­es in an ef­fec­tive and risk-oriented way. The pos­si­bil­i­ty of using ar­ti­fi­cial tax struc­tures or cir­cum­vent­ing arm's length prin­ci­ples is strictly pre­clud­ed. Neither our products nor our client-related ac­tiv­ities are designed in a tax-driven man­ner.