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On 20 September 2006, UniCredit Group’s Integrity Charter Day, all the bank’s employees took two hours off work and discussed the six core values laid down in the Integrity Charter: fairness – transparency – respect – reciprocity – freedom – trust.
Within BA-CA and its Austrian subsidiaries some 2,000 groups organised workshops in which the employees made themselves familiar with the core values of the Charter, analysed strengths and weaknesses in the implementation of these values in everyday work routines, and explored possibilities of how each of them together with their colleagues would be able to better live up to these values in their daily work.
The workshops were jointly organised by HR and the Communications department. The concept was made available to the subsidiaries in CEE as a model to adopt or to adapt to meet their own requirements and ideas. The materials were structured so that teams of 5–7 employees equipped with a work plan and supporting materials, were able to solve the tasks on their own. The questionnaire completed by the participants at the end of the workshops showed that more than 80% considered the values of the Integrity Charter to be very important for the Group – which demonstrates their strong sense of solidarity with the company. 89% found this novel approach to examining corporate values very good. The values most of the employees concentrated on in the discussions were fairness (48%), respect (44%) and trust (43%). The Integrity Charter Day met its prime objective of providing broadly based information on the contents and the meaning of the Integrity Charter: at the end of the day, 72% of the employees felt that they were very well or well informed and 29% expressed the wish for more information and further discussions on the values. This wish will certainly be met as the values set forth in the Integrity Charter will continue to be an important element of the Group’s corporate communications in 2007.