Our employees

Developing and maintaining trust through long-term relationships with all our stakeholders is our top priority. And it all starts with our employees. To nourish employee engagement and their long-term prospects on an ongoing basis, we:

  • develop our people’s ability to perform better
  • encourage our people to innovate, regardless of their function and across departmental boundaries
  • foster vertical and horizontal collaboration
  • strive to reduce complexity
  • exploit the richness of diversity
  • develop a unique customer-centric mindset at all levels of our group
  • encourage international exchange of best practices
  • breathe our PEARL+ business culture

Talent management

To KBC, talent management is an ongoing process that enables our employees to continue developing their personal and professional skills, improve their performance and explore their leadership abilities. At KBC, we aim to create a working environment that attracts and retains high-quality employees.

We support our staff through:

  • StiPPLE, a digital learning platform to improve skills
  • Continuous progression, instead of annual appraisals
  • Leadership programmes, because managers play a key role in employee satisfaction and motivation and function as role models.

 Listening to our people

Employee engagement

We keep close track of our employees’ opinions by conducting a biannual employee engagement survey. In it, we enquire about questions that are top of mind (e.g. How do you experience the ongoing digital transformation? How do you see sustainability as part of the KBC strategy?). Depending on local requirements, the employee engagement survey can be integrated into a broader survey.

Social dialogue

We are keen to build a constructive dialogue with our employees and with our formal employee representation groups. Social dialogue is normally initiated at the country or legal-entity level. The European Works Council brings together the employee representatives from all core countries and senior management once a year.

Health and well-being

We value our employees’ health and well-being. We aim to create and maintain a working environment where people feel safe, are free to speak up and able to grow. We are keen for our employees to enjoy the right work–life balance and to putting in place all relevant measures for achieving this balance. We believe
this benefits both the employees and KBC. 

Diversity and inclusion

In our staff regulations, selection and promotion policy as well as our performance appraisal systems, we do not discriminate based on gender, religion, ethnic background, sexual orientation or similar grounds. We also reject any form of discrimination in recruitment and promotion.

The KBC Group Code of Conduct sets out guidelines on how we do things at KBC and informs our staff of the key behaviours that we expect from all group employees. Our Diversity and Inclusion Policy makes clear how much we value diversity and inclusion.  

Staff numbers

Number of staff, KBC Group

31-12-2022 31-12-2021 31-12-2020
In headcount 41 947 40 428 40 863
In FTEs 39 288 37 207 37 696
       
Numbers in % (based on FTE)      
Belgium 37% 39% 39%
Central & Eastern Europe 60% 57% 57%
Rest of the world 4% 4% 4%
       
Men 43% 44% 44%
Women 57% 56% 56%
       
Full-time 84% 83% 83%
Part-time 16% 17% 17%

For more information on our people indicators we refer to the KBC Group Sustainability report.