Talent attraction and engagement

Recruiting and retaining the best talent is a critical cornerstone to supporting and sustaining our business growth ambitions. It enables us to address the staffing challenges we face, such as the competitive labor market, the size of the labor pool, skills shortages in certain domains, and the need to continually rejuvenate our workforce. I 3-3 I

Our ambition is to be recognized as a market-leading, attractive, and innovative employer where entrepreneurial spirit, feedback, cooperation, responsibility, and leadership are the norm.

Transforming to meet future challenges

Our growth ambitions depend on our ability to transform and adapt to challenges in a constantly changing environment.

In 2022, we launched a company-wide human capital transformation program called ‘Horizon – aiming for the future’ to improve our capabilities to support our business strategy. This employee-centric program aims to positively transform the experience of everyone at ST.

It is based on four pillars:

• culture and ways of working
• diversity, equity and inclusion
• talent management
• career paths at ST

Reinforcing our leadership culture

We strongly believe all employees are leaders.

As the first step in our transformation journey, we launched a new leadership model that guides how we work with internal and external stakeholders. We used this model to translate our values into the following behaviors:

To ensure all employees understand the new leadership model and its associated behaviors, we trained 365 ambassadors to deliver awareness sessions throughout the Company, involving more than 19,200 participants.

The new model is being embedded into all our people processes (talent selection, assessment, development, succession planning, and performance management) and used as the basis for decision-making, rendering it the common language of talent in our human resources lifecycle.

Inspiring future talent

To support our ambitious recruitment goals, we hired more than 2,900 exempt⁽¹⁾ employees in 2022. We also launched a refreshed employer branding campaign in July 2022 called ‘#Futurestarters’, to reinforce our reputation as a people-driven, high-tech leader.

Our employer branding campaign highlights that ST is committed to building innovative and pioneering technologies for a better, smarter, and sustainable world. Featuring ST employees, it also reinforces the sense of belonging and pride people feel about working at ST.

Ede Kossari Tarnik

Environmental and Energy Champion, Kirkop (Malta)

At ST, we are all ‘Futurestarters’! This means that all of us, as one ST, can contribute to shaping a smarter and greener future for future generations. When I started my job 1 year ago, I was impressed by ST’s leadership and commitments in sustainability. I am proud to contribute to achieving our objectives by reinforcing the importance of creating a more sustainable future throughout the organization.”

To help attract talent, our people act as ST ambassadors during external events, such as campus fairs, job fairs and conferences, as well as on social media. More than 330 ambassadors shared their experience as ST employees during the year, showcasing our opportunities and promoting ST as a great place to work.

In 2022, we continued to build strategic partnerships with universities and engineering schools throughout the world to ensure a regular flow of candidates, while also establishing education pathways to respond to our specific skills needs. One example is I-NOVMICRO, an innovation program designed to develop and promote microelectronics and electronic training paths in the south of France.

During 2022, we collaborated with 53 strategic academic partners globally and over 250 sourcing partners.

Developing and supporting our talent pool

Our ambition is to become a top global employer with a diverse and high-performing workforce centered on collective and individual performance. We aim to improve employees’ experience throughout their career at ST through holistic, flexible and dynamic talent management, boosted by internal mobility and development opportunities.

To support this ambition, we are starting to transform, simplify and digitalize our talent management processes (recruitment, onboarding, workforce planning, succession planning, talent review, career path, capability management, and learning and development) with a full co-design approach involving managers and employees.

Feedback is a core pillar of our management culture, enabling us to strengthen and continuously develop our talent pool. Since 2021, we have encouraged employee-manager relationships built on open and continuous feedback.

Coaching also helps to spread ST’s culture of feedback and leadership and is embedded in our managerial ethos. We delivered 170 individual coaching sessions and 43 team coaching sessions in 2022 to support the career development of our people and enhance organizational performance.

We continued the talent review process initiated in 2020, prioritizing the succession plans of executives approaching retirement age. We are on track with our roadmap, including assessments, development, and talent acquisition.

In addition, we continued to diversify our learning offer to train people faster, more easily, and more efficiently, with more than 350 online courses from various content providers, available to more than 30,800 employees.

We also used an external digital platform to successfully pilot the development of technical skills for certain jobs: 373 ST engineers completed 5,400 training hours on 420 online courses, gaining 347 certificates.

On average, we delivered 47 hours of training per person in 2022.

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Achieving the full potential of our people

Helping our people achieve their full potential by meeting their aspirations is essential if we are to face our current and future challenges successfully.

Listening to our employees

We aim to deliver the best employee experience we can, from the very first touchpoint right throughout their career.

Listening to our employees is vital for monitoring our transformation and organizational changes.

The initiatives and measures we have put in place allowed us, once again, to be independently ranked as a ‘Top Employer 2023’ in France and Italy, by Top Employers Institute.

We see hybrid work as a critical enabler to attract and retain talent. We therefore implemented a company-wide framework for flexible working arrangements, such as working from home or from another site, in compliance with local regulations.

At the end of 2022, 49% of our employees were under 40 years old. By the end of 2025, they will represent 75% of our workforce. Listening to them is essential to understand how to improve the employee experience and make ST an attractive and engaging place to work. With this in mind, we launched our ‘Blossom’ program 2 years ago to allow them to voice their opinions, offer their ideas, be creative, and share their expectations. By the end of the year, more than 8,000 ‘blossomers’ were engaged in this community and involved across our regions and organizations in numerous projects, such as panel discussions, working groups, and meetings.

FOCUS

Encouraging open dialog between senior management and younger talent

Fostering a culture of open dialog between senior management and younger generations is vital. It enables us to share mutual expectations, while continuing to enhance the employee experience and make ST a more attractive and engaging place to work.

In June 2022, we held our first Blossom event in Geneva for ST employees under 40 years old. Seventeen Blossom representatives from around the world were invited to a unique meeting with the Executive Committee. During an open question and answer session with ST President and CEO Jean-Marc Chery and the eight members of the Executive Committee, they discussed how to attract new generations and what senior management expects from the Blossom network. They also had the opportunity to discuss human resources topics with ST’s President of Human Resources and Corporate Social Responsibility, along with the importance of the ‘blossomers’ role in attracting new talent.

Another example was a roundtable organized in Shanghai in September 2022 for Blossom newcomers, attended by Henry Cao, Executive Vice President, Sales and Marketing China region. Participants freely exchanged ideas and received career development guidance from the China leadership team, with the aim of building mutual understanding and fueling their career aspirations with ST China.

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Sustaining a high level of engagement

Employee engagement is a critical driver of organizational performance to achieve our business objectives.

In 2022, we changed our annual census survey on individual engagement, goal alignment, and organizational agility, to every 2 years. In between, we will conduct focus surveys to gain insights into specific subjects.

At the end of 2022, we conducted our first focus survey on diversity, equity and inclusion (see Diversity, equity and inclusion). It also included five questions to measure employee engagement.

The participation rate was 67%. Although this is below the response rate we usually achieve for our full census surveys, it is higher than the response rate typically seen for this kind of survey.

The overall engagement index was 86%, three points higher than 2021 and two points above the GHP norm⁽²⁾.

• 85% of respondents said they were willing to go the extra mile to help ST meet its goals. This is equal to the 2021 score.
• 88% of respondents said they are proud to work for ST, two points up on 2021.
• 86% recommended ST as a great place to work, three points higher than 2021.

Reward and recognition

Our compensation and benefits policy is a critical part of our employee value proposition, supporting our growth and recognizing the contribution of our people.

We offer a short-term incentive scheme to more than 21,000 employees. As well as rewarding operational performance, it also recognizes the achievement of our sustainability objectives through a dedicated sustainability index focusing on four of our priorities:

• safety
• climate change
• diversity
• employee engagement

The same sustainability index applies to every ST employee, including senior management.

The sustainability index is also one of the three criteria for the long-term incentive (performance stock awards) scheme. In 2022, we increased the number of people eligible for our long-term incentive scheme by more than 1,200, to include more young and entry-level talent.

2022 was the year when we could once again hold a corporate ceremony in person as part of our annual STAR awards corporate recognition scheme. With more than 2,600 winners, we took employee recognition far beyond previous levels. We also granted a one-off ‘COVID-19 crisis management’ award to acknowledge efforts made at site and organization level to ensure employees’ health and safety, safeguard our business continuity, and help our local communities during the pandemic.

In addition, as part of our new Leadership Model, we presented our first Leadership awards during our Business Plan Meeting in December 2022. The Leadership awards will be rolled out globally in 2023.

Contributing to the Sustainable Development Goals

Our commitments and programs as described above contribute to:

SDG target 4.3 – Ensure equal access for all women and men to affordable and quality technical vocational and tertiary education, including university.