How we achieve out Triple P aims:

• By offering our employees an inspiring working environment, a culture of accountability and a stable source of income
• By supporting the career development of our people
• By striving to continuously improve the safety and health of our employees, our customers and the people who live near our sites
• By being a responsible partner to society and all our stakeholders
• By working with works councils and other representative employee organizations in a mutually respectful manner
• By developing, manufacturing and marketing sustainable products and services in the fields of Life Sciences and Materials Sciences to support a healthier, more sustainable and more enjoyable way of life

Passion for People
DSM’s Vision 2010 presents DSM with a range of challenges:

• To attract, develop, reward and retain talent at all levels.
• To include unprecedented growth in the numbers of new non-Dutch employees joining DSM.
• To ensure that new and existing employees are nurtured and given the opportunity to develop their talents.

Diversity
DSM has a global diversity drive to increase the diversity of our workforce, in terms both of nationality and of gender. In 2008, the DSM workforce developed accordingly. We are especially satisfied to see the growth in diversity, both in gender and in internationalization of our management group.

DSM's Diversity council, headed by the Chairman of the Managing Board, formulated targets to have an average % inflow of new non-Dutch executives of 60% (65% realized in 2008) and to have an average inflow of 25% of new female executives (18% realized in 2008) by the end of 2010.

Employee Engagement Survey
To assess levels of engagement throughout our company, we launched our first comprehensive DSM Employee Engagement Survey at the end of 2007.

Almost 12,000 employees worldwide participated in this online survey. This figure represents 63% of the total target group population of 19,000 employees who have access to our company email system and were therefore able to participate. Working conditions and safety standards, job satisfaction, support from the relevant line manager and teamwork all received positive scores: most notably, 81% of respondents gave a high rating to working conditions and safety standards. In total, 62% of participants scored favorably on the DSM Engagement Index, while 25% scored a neutral response, indicating that 87% are to a greater or lesser degree pleased with their job, and that at least 62% of our employees are committed and proud and would recommend DSM as a great place to work. Compared with the average external benchmark (64%) we are pleased with this score. Nevertheless we will have to improve on it in coming years.

Highlights and achievements in 2008

• In 2008 DSM became more international: the % non-Dutch in our management group increased from 45% in 2007 to 53% in 2008
• The % female in our management group increased from 17% in 2007 to 20% in 2008
• A new career management design stimulating a high-performance culture was developed in 2008
• A new DSM learning and development architecture was introduced in 2008
• In 2008 we attracted in total 486 top talents from across the globe, of whom 77% were non-Dutch and 38% were women
• In 2008 we designed a global internal vacancy system to ensure transparency regarding career opportunities within DSM worldwide