Employees

The “Winning Ways” strategy is our plan for BASF’s long-term business success. As part of this strategy, we are driving development toward a performance culture. After all, we can only achieve BASF’s targets with a high level of engagement from our skilled employees and leaders. With our adequate and competitive compensation, we want to contribute to attractive working conditions at BASF and thus attract and retain engaged employees.

BASF is committed to equal opportunities and fosters an inclusive work environment and offers all employees fair working conditions and support in the event of any possible concerns. Our Policy Statement on Human Rights underlines our commitment to a workplace that is characterized by trust, respect and appreciation.

When identifying leadership talents, we also take into account the promotion and appreciation of diversity. For example, we are committed to increasing the global proportion of women in leadership positions to 30% by 2030. We strive to always act in accordance with the applicable local laws. As of December 31, 2025, the proportion of women working in the BASF Group was 27.3% (2024: 27.1%). The global proportion of women in leadership positions with disciplinary responsibility was 29.9% as of December 31, 2025 (2024: 29.3%).

We consider employee engagement to be a decisive indicator of the success of our actions. All employees are invited on a regular basis to give feedback on their working environment and the corporate culture as part of our employee survey. In the employee survey,¹ BASF measures employee engagement based on five central questions. We have set ourselves the target of achieving an Engagement Index of more than 80%. Worldwide, nearly 85,000 employees participated in the survey in 2025 (participation rate: 75%, 2024: 78%). The survey showed a global Engagement Index of 77%, which was a slight decrease compared to the previous year (2024: 79%). Our aim is to increase this score to the defined target value of higher than 80%.

1 The scope of employees participating in the survey goes beyond the scope of consolidation. However, there are exceptions for companies that represent joint ventures as well as companies held for sale.

The total number of employees as of December 31, 2025, was 108,251. This is a decrease compared to the number of 111,822 employees as of December 31, 2024. The decline was primarily due to departures in connection with the ongoing cost savings programs and as part of the divestiture of the Brazilian decorative paints business. The number of employees includes employees of the discontinued coatings business; as of December 31, 2025, the number of employees was 9,928 (2024: 10,122).

BASF Group employees by region

The rate of employee turnover, i.e., the proportion of employees who left the company in 2025, amounted to 7.5% globally (2024: 7.2%). We adhere to the ESRS definition, which includes voluntary and involuntary leaves, retirements, and deaths in service.

As of December 31, 2025, the BASF Group was training 2,663 people in various occupations (2024: 2,941).

For more information on careers at BASF, see basf.com/careers

Adequate wages are an important component of the package we offer to employees that makes us a compelling choice as employer. We review our compensation levels worldwide annually in close cooperation with local units, including on the basis of external market data. This allows us to aim for market-oriented and adequate compensation in the respective countries or markets and to analyze the effectiveness of adjustments to our compensation levels as part of the process. As a rule, compensation comprises fixed and variable components as well as benefits. In many countries and companies, our additional benefits exceed legal requirements.

Based on defined, globally uniform criteria, positions are classified into BASF job grades, which form the basis for compensation, independent of the individual. The classification is based on the requirements of the relevant function. In this way, we want to make positions globally comparable and create the basis for compensation commensurate with function. In addition, we have introduced an enhanced performance management system in 2025 that provides a closer link between incentives and unit-specific achievements.

Expenses for wages and salaries, social security contributions and assistance, as well as for pensions increased to €12,299 million in 2025. The increase was mainly due to a higher wage and salary level and higher additions of bonus provisions compared with 2024. This includes personnel expenses of the discontinued coatings business of €878 million in 2025 (previous year: €853 million).

BASF Group personnel expenses

Our Compliance Program is based on our corporate values and voluntary commitments as well as applicable international standards. We are convinced that compliance with these principles plays a key role in ensuring our company’s long-term success. The global program describes our commitment and requirements for responsible conduct of all BASF employees in their interactions with business partners, officials, coworkers and society.

At the core of our Compliance Program is the global, standardized Code of Conduct, which is overseen by the BASF Board of Executive Directors and to which all employees and leaders must adhere. It covers topics ranging from corruption and antitrust laws to human rights, labor standards, conflicts of interest, whistleblower protection, trade control and data protection. The Code of Conduct is supplemented by additional global and regional requirements that address specific topics such as corruption and conflicts of interest in more detail.

The structure of BASF’s Code of Conduct

The regular compliance audits performed by the Corporate Audit unit are another source for the systematic identification of risks. These risks are documented in the relevant risk or audit report. The same applies to specific risk minimization initiatives as well as the time frame for their implementation.

Workshops and mandatory training are a key element in preventing compliance violations and are conducted on an ongoing basis either in person or online. Within a prescribed time frame, all employees are required to complete basic, refresher or specialized training on topics such as antitrust legislation, money laundering and trade control regulations. In 2025, we registered more than 111,000 participations worldwide (2024: >120,000) in our Code of Conduct trainings. In total, more than 93,000 training hours were completed (2024: 105,000). Functions-at-risk are fully covered by the training program.

Leaders play a key role in our compliance culture by embodying and communicating our values both internally and externally. In addition to special workshops on integrity as a leadership task for newly appointed senior executives, separate training sessions were also offered in 2025 for the managing directors of BASF Group companies.

The online version of our Code of Conduct is aimed at our employees and offers user-friendly features such as case studies, FAQs and additional references. We continuously provide our employees worldwide with up-to-date content such as videos, links to specialist units and requirements as well as direct contact to subject matter experts on the internal online platform and the corresponding app.

In 2025, the BASF compliance hotline received 739 reports (2024: 751). In 2025, violations of our Code of Conduct led to termination of employment in a total of 59 cases (2023: 67).

For more information on the BASF Code of Conduct, see basf.com/code-of-conduct