Andreas Schwaiger started his professional career at Texas Instruments (TI) in 1997, working in a variety of roles across different functions before being appointed Managing Director of TI Germany and Vice President. He is a member of the AmCham Germany Executive Committee, is wholeheartedly engaged in initiatives like NextGen and a jury member of the Female Founders Award since its start. Andreas Schwaiger is excited to uphold TI’s commitment to STEM development from school through university to a career in engineering, particularly focusing on female development in these areas. As executive sponsor of TI’s CSR branch in EMEA, he is strongly engaged in the team’s efforts, supporting initiatives like Girl’s Day and Female Tech Leaders, and acts as a mentor for the initiative #BayFID, which supports female talents in digital professions. For him, TI’s commitment to drive innovation and support start-up initiatives matches perfectly with engagement in AmCham Germany's Female Founders Award.
1. What are the benefits for companies regarding their effort to promote diversity?
"To give you a short and simple answer: Diversity is essential for a company’s success. According to a McKinsey study, diverse companies have a higher likelihood to achieve above-average profitability, they have more innovative strength and have higher employee retention. At Texas Instruments, we truly believe that we are different by design, and that our diverse backgrounds and perspectives make our products more innovative and our teams and company stronger. We are trying to embrace all different elements of diversity. Thus, we continuously focus on creating an inclusive culture where we respect and encourage ideas and where our people know that they can succeed and build long-term careers."
2. What opportunities and chances do diverse teams offer?
"As we’re a semiconductor company, technological innovation is very important for us. From our experience, diverse teams are key to driving higher levels of innovation – bringing different experiences and perspectives together sparks new ideas and, for example, new ways to solve design challenges. Additionally, workflows and processes for semiconductor development and production are so international that within our teams, usually colleagues from around the world collaborate. In our EMEA headquarter in Freising, we have over 70 different nationalities; our employees bring a broad variety of different backgrounds and experiences, and we embrace different perspectives as they make our teams stronger. Let me emphasize that in order to leverage the advantages and opportunities of diverse teams, this requires a strong focus on an inclusive environment."
3. Do you see diversity as a path to tackling the skilled labor shortage? For example, have you taken deliberate steps to recruit more diverse teams and target social groups that are currently or have been underrepresented?
"For us, it’s important to recruit bright minds and best talents, therefore we’ve been working on attracting people from very diverse and international backgrounds for a long time. We place a special emphasis on being a great employer with a diverse and inclusive culture, and we’re very proud that our hiring rate of female engineers is above the market average in Germany. Nevertheless, there’s still room for improvement. For example, the percentage of young women who are interested in starting a STEM career is unfortunately still comparably low. Therefore, we’re very committed to supporting STEM initiatives like AmCham Germany's Female Founders Award, Girls’ Day or #BayFid (a Bavarian initiative for supporting women in digital professions) to inspire more girls and young women to consider a STEM job role."
4. Apart from business opportunities, what else encourages companies to strive for a diverse company culture?
"A diverse company culture brings invaluable benefits for both employee retention and recruiting. Creating a culture of inclusion and belonging has very positive effects on employee satisfaction and loyalty. For example, approximately 90% of our global employees say they are proud to work at TI. Additionally, diversity and inclusivity in the workplace already is and will become an even more decisive criterion for potential employees when choosing a job. This is particularly true for career starters. They check very carefully whether a company only preaches inclusion on their website or whether it is actually lived as part of its corporate culture. At TI, inclusion is one of our company values, and we live diversity as part of our culture in a variety of ways. For instance, we have several diversity networks, including TI Pride and the Women’s Employee Network, which promote a safe space for employees to bring their full self to work and develop their potential through workshops and mentoring programs."
