“We believe Siemens can make a real difference in the world. Our purpose is to create technology that transforms the everyday for everyone. While that drives our business, it also gives us the opportunity to make a difference for our people. The best way to do that is by providing a Living Wage and ensuring all Siemens operating entities uphold these principles,” says Susan Brown, Senior Director, Compensation at Siemens.
WageIndicator spoke to Susan to better understand Siemen’s Living Wage journey.
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| Susan Brown |
Why pay a Living Wage?
Siemens has always had a compensation philosophy to pay competitively and fairly, and I’m proud that we can say we meet that objective. Thinking beyond market pay levels, paying a Living Wage is important as a responsibility to our people. Having this as a goal sends a strong message to our people, as well as to potential talent outside Siemens and the broader communities where we work.
We believe Siemens is making a difference in the world – our purpose is to create technology to transform the everyday, for everyone. While that drives us on the business side, it also means we can make a difference for our people. The best way we can do that is by providing our people with a Living Wage and ensuring all Siemens operating entities follow these principles.
How do you plan on implementing Living Wages?
First, we make sure we have the data across all our countries. We’re building on the approach we tested and implemented for the EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD). We have the experience and IT solutions from CSRD adequate wage reporting to operationalize Living Wage analysis. Next, we are assessing whether we need a policy around Living Wage, and if so, we will formalize our definitions and methodology.
In any case, we’ve seen that test runs are important to identify areas where additional country data or clarification from WageIndicator would help advance our analysis. We’ve found WageIndicator to be a great partner — with solid research, consistent reporting, and coverage of all but two of the countries where we operate. That kind of breadth and depth is unmatched.
Finally, documenting our process is important to ensure our approach is repeatable year after year. Our colleagues in the Shared Services organization have been fantastic in defining all the steps and formulas we follow, and in identifying where we automate and where manual input is required.
How do you report?
Assessing and reporting how Siemens’ pay compares to country Living Wages is a journey. We’ve conducted initial analyses twice so far, using WageIndicator’s quarterly updates. We have a global database that provides a strong foundation, and we audit and discuss any nuances with country experts to ensure data integrity and accuracy.
We’ve also had to make decisions such as: Do we include temporary workers? Do we include companies where we have partial ownership? These decisions come down to data availability and what can be repeated consistently. Repeatability is a key aspect for a company of Siemens’ scale — ensuring consistency, auditability, and long-term sustainability to keep us on the strong path we’re on.
While all of these details are important, we try to keep the bigger picture in mind — paying a Living Wage.
Is reporting easy or difficult?
Reporting for a company of our size is never easy — with many countries, collective bargaining, and multiple people responsible for keeping data up to date. That said, we’ve come a long way over the past three years in increasing attention to high-quality compensation data and putting controls and checks in place to respond effectively when we see issues.
The best advice I can give is to rely on a strong network. We’ve partnered closely across our Total Rewards team, HR IT group, reporting team, EU regulation experts, and our Shared Services experts — globally and in-country. This partnership has enabled us to take on Living Wage reporting, something we weren’t ready to do four or five years ago.
October 2025