Working for Santander

• Reward
• Professional development
• Balancing work and life
• Diversity
• Mobility

Working at Santander means forming part of a leading financial services group, with 130,000 employees providing products and services to 69 million customers around the world to create value for 2,400,000 shareholders. Santander offers worldwide employment opportunities, with 95 nationalities working in more than 40 countries, to develop your professional career. Santander values the commitment of their professionals and aims to always recognise and reward that commitment. Santander aims to attract the best people and seek the right balance between their expectation and business needs. Santander fosters cultural diversity and equality of opportunity without discrimination. Their global human resources model combines common corporate policies for the Group with a local focus.

Reward

Santander aims to attract and retain the best professionals by recognising their achievements and comittment. Every person's contribution is recognised, and every person's ideas are valued.

Santander values and recognises the commitment of its employees through a variety of tools. Remuneration policies take into account two basic criteria, performance and the level of responsibility, with the goals of motivating and retaining staff, fostering career development and promoting the Group's business units. Santander employes have access to a variety of fixed and variable remuneration programmes, as well as flexible social benefits adapted to employees' needs. Long-term incentives exist to align business units and shareholders' interest.

In August, 2007, all Group employees were given 100 shares each to mark the 150th anniversary of Santander's founding.

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Professional training and career development

Santander believes in continuous professional training and knowledge, which means that their employees are the best prepared in the financial sector, with successful professional careers. They offer worldwide exposure, with 95 nationalities working in more than 40 countries, to develop your professional career. Employees with leadership potential are identified and enrolled in progammes such as the Executive Training Programme, the Corporate Leadership Programme and the Future Executives Programme, which open career opportunities and foster mobility within the Group.

In 2006, 19,000 employees were promoted.

Training plays an essential role in our human resources policy. Employees spent an average of 51 hours each on training courses in 2006 as part of an investment of EUR 76 mln by the Group. The centrepiece of Santander's corporate training programme is "El Solaruco" Corporate Training Centre at Group headquarters in Boadilla del Monte. Some 18,000 employees received training at this centre in 2006. Throughout the Group, 115,000 employees received some sort of training in 2006 and 3,000 took part in the programmes to identify high potential professionals.

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Balancing work and life

Santander helps to reconcile work and home life through flexible policies regarding working hours, caring for dependents, personal and professional advice, benefits, training and development. The bank is aware of the importance of further fostering a culture that helps employees strike an appropriate work-life balance.

Support programmes vary among countries according to local needs and conditions, but can feature flexible working hours, support with child care, maternity and paternity benefits, assistance for handicapped or disabled children of employees and job shares, leaves of absence or career breaks.

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Diversity

Santander fosters cultural diversity and equality of opportunity without discrimination. The Group wants employees who reflect the realities of the societies in which they work. Pro-active measures to have more women in posts of greater responsibility are backed by the Equality Committee, which includes employee representatives. Within the Group, 51% of employees are men and 49% women.

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Mobility

Santander offers employees the possibility of an international career and provides the training and advice needed to make this happen.

Santander believes that geographic and functional movement is an excellent way to assure the professional development of its executives, to spread best practices through the Group, and to transmit the values that make Santander a global, leading bank.

Santander has expatriates in 40 countries. Many are working in Latin America or come from there, a process that now involves the European countries where the Group operates. Some executives have worked in two or three countries, notably improving their outlook and global knowledge of the Bank.