Our staff's wellbeing

In Acea we look after our people with a series of initiatives designed to improve the quality of life inside and outside the company, in line with the objectives of our Industrial and Sustainability Plans.

We have devised a company Welfare Plan to enhance the personal and professional well-being of our employees. Measures have been developed to promote a suitable life-work balance, offer parenting support and provide employees and their families with healthcare, encouraging workplace flexibility and training, in particular with regard to the processes of technological and digital transformation that the Acea Group is currently implementing.

The new Acea Welfare Plan

In 2021 the Group’s Welfare Plan was enhanced, and six fundamental pillars were established concerning health, work-life balance measures, psychophysical wellbeing, supplementary pensions, income support measures and family.

Numerous remote, informative meetings – actively involving all our staff members – were held to promote our 2021 Welfare Plan; and targeted training videos were also published on the company intranet.

Emergenza Covid-19: le iniziative Acea

For all 2021 Acea launched various corporate welfare initiatives, promoting important communication campaigns. For example, Previeni con Acea, dedicated to prevention; Mi prendo cura di te, to support the management of care, assistance and fragility needs; and Acea e Fitprime insieme per il benessere, in favour of healthy and safe lifestyles:

• The "Previeni con Acea" prevention campaign includes awareness days on prevention issues, as well as on free screenings, check-ups and telehealth services.
• The "Mi prendo cura di te" caregiver programme provides a completely free, customised support in the form of advice and guidance and in the management of educational and/or social-care needs.
  
• The "Acea e Fitprime" wellness programme promotes wellbeing by offering various sports-related services (sports subscriptions, live streaming courses and outdoor fitness lessons), including the possibility to adopt a healthy diet through personalised diet plans with the support of a nutritionist.
  

Welfare services for health and wellbeing

• Healthcare services
• Life and professional insurance policy
• Men’s/Women’s health prevention campaign

Measures of work-life balance
Not just Smart Working, but also flexible working hours and measures designed for parenting support.

• Smart Working
• Flexible working hours and leave for during children’s entrance to nursery school and preschool
• Solidarity Taxi
• Caregiver programme

Welfare measures for psychophysical wellness care

• Wellness programme (sports subscriptions, live streaming and on demand training, nutritionist programme)
• Listening and psychological counselling desk

Welfare serivices for families

• Career guidance programme for employees’ children
• Summer camp 

Income support measures

• Company agreements
• Banking agreements
• Flexible Benefits

Supplementary pensions

The contractual, provisioned supplementary pension scheme is constituted by the Pegaso Fund, which over the years has become increasingly important for the Group’s employees.

Welfare Credit

Our payment policy is based on meritocracy and rewarding value.

All employees receive a productivity bonus every year, linked to company results. From 2019, the possibility was introduced to convert the bonus into welfare services and supplementary pensions, offering the benefit of tax deductions and an additional payment by the company, via the MyWelfare platform.

Wellbeing for Acea means also promoting the culture of inclusiveness, enhancing diversity against any form of discrimination.

The theme of Diversity & Inclusion has become increasingly important for Acea, which promotes greater awareness at all organisational levels through projects, initiatives and tools to integrate these issues into the modus operandi of the company, individuals and stakeholders.

To understand the phenomena linked to diversity, in 2021 we developed a Diversity & inclusion Plan and a people strategy Dashboard with specific indicators which allow to carry out analyses of the progress of the processes connected to each phase of the employee journey.

• In 2021, a survey was administered to employees to collect data on the level of cultural awareness and knowledge of the topic, to undertake initiatives in line with the real needs of employees, to facilitate the dissemination of a culture oriented to the enhancement of diversity and inclusion of people with a careful look at both the internal and external reality of the company.
• The intranet includes a space dedicated to Diversity & Inclusion, designed to disseminate the D&I culture, make documents collected in a structured repository easily accessible to employees, and disseminate information and communications on initiatives and commitments undertaken by the company on the subject.
  

Moreover, the 2021-2022 Diversity & Inclusion Plan sets out a programme made of internal initiatives – dedicated to employees - and external initiatives, with the development of D&I projects impacting on our customers and communities. Among the different initiatives promoted, we adopted measures of parenting support, such as the extension of paternal and paternity leave, hourly leave during children’s entrance to nursery school or preschool and a Holiday Donation Programme.

Another significant project concerned the training on unconscious bias developed for our staff in order to provide them with the necessary information to promote diversity in the company and push to an inclusive management of working relationships. The project involved 5,190 people, whose awareness was raised on cognitive bias and widespread prejudices – and how they impact on companies - and on potential resistance which can hinder the adoption of an inclusive culture.

In addition, in 2021 we also took part in the Sistema Scuola Impresa project, contributing to the creation of the Inspirational Talks Role Model initiative, a programme to promote STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) training courses for middle and high-school female students.