The way we work

Innovation starts from within

We chose to take an active part in designing the Innovation Model for the Acea Group, by involving our staff with methods to facilitate team collaboration and to generate creative thinking. 

By taking part in internal contests, anyone in the company can put forward innovative ideas for our businesses or visualise new, future challenges. Thanks to the internal entrepreneurship programme Innovation Garage, projects were launched that focused on the improvement of customer experience and valorisation of water resources. One of these is the Waidy project, an app that enables the geolocation of public water distribution points, access to historical information concerning the fountains and drinking-water fountains (nasoni) and the reporting of potential issues.

The I Care project

In 2022 the I Care Professional – Mirroring course continued for individual and professional well-being, to promote healthy working environments and to mitigate stress in professional activities. The program involved 295 employees, including 162 women and 133 men, for a total of 4,040 training hours.

Smart Working in Acea

We have implemented smart working an agile and flexible way of working, consolidating an experimental project from 2018 to promote work-life balance together with other initiatives. In particular, the Smart Working agreement “New Normal” was reached, guaranteeing employees access to Smart Working on a voluntary basis, up to a maximum of 60% of the monthly working days and for a total period of 12 months.

All this makes it possible to implement a Leadership Model, which favours focus on the objective, teamwork - even remotely - and resourcefulness in adopting new ways of working.

The smart working method also allows our staff to strengthen the digitisation of business processes, the use of virtual workspaces and innovation across all channels. Acea has always provided its staff members with modalities and working tools adapted to their particular working conditions and lifestyle, in order to preserve - through targeted initiatives - the employees’ involvement in the Group’s identity, skill development and organisational wellbeing.

Improvement is development

2021 saw the launch of the Development Center program with the involvement, in 2022, of over 200 people in individual development courses (consisting of training, team coaching, individual coaching and mentoring) with the aim of enhancing professionalism and increasing skills, because the development and success of the individual are the growth and well-being of the entire organisation

Acting sustainably to make a difference

In line with market best practices, the Group invests in Sustainability issues also through training, with the aim of making the corporate population aware of the issues that characterise sustainability today (e.g. Agenda 2030) and create specialist skills to concretely introduce a set sustainable processes and practices within each Acea company.
To that end, in 2022, the  Acting sustainably to make a difference course continued with the aim of:

  • providing targeted tools to strengthen the Acea Group's Sustainability Community;
  • developing shared value projects and thus favouring the development of synergies between teams and the sharing of experiences;
  • monitoring the effectiveness of the course and maintaining a high level of participant engagement.

42 people were involved, for a total of 12 projects initiated in the following macro-areas: Sustainable Processes, Tools for Sustainability, Sustainable Innovation, Culture, Purpose and Territory.
The course will continue in 2023 with the certification of the Sustainability Ambassadors to strengthen the professionalism of those who pursue the Group's Sustainability objectives on a daily basis.

Highlights

Discover the latest news and initiatives of the Acea Group