Social conditions and working environment

Verdo is one of the biggest workplaces in the Municipality of Randers.

We see it as part of our civic responsibility to contribute to growth, to create new jobs locally and to give something back to the local community.

Policy

Verdo wants to retain and develop our existing workforce, but we also want to attract new employees and give something back to the communities in which we operate. That is why we are actively working to be an attractive place to work.

Good energy

Every year, Verdo’s dedicated employees participate in local running and cycling events. We call the initiative ‘Den Gode Energi’ (good energy). It emphasises the fact that good energy is fundamental to everything we do – both when it comes to energy production in the literal sense and to our employees. Activities include the ‘Fjordløbet’ race in Randers and the DHL Relay race in Aarhus, Aalborg and Copenhagen. In addition, we offer many other employee activities such as team building events, development and training opportunities, health insurance, advantageous pension schemes, personal pension interview for salaried employees and a canteen focusing on healthy and climate-friendly food. It has always been important for Verdo to work with educational institutions on apprenticeships, traineeships and internships. We also work with the local municipality to meet the demand for work experience for citizens on sick leave and unemployed citizens.

Working environment and safety

Half of our approx. 550 employees spend their working days on construction sites, at storage facilities and in production. Therefore, we place high demands on the physical working environment and on safety. We are strongly focused on our employees’ working environment and on bringing down the number of accidents at work. We also give priority to our psychosocial working environment and employee well-being in general. Verdo conducts workplace assessments (WPAs), where we look at work-related absence and commit to reducing any such absence and increasing the job satisfaction of our employees through the formulation of clear action plans.

Diversity

We believe in the power of diversity in the workplace and are working to increase the number of female managers. In 2020, there will be an even greater focus on diversity in Verdo, and we will develop new targets for how we can attract employees in future based on a broader understanding of diversity than age and gender. These could be parameters such as educational and professional background, origin and international experience.

Efforts and results

In 2019, a wide range of activities were again organised for Verdo’s employees, and many participated in running and cycling events. We participated in a number of educational and career fairs to engage with future talents with an interest in the energy sector. We held a number of energy and climate-themed events for schoolchildren aimed at providing insights into how electricity and heating are generated and supplied to their homes. Verdo wants to share our competences and knowledge with tomorrow’s climate ambassadors.

More apprentices and trainees

In recent years, Verdo has welcomed an increasing number of apprentices. We are very pleased with this development. In 2019, the target for Teknik was for apprentices to account for 20% of the total number of technicians. We have achieved this target for the second year in a row. In Energy, the figure was 14% for both Verdo Energy Systems A/S and Verdo Energiteknik A/S. In 2019, the overall target was four trainees for the Group. However, we had a total of 12 trainees. In 2019, we also increased activities aimed at employees in flexjobs and employees undergoing job training, with an overall increase of 50% from 2018 to 2019. Verdo has always supported training and education initiatives and offered attractive internships and apprenticeships to the talents of the future.

Focus on working environment

Overall, Verdo has seen an 11% decrease in accidents at work and near misses. Generally, this is a positive trend in terms of our goal of reducing the number of accidents at work. In 2019, we registered eight accidents at work, which resulted in a total of 103 days of absence. Moreover, we registered 115 near misses. So as to reduce the number of accidents at work among our technicians, they have all received safety training via instruction videos, followed by a test.

Climate-friendly canteen

Verdo’s focus on sustainability and the environment also extends to our canteen. Healthy food is good for your physical and mental health and thus for the well-being of our employees.

In 2019, 42% of the food we served in our canteen was organic, and 54% of the ingredients were produced in Denmark. We are aware that meat production has a negative impact on the environment. To limit this impact, we are mindful of the role of meat on our menus and source high animal welfare meat where possible.

In 2019, meat accounted for 9% of the total amount of ingredients used in our canteen – a 5% drop from 2018. We thus achieved our target for the year of a reduction in meat consumption to less than 10% of the total amount of ingredients used. One of our other focus areas is to minimise food waste, and in 2019 our food waste amounted to just under 5,000 kg. We are constantly working to reduce and reuse any leftover food. We therefore collect leftover food and send it to Daka in Hedensted, where it is reused in the production of biogas. Verdo’s 5,000 kg of food waste has helped to reduce CO 2 emissions by 3,556 kg. This is equivalent to 168 days of heating in an average Danish household.

Social conditions and working environment

Women and men in management

Diversity in the workplace remains an important issue in Denmark. We believe that diversity creates value for Verdo. It is a strength for our employees and our business which we can convert into results. A highly diverse management team increases the ability to manage and assess the considerations that enable the company to live up to its values and the expectations of the outside world.

Verdo offers management training and individual programmes which support the personal development and specific managerial responsibilities of managers. In 2019, we focused on encouraging female talent to attend our in-house project management course. We did this because 80% of Verdo’s employees are male and the number of women declines the further up in the organisation you go. The project management course consisted of four classes over a two-year period, and 10% of the total number of participants were female. In 2019, we intensified our focus on inviting female talent, which increased the share of women from 6% to 20% in the latest class.

We are not the only company in the energy sector to be facing these challenges, but we are determined to do something about them. As a result, we plan to step up efforts in 2020 to redefine our diversity targets towards 2030, including sub-targets for 2023 and 2027. The targets apply at all levels of management in the organisation.

In 2019, we saw a positive development in the number of female middle managers at management level 1, with an increase from 6% to 9.5%. In so doing, we have almost reached our target of 10% female managers at management level 1. This indicates that our efforts in 2019 have paid off. Female managers at management level 2 are typically found in staff functions, for which the recruitment base is often wider and more diverse. In this area, we saw a decline from 23% in 2018 to 17.5% in 2019. This means that we did not meet our target of 20% for 2019. At management level 3, one in eight directors is female. This corresponds to a share of 13% and is therefore below our target of 25%. In 2019, we therefore had a sharp focus on the recruitment process at the upper levels of management. Thanks to this focus, we are able to welcome a new female general counsel to Verdo’s Executive Board in 2020. In connection with the recruitment of Verdo’s new CEO, it was a specific requirement on our part that the shortlist had to include female candidates. This is a new approach which should help to remove gender bias in the recruitment process.

Verdo also wants to increase the number of female members of the Supervisory Board. This is a challenge because Verdo is a consumer-governed company and thus has no influence over who is elected to the Supervisory Board. Nevertheless, we encourage our female talents to apply for employee-elected positions on the Supervisory Board. Elections to the Board of Representatives were held in 2019 in Herning. Two of the 16 newly elected members were women. The Board of Representatives consists of a total of 45 members from Herning and Randers, nine of whom are women. This equates to a share of 20%. Only one of the 12 members of Verdo’s Supervisory Board is female, taking the total share of women on the Supervisory Board to 8%. For several years, Verdo has encouraged the Board of Representatives to focus on the underrepresented gender when electing members to the Supervisory Board. We will step up these efforts until the next election to the Board of Representatives in 2022.

The situation is different for employee-elected members of the Supervisory Board, where two out of the four members are women, corresponding to a share of 50%. A number of subsidiaries have their own supervisory boards. Members of these supervisory boards are recruited from among members of the management team in the Verdo Group, which means that they are subject to the same gender balance target. In 2019, we achieved a gender balance in 13 of our 18 subsidiaries. This is a significant increase from 2018, when none of the companies had achieved a gender balance. This focus continues in 2020.

Sponsorships and partnerships

With our partnership and sponsorship policy, we want to promote knowledge of sustainability and green energy issues and to create value for the local communities in which we operate. Sports and culture help bring people together in communities that generate value for the individual and society. That is why we have supported the world of sports for many years, most notably as the main sponsor of Randers FC, a sponsorship which dates back to the early days of the club. We also sponsor handball, Herning Blue Fox ice hockey and various local events. We strive for diversity in our sponsorships. Therefore, we support ‘Værket’ and its wide range of cultural events in the form of opera and ballet, music, theatre and shows for the whole family. Active citizenship and social responsibility are all about our value-adding relations with the rest of society. We therefore reach out where we feel we can make a difference. Even a modest helping hand can have a big impact on the individual and the local community. In 2020, we will work on increasing the breadth of our sponsorships. This will mean that some of those recipients who have received a lot of money in the past will receive slightly less, which will allow us to support small initiatives in the local community.

Conclusion

Our employee benefits contribute to Verdo’s attractiveness as a workplace, as well as having helped to ensure that our active efforts to recruit more apprentices and students have borne fruit. We have recruited more female managers, but unfortunately did not meet our target at all levels. Judging from the positive feedback we have received, we have succeeding in giving something back to the local communities we are part of via our sponsorships.