#SiamoEnel Architects of wellbeing

#SiamoEnel
Architects of wellbeing

{{item.title}}

Wellbeing and inclusion

Wellbeing and inclusion are the prerequisites that guarantee a good work-life balance. Involving people and valuing their differences contribute to the creation of sustainable value, a commitment at the heart of our company welfare program. This is the foundation of our People and Organization policies, which aim to attract talent, improve the organizational climate and ensure a healthy work-life balance.

The key to this journey is listening and trusting, because only by understanding the needs of our people were we able to face the challenges imposed by the recent health crisis. It changed the way we work and ushered in a new way of working, where wellbeing is a facilitating factor of inclusive leadership.

Work-life harmony

Our idea of wellbeing goes beyond the private sphere and extends to the professional dimension and to people’s lives in general. Work-life harmony and inclusion are not just an organizational matter, but also a matter of providing concrete services and opportunities. Agile working, with the possibility to work remotely, was already established back in 2016, and is a pivotal element of what we offer. It is an excellent example of flexibility that allows for work-life balance.

A further enhanced tool for colleagues who are in special situations related to persons with disabilities, those caring for disabled family members or cohabitants, pregnant colleagues, parents with children up to 3 years of age, and any other extraordinary and temporary individual conditions.

Our goal of work-life balance has produced a series of actions and best practices thanks to which, in 2016, for the first time our Group ranked 25th on the Thomas Reuters Index, which reviews 5,000 international companies and selects the top 100 globally.

In 2022, we reconfirmed our position at the top of the Refinitiv Diversity and Inclusion Index (formerly Thomson Reuters) in the “Electric Utilities & IPPs” industry category, ranking 30th among the top 100 in the index compiled by Refinitiv, a global financial data provider. This index evaluates the diversity and inclusion performance of more than 11,000 companies based on publicly available information.

In the 2021, 2022 and 2023 editions of the “Gender Equality Global Report & Ranking,” which Equileap publishes every year to monitor the implementation of gender equality practices in the corporate world, our Group was recognized as the best utility company globally, the best Italian company, and earned eighth place in the overall TOP 100. In 2022, for the third consecutive year, the Group was included in the Bloomberg Gender-Equality Index (GEI), which features 418 leading companies headquartered in 45 countries which are assessed and selected from among nearly 11,700 publicly traded companies evaluated on the basis of the breadth of disclosure and the achievements of their gender inclusion initiatives.

Our commitment was also recognized by LIFEED, the company that invented Life Based Learning, a training method that promotes soft skills. They awarded our Group the Caring Company 2022® award, which is given to companies that place importance on work-life balance and promote the diversity of each individual, thus contributing to community growth and a cultural change that the country needs.

Attention and care for people

Wellbeing is about prioritizing healthy habits related to diet, physical activity and rest, as well as managing and controlling stress and our relationships with other people. Certain behaviors can reduce the risk of disease, help us to protect our mental health, give us more energy and enable us to work better. Which is why our Group has developed a series of services aimed at physical and mental wellbeing that can be utilized by all colleagues, they include psychological support, nutrition counseling and online classes for mindfulness, yoga, pilates and postural gymnastics.

The Wellbeing 360 program was created to bring awareness to our people about the importance of having a healthy lifestyle geared toward physical wellbeing. Themes relating to health, nutrition, physical activity and postural movement are addressed in various online tutorials. We also offer an exclusive, free, anonymous and confidential counseling service with a nutritionist, which is extended to family members as well. 

It is a priority for our Group to support people during their most difficult times, both in their private as well as their working lives, and to offer them all the necessary tools to best deal with these difficulties and overcome them. With this in mind, since March 2020, we have been offering a free, anonymous and confidential Psychological Listening and Wellbeing support service for our people and their families. The service provides consultation with psychologists and psychotherapists specialized in the management of various problems, available every hour of every day, all year round. Our commitment to supporting people’s mental and physical wellbeing was recognized and rewarded at the 2022 CEO for Life Lundbeck Awards.

Caring for families and parents

We promote services supporting the wellbeing of our people in all stages of life, with a special focus on parenting, an important journey in which both parents redesign the balance between the domestic and working spheres. Through our Parental Program, we aim to enhance the parenting experience in an organizational context as well, fostering the transfer of acquired skills into the workplace. The program includes encounters with each person’s People Business Partner and managers to address both work and organizational issues and to promote parenting culture within the company and the sharing of useful tools to facilitate the integration of work and home life.

We promote a vision of shared parenting, which foresees care by both parents, consolidating our commitment to work-life balance together with policies to enhance diversity by breaking down socially predefined roles. In January 2023, we signed a union agreement that expands the parental support benefits already adopted by our Group. These new benefits include the expansion of leave for fathers, with an additional 10 days of paid leave beyond the mandatory paternity leave provided by law. We also provide better conditions compared to those required by the national  agreements, such as those related to maternity leave (100% pay in the first 5 mandatory months compared to 80% required by law), as well as parental leave (90% pay for the first month, 60% pay for the second and third months, 45% pay for the additional 3 months to which parents are entitled, compared to 30% required by law).

In keeping with our culture oriented towards inclusion, respect for diversity and attention to caring for children, as of July 2021, the benefit that guarantees the use of parental leave and time off was extended to include the non-biological/legal parent of same-sex couples in civil unions, who still by law today cannot benefit from it. This is a groundbreaking change for our Group in Italy, and is part of the LGBTQI+ inclusivity path that we are on. In addition, for parents of children with specific learning disabilities (SLDs), attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), motor disability, sensory disability or neurodiversity (intellectual, autism spectrum), a dedicated support program has been started to improve their familial and social wellbeing.

For expectant mothers and parents of children of up to three years old, there is also the digital platform “CHILD” available to help capitalize on an individual’s own experiences to apply to work through the “Life Based Learning” method. This methodology uses life and personal experiences as a breeding ground for the development of soft skills that are critical for effectiveness on the job, such as organizational, creative and interpersonal skills.

Our care initiatives also include those who are caregivers for an elderly person or other dependent adult. For these individuals, we offer a series of meetings regarding the caregiver role to offer support for the development of greater awareness and peace of mind regarding their responsibilities, and ideas on how to integrate these more smoothly with their professional life. The use of personal experiences to develop soft skills is also the basis of the online Master Care course.

The goal of our Ability Parent Care project is to provide tangible support to parents of children with specific learning disabilities (SLD), attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), motor or sensory disabilities, and neurodiversity (including intellectual and autism spectrum conditions). Through a series of support and training groups, we aim to guide parents in discovering effective tools and shared strategies to enhance their relationships with individuals with disabilities, tackle any challenges within the family or social context, and alleviate potential feelings of stress, inadequacy, or concerns about the future. Simultaneously, we strive to enhance the overall wellbeing of families and promote the autonomy and inclusion of individuals with disabilities.

Welfare and Benefits

In 2020, we designed the MyBenefit portal with the objective of making it possible for each colleague to quickly find all the benefits available to them. In fact, the portal shows everything we offer to our people. By accessing the portal, it is possible to utilize numerous services at negotiated prices with qualified provider networks, such as babysitting services, family counseling, homecare for a temporary or permanent disability, veterinary services to care for our four-legged friends, online drugstore products, home maintenance, and tailoring and laundry home delivery services.

Another important service we offer is tied to the concrete economic benefits for our people offered by the Italian Stability Law. With MyWelfare, there is the possibility to convert a portion of profitability and productivity bonuses into goods and services with great economic and tax benefits. In 2018, we received the “Welfare Award,” a recognition given to the most outstanding companies in the field of organizational wellbeing and those with the biggest success in increasing purchasing power of their employees. Specifically, we ranked first in the “Best Participation Under 30” BIG Corporate section, by virtue of having close to 100% use of company welfare benefits by colleagues under 30 years of age.

Towards sustainable mobility

Several years have passed since we introduced the role of mobility manager, a person responsible for putting initiatives into action to encourage colleagues to substitute private motor vehicles with green transportation options. Our network of mobility managers have been expanding over the years and currently counts with 18 colleagues in various cities. In particular, to meet the needs of people and the specific characteristics of the areas we operate in, over the last few years we have introduced incentive projects that include: the development of mobility sharing through special rates and agreements with public and private operators; the ability to purchase annual passes for local public transportation through a dedicated platform guaranteeing a company contribution and special payment agreements; the creation and presentation in the municipalities in areas where we are present of Piani di Spostamento Casa Lavoro (Home-Work Travel Plans) based on existing national regulations that allow us to analyze the mobility habits of colleagues and assess their propensity to change; the use of bicycles through the Enel Bike&Free corporate bike sharing program, already implemented in Bologna and Florence, where infrastructure conditions make the use of bicycles easy and safe.

In closing, for the benefit of all colleagues, we have created an online training course for the safe operation of bicycles and scooters, because safety is a core value for us.

Initiatives for talented young people

Access to quality education is one of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals of the UN 2030 Agenda and,, as a company, it is a target about which we have made specific pledges. One such pledge is towards the youngest children, starting with those of our people. We have organized Digital Education workshops to study interactions with social media networks, videogames and smartphones to assist parents in better understanding and managing their children’s interactions with new digital technologies. It is in this same spirit that we promote Ada Labs, interactive laboratories on coding dedicated exclusively to our colleagues’ children between the ages of 7 and 10. Each lab session, lasting 1.5 hours, has the aim of introducing young children to IT technologies and the basics of programming, while emphasizing the creative, innovative and sustainable aspects of studying technical and scientific subjects. At the same time, the labs break down gender bias by involving children in an interactive story starring one of the “STEM muses,” crucial but often unknown female characters who have helped to create the present we live in. We have also launched the “Back to School” initiative to raise awareness among secondary school youth, in particular female students, regarding the value of a technical and scientific education, countering gender stereotypes.