Working at A2A

Responsible management of human capital

Innovation, sustainability, participation, responsibility, excellence: our values give us energy and motivation, guiding our behaviour and making us aware of what we can be in the future.

In our offices and facilities, along with the development of innovative and smart environments, these values are fundamental for enabling our people to express themselves in the best possible way.
In fact, A2A Group recognises the role played by its human resources as the focus and hallmark of its entire business strategy, and has defined a development plan aimed at enhancing quality and skills, based on selection, training, management and remuneration systems. On 31 December 2017, the Group had a total of 11,416 employees. Compared to 2016, the number of employees has increased by 17% due to both new hires and the acquisition of companies in 2016 (LGH Group, Rieco-Resmal Group, La BI.CO DUE Srl and Consul System SpA) and consolidated in non-financial reports starting from 2017.
The protection of health and safety at work is a priority for A2A Group: every employee has the right to a workplace and to carry out activities that do not put their health at risk, but also the obligation to actively participate in the training, to comply with instructions for carrying out activities, including the use of protective equipment, and to observe all current regulations.
In 2016, we launched the pilot project, smartWorking-A2A: around 250 people worked from home or from a location other than their own office once a week and, in 2018, it was extended to a total of around 800 employees.
Smart working is a tool that helps improve flexibility and the quality of work and that simultaneously offers a solution to important economic and social needs, reconciling people’s needs with those of the company, saving time, money and environmental sustainability. 
 

 

Personnel by workplace

Welfare and diversity

 

We believe in the value of diversity through identifying and overcoming any stereotype related to gender, age, disability, ethnicity, belief and sexual orientation. As required by current legislation, A2A guarantees the right to work for disabled people, whose number within the Group at the end of the 2017 financial year stood at 506, 24% of whom are women. In terms of the work-life balance, the Group also meets the needs of employees, having granted 324 part-time contracts in 2017 (3% of total employees), 88% of which were to women. In addition, 335 cases of parental leave were agreed, 33% more than in 2016. 91% of people who were granted leave returned to work in 2017. The offer includes many services offered to employees:

 

A2A social policies
Work-life balance services Mobility services: discounted rates for employees were also applied in 2017, for the purchase of local public transport season tickets; 974 season tickets were activated. 
Smart Working: Work at A2A is getting smarter. Since 2016, thanks to a pilot project that has involved approximately 250 employees, it has been able to test the effectiveness of smart working in the field, innovative ways of working that, for one day a week, helped employees who participated to work from home.
This first phase of the Smart Working project has been successfully completed and is very popular with the workers involved: about 5,000 days were worked in a "smart" way, with an rating of 9.2 on a scale from 1 to 10 by the participants, who declared their willingness to continue with this way of working in 99% of cases. A2A's "smart workers" saved about 32 hours and 1,100 km per person over one year and, thanks to the absence of travel, the overall emission of around 11 tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere was avoided. 
Smart working is a tool that helps improve flexibility and the quality of work and that simultaneously offers a solution to important economic and social needs, people’s needs with those of the company, saving time and money and environmental sustainability ”. 
Thanks to these important results, A2A decided to expand the project, sharing Smart Working with trade union representatives and tripling the number of people involved: by the end of the year there will be 800 people involved. Over the coming months the assessments and research will continue in order to further expand the perimeter of the individuals involved.
Company nursery and preschool: at the Lamarmora headquarters in Brescia, 22 children of registered employees were enrolled in 2017.
Health and well-being services 

Social and psychological assistance service: present in 14 A2A Group offices. In 2017, the service involved 3,037 employees. 

 

 

In line with previous years, A2A is implementing actions in favour of the gender equality within the company. 

 

Our numbers

Education and training

The Integrated Development Path for Human Resources defines the ideal path of the professional life of the employee.
With the support of tools, processes and methodologies the employees are able to develop skills, express potentialities and grow based on their merit.
The training strategy and the implied actions come from a global perspective which integrates training with the other development tools creating in this way a connection between values, the distinctive organizational skills of A2A, the performance management tools and the career paths. 

 

Employees development

Remuneration

A2A guarantees recent graduates the minimum salary established by the applicable national collective labour agreement for the category into which they fall. For those already qualified and experienced, a salary is guaranteed in line with market standards and internal remuneration practices, in order to ensure both an adequate level of external competitiveness and internal fairness. In defining the type of contract and salary, A2A scrupulously complies with Italian regulations, which excludes any distinction between gender in the remuneration profile. As in previous years, differences in the average pay for different qualifications are small. The differences with regards to 2016 are due to the enlarged scope of the companies consolidated in the 2017 Integrated Financial Statements.

Average wages women/men by qualification (%) 

CATEGORY

2015 

MEN/ WOMEN 

2016 

MEN/WOMEN

2017

MEN/WOMEN
DIRECTORS 101.0% 102.3% 103.7%
EXECUTIVES 97.0% 95.7% 96.0%
EMPLOYEES 89.1% 89.6% 89.4%
WORKERS     91.1% 92.7% 95.3%

The Group's remuneration policy is primarily designed to recognise and enhance the commitment, skills and conduct of employees and to ensure the correct remuneration of people in relation to their duties. 
For all employees, remuneration is structured in fixed and variable monetary terms and includes a package of income support or facilitation benefits (health and social security insurance, projects and initiatives for the employee and their family, promotions and various types of facilitations). The variable monetary component is based on discretionary mechanisms that recognise work performance and behaviour in terms of a one-off event or on systems that correlate directly with company performance and individual performance ("Management by Objectives"). In 2017, in line with the objectives of the A2A Group Industrial Plan, the extraordinary incentive plans for the sale of energy efficiency services were followed and incentive plans were launched in line with the objectives for the promotion of Smart City technologies. 
In 2017, new tools were also tested to reward the participation of some employees in one-off projects, using prizes and non-monetary awards, such as vouchers that can be spent online to purchase goods for daily use, directly chosen by the employee. 
The variable compensation system is supplemented by a group incentive tool ("Performance Bonus"), based on the Group's profitability and productivity objectives, designed to ensure that all employees, including those not covered by the MbO, are involved in the Group's performance. The analysis and comparison phase also continued in order to allow employees with the income limits envisaged by current legislation to choose, from 2018, whether to convert part of the "2017 result bonus" into benefits and services. 
In order to narrow the gap between employees and the Group's objectives and increase their participation in achieving corporate targets, the MbO system was further extended in terms of the number of people involved and, in 2017, reached approximately 100% of directors, 28% of executives  and 2% of employees. In particular, there was a significant increase for the number of executives compared to 2016, this is also due to the increase in Companies involved.
Finally, in order to facilitate the implementation of the Sustainability Plan’s initiatives, defined by the A2A Group, a structured model of sustainability objectives was integrated into the management incentive systems. This provided for the inclusion of at least one sustainability objective in 100% of the 2017 MBOs for A2A Group's directors (excluding the LGH Group and the newly consolidated companies).