Hours worked, salary and pension funds

HOURS WORKED IN ACEA

Acea works in compliance with labour legislation and in accordance with the National Collective Bargaining Agreements of reference, with a particular focus on cases relating to working hours and the duration of work, minimum guaranteed wages, age categories and restrictions on the use of legal child labour, proper management of disadvantaged categories.

Following the continuation of the Covid-19 health emergency, in line with the security measures imposed at government level, Acea has maintained remote working as the main working method, mainly for staff with administrative profiles.

Hours worked in the year, ordinary and overtime, excluding managers, amounted to 10,807,931 hours of which 78% by male staff (8,436,103 hours), due to the higher proportion of men in the company’s workforce (76% of the total).

Analysing the overtime hours, the influence of gender is even more evident: 96% of overtime is in fact attributable to men and only 4% to women (please also see the sub-paragraph Remuneration). Days of absence totalled 82,254, mainly due to illness, leave (for reasons of study, health, etc.), maternity/paternity leave, trade un- ion and other reasons (study, health, generic) (see Chart no. 44 and Table no. 42).

The absenteeism rate for the year was 2.7% (3% for men and 2% for women), down from 3% in 2020.

Chart no. 44 – Hours worked by the staff and absences (2021)

In addition to leave, staff can access reduced working hours, in ac- cordance with the terms defined by the company: in 2021, part-time staff amounted to around 1.6% of total staff.

For managers and stage-three workers, independent scheduling is permitted, which allows the “personalized” management of work schedules, in compliance with contractual provisions.

For employees with a “fixed schedule”, arrival and departure flexibility is permitted, according to established slots, and a total number of monthly hours of leave can be used during the times estab- lished.

Remote working is an agile and flexible working method that Acea has adopted on an experimental basis since 2018 to promote worklife balance; because of this choice, the company was able to reorganise its working methods as from the start of the pandemic emergency, which continued into 2021, by placing most of its staff into remote working mode (see also the section on Staff develop- ment and communication).

SALARIES

The wages that Acea pays its employees, excluding executives and top management, are determined by applying the National Collec- tive Bargaining Agreements (CCNL) of reference, which ensure the minimum salary levels according to professional categories.

The company also adopts a remuneration policy that applies mer- it-based principles to the fixed and variable components of the re- muneration, determining remuneration that is above the minimum salaries set by the National Collective Bargaining Agreements.

The percentage weight of gross average effective remuneration of women, including fixed and variable components, as compared to that of men shows that for executives, the pay gap is the high- est and amounts to 10.3%, in favour of men; for middle managers, women's and men's salaries are essentially aligned and men receive only 0.4% more remuneration than women; for clerks and manual workers, the pay gap is 8.8% and 7.5% respectively, again in favour of men, due to the fact that activities with higher additional remu- neration (on-call, shifts, allowances, overtime, etc.) are mainly car- ried out by men.

Breaking down the data further by age group: the pay gap narrows slightly for female managers over 50, who accrue more variable el- ements of their pay over time; female executives aged between 30 and 50 receive pay that is 0.8% higher than that of men in the same age bracket; finally, the pay gap narrows, in particular, for female employees under the age of 30, demonstrating that the remuner- ation for the new and more qualified jobs required by the company are more uniform from a gender perspective (see chart no. 45 and table no. 42).

Chart no. 45 – Women's pay as a percentage of men's pay by qualification and age group (2021)

(*) The item does not include senior managers benefiting from the Long Term Incentive Plan (LTIP).

PENSION FUNDS AND DEFINED CONTRIBUTION PLANS

Supplementary pensions are a form of voluntary contribution aimed at generating income that is supplementary to the pension, the amounts paid by workers being invested in the financial market by specialized operators.

The pension funds of reference for Acea staff are: Previndai, re- served for executives, and Pegaso (managed jointly by Utilitalia and Trade Union Organisations) for non-management staff, to whom the National Collective Bargaining Agreements of the electrical and gas-water segments apply.

The Pegaso Fund adopted a 2019-2021 Strategic Plan that illus- trates the organisation’s management guidelines, including instruments for measuring ESG factors (environmental, social and governance).

There were 2,973 Pegaso members among the Acea employees in the year, a slight increase on 2020 (2,909 members). By analysing the distribution by gender of the members, 76% are men and 24% are women (please see Table no. 42). The company paid about € 6 million in severance pay to the fund and about € 2.1 million in sup- plementary contributions; for some years it has been possible to pay part or all of the performance bonus into the fund, benefiting from an additional share paid by the company.

Table no. 42 – Hours worked, absences, remuneration and members of the supplemental pension fund (2019-2021)

(*) 2019 and 2020 data do not include AdF and GORI.