Hours worked, salary and pension funds

[GRI - 103-2], [GRI - 103-3], [GRI - 201-1], [GRI - 103-1], [GRI - 405-2],

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)

Chart 44

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)

Chart 45

(*) 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)

u.m. 2019 2020 2021
  men women total men women total men women total
HOURS WORKED BY THE STAFF
hours  
regular 6.250.724 1.941.510 8.192.234 7.771.112 2.256.024 10.027.137 8.036.229 2.354.212 10.390.441
overtime 369.398 29.464 398.862 399.694 14.871 414.565 399.874 17.616 417.489
total hours worked 6.620.122 1.970.974 8.591.096 8.170.806 2.270.896 10.441.702 8.436.103 2.371.828 10.807.931
TYPE OF ABSENCES
days  
sick leave 29.279 10.969 40.248 35.163 7.815 42.978 33.518 7.218 40.736
maternity/paternity 1.118 9.278 10.396 1.499 7.929 9.428 1.730 10.640 12.370
strike 82 28 110 0 0 0 1.159 257 1.416
trade union leave 5.159 584 5.743 3.756 377 4.133 3.996 399 4.395
leave of absence 1.313 379 1.692 2.015 734 2.749 1.617 813 2.430
miscellaneous leave (study, health, bereavement and general reasons) 15.631 8.022 23.653 18.402 5.378 23.780 16.157 4.750 20.907
Total absences
(not incl. holidays
and accidents)
52.582 29.260 81.842 60.835 22.233 83.068 58.177 24.077 82.254
AVERAGE GROSS FEMALE PAY AS A PERCENTAGE OF MALE PAY BY QUALIFICATION (*)
%  
executives 96,2 98,2 89,7
managers 97,1 98,2 99,6
clerical workers 87,6 87,8 91,2
workers 99,6 94,6 92,5
AGE GROUPS AND GENDER OF THE EMPLOYEES ENROLLED IN THE PEGASO FUND
numero  
≤ 25 years 20 0 20 32 32 56 3 59
> 25 years and ≤ 30 years 65 26 91 92 25 117 103 29 132
> 30 years and ≤ 35 years 126 66 192 143 70 213 155 76 231
> 35 years and ≤ 40 years 186 88 274 202 103 305 224 90 314
> 40 years and ≤ 45 years 249 78 327 261 89 350 258 99 357
> 45 years and ≤ 50 years 320 105 425 293 101 394 293 96 389
> 50 years and ≤ 55 years 469 136 605 466 144 610 454 154 608
> 55 years and ≤ 60 years 423 119 542 440 112 552 434 102 536
> 60 years 293 49 342 276 60 336 276 71 347
total 2.151 667 2.818 2.205 704 2.909 2.253 720 2.973

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

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