Organisational development

Sustainable employability
Our employees will have to carry on working until at least the age of 65. This means that sustainable employability has become even more important. By sustainable employability we mean the extent to which our employees are willing and able to continue to work in a productive, motivated and healthy way, either within or outside our organisation. We therefore stimulate internal and external mobility, partly because employees who change jobs regularly will find it easier to adapt to changing circumstances at a later age. It is also important to us as employers that employees, together with their managers, continuously look for ways in which Gasunie can make the most of their talents. Other key aspects of our sustainable employability policy that we will continue to work on in the coming years include the following:

• Training and development
  We believe in the concept of ‘life-long learning’. We think it is important for our employees to be able to develop and pursue personal growth during their careers, as this helps to improve sustainable employability. We offer our employees the opportunity to follow specific courses and training programmes. Given the fact that the educational level of our employees is very diverse, we offer additional training programmes for various target groups. We also offer many individual, tailor-made programmes. In 2013, we spent € 2,343,000 on courses and training programmes (per employee/year: € 1,653).
   
• Competence management
  In our HR policy, we focus on the knowledge and skills that our organisation needs in order to achieve its objectives. We apply this competence management in the assessment of our managers and in the process of assessment and recruitment. In this, we increasingly use the ‘360° Feedback’ method. This means that we collect input from various people from the employee’s work environment. Furthermore, when we appoint managers, we focus more strongly on competences such as developing other people’s qualities and coaching leadership. In the past, as a mainly technical company, we traditionally placed most emphasis on technical knowledge.
   
• Management development
  Over the past few years, we have invested a great deal in management development, partly through the internal training programmes ‘GU 2012’ and the GLP. We are convinced that the development of an organisation starts with the development of its management. After completing the GLP, participants indicated that they felt Gasunie can be managed more professionally and dynamically, but that this requires good organisation and constant attention. We are now working on a follow-up programme to address this point.
   

Diversity and equal opportunities

We aim for diversity throughout our organisation, seeking to create a culture in which everyone is occupied in ways that make the most of their talents and strengths – regardless of, say, their gender or ethnic origin. Talents can flourish better if we create more diversity in our organisation. That is why, for a number of years, we have been working with ‘inflow targets’ to attract more women and employees who are ‘distanced’ from the labour market. The targets relating to the number of women vary, depending on the current numbers of male and female students graduating from degree programmes that are relevant to our business. In addition, we have joined various external initiatives for raising awareness in the field of diversity. Together with others, we try to combat prejudice in special programmes (e.g., Talent to the Top and Professional Board Forum), during internal workshops, through coaching, and in our labour market communications. We also look at each vacancy to see if there are opportunities for employing disabled young people.