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.
Again for 2022, the Group 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 10,939,428 hours of which 78% by male staff (8,491,925 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: 94% of overtime is in fact attributable to men and only 6% to women (please also see the sub-paragraph Remuneration).
Days of absence totalled 100,882, mainly due to illness, various leave (for reasons of study, health, etc.), maternity/paternity leave, and trade union reasons (see Chart no. 43 and Table no. 45).
The absenteeism rate for the year was 3.6% (3.7% for men and 3.1% for women), up from 2.7% in 2021.

Chart no. 43 – Hours worked by the staff and absences (2022)

In addition to leave, sta can access reduced working hours, in accordance with the terms defined by the company: in 2022, part-time staff amounted to around 1.5% 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 num- ber of monthly hours of leave can be used during the times established.

REMUNERATION

The wages that Acea pays its employees, excluding executives and top management, are determined by applying the National Collective Bargaining Agreements (CCNL) of reference, which ensure the minimum salary levels according to professional categories.
The company also applies a remuneration policy that includes mer- it-based principles, in line with the Performance Management and Leadership Models adopted, with effects on the fixed and variable components of the remuneration, determining remuneration that is above the minimum salaries set by the National Collective Bargain- ing Agreements (see also sub-paragraph Incentive Systems and Staff Evaluation).
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 9.6%, in favour of men; for middle managers, men’s salaries are slightly higher than women’s, the men receive 2.4% more remuneration than women; for clerks and manual workers, the pay gap is 10.2% and 5.2% respectively, again in favour of men, due to the fact that activities with higher additional remuneration (on-call, shifts, allowances, over- time, etc.) are mainly carried out by men who hold technical roles. Breaking down the data further by age group: the pay gap narrows slightly for female managers over 50 and more substantially for those aged between 30 and 50; female middle managers over 50 receive pay that is substantially aligned with those of men in the same age bracket; finally, the pay gap narrows, in particular, for female clerks under the age of 30, demonstrating that the remuneration for the new jobs required by the company are more uniform from a gender perspective (see Chart no. 44 and Table no. 45).

Chart no. 44 – Women's pay as a percentage of men's pay by qualification and age group (2022)

(*) 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, mainly: Previndai, reserved 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 Strategic Plan that illustrates the organisation’s management guidelines, including instruments for measuring ESG factors (environmental, social and governance).
There were 4,157 Pegaso members among the Acea employees in 2022, of which 78% men and 22% women (see Table no. 45). The company paid about € 8.7 million in severance pay to the fund and € 3.4 million in supplementary 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. 45 – Hours worked, absences, remuneration and members of the supplemental pension fund (2020-2022)

(*) 2020 data do not include AdF and Gori.