Employees
“Our employees are our most important capital. They are the driving force behind our success. We endeavour to include in our business strong local organisations with a high degree of entrepreneurship and sense of responsibility for all business processes. Communication lines are short in these organisations and authority is delegated. Each operating company implements its own personnel policy, in line with the wishes and circumstances at each site, but always consistent with Hydratec Industries’ guidelines and values. HR managers meet each other on a regular basis to coordinate this policy.
Recruitment
By 2022, we faced a further tightening of the labour market, not only for technical positions, but also across the full breadth of jobs and profiles. Our decentralised organisation and the associated high level of commitment and responsibility among our employees gives us a relatively low staff turnover. We also managed to fill vacancies in 2022 by making smart use of various communications channels. Consequently, the labour market situation did not cause any significant problems at Hydratec companies last year, although work pressure sometimes increased.
That is why we continue to look for creative ways to engage our employees and keep them attached to Hydratec. Where possible, we offer marginalised people with poor job prospects opportunities to develop skills, sometimes through a sheltered workshop. New colleagues go through an extensive onboarding process, covering not only working arrangements and rules, but also Hydratec Industries’ standards and values. It is important to us that all new colleagues feel at home. Regular, constructive meetings are held with works councils in each operating company to discuss employees’ interests. Central management takes part in such consultations once a year.
Diversity
Hydratec Industries strives for a diverse and inclusive workforce that reflects society. We steer towards this in our recruitment policy: we make no distinction between age, gender and ethnicity. We offer everyone with the right skills, education and drive equal opportunities for development and advancement. Hydratec Industries promotes gender equality nationally and internationally. Men and women who do the same work in the same situation receive equal pay.
Hydratec Industries greatly values diversity in its workforce, because we are convinced that it encourages innovation and because different perceptions lead to different approaches and better decisions. Among other things, diversity stems from differences in education, background, age, gender and ethnicity. Partly for this reason, we strive for a balanced ratio of young and older talent and a good gender ratio, also in management positions. The company employed people of 24 different nationalities in 2022 (2021: 21). The percentage of female employees in the group was 19% at the end of 2022 (2021: 21%). It will take extra attention to attract enough suitable female employees at a clearly technically-oriented organisation. We also strive for diversity in the composition of the Management and Supervisory Boards. The Management Board comprises 50% women (1), the Supervisory Board 33.3% women (1) and personnel in managerial positions are 20% women (1). Hydratec has not yet set a firm target for the proportion of women in managerial positions. This will be addressed as part of the CSRD implementation.
Training and development
Our employees underwent 31,297 training hours last year (2021: 20,218). Both internal and external training hours rose sharply compared to 2021. We consider the development of employees to be of great importance for them to remain permanently employable. A range of means are used for this, including onboarding courses for new employees, job rotation, internal courses given by colleagues, watching webinars, taking external courses and follow-up programmes. In 2022, we developed young talent by offering a total of 40 traineeships among the companies. We also focused on improving leadership within our organisation, and offered middle managers management training for this purpose.
Safety at work
Our employees work with large pieces of equipment and, in some cases, with hazardous substances. This can lead to potentially dangerous situations. In 2022, there were relatively few serious accidents 13 (2021: 11). We believe it is important to ensure that all incidents are reported. We believe that every incident is one too many. so we pay close attention to safety and accident prevention through monitoring, training and awareness. This is not simply a matter of rules and agreements, but primarily also of awareness and behaviour.
Mental safety was also addressed in 2022, partly in response to reports of unacceptable behaviour in other sectors. We believe it is important that every colleague feels safe in their working environment and feels able to speak up. We received no reports of inappropriate behaviour or signs that this is an issue at Hydratec in 2022. We are aware that this does not mean that unacceptable behaviour does not occur at our premises, so we need to continue to actively investigate whether this is the case at Hydratec. We encourage our managers to adopt such a proactive, inquisitive attitude and keep the topic open for discussion with employees.
Health and employability
The well-being and employability of our people was again a top priority in 2022. We conducted an employee satisfaction survey at several sites. The results were discussed with the works council and shared with colleagues. One of the measures based on the study is to improve internal communications, both top-down and between departments or teams. We spent time actively addressing (social) connectedness, work-life balance and staying in touch with our customers. We organised events at several sites. During the well-attended celebration of our 25th anniversary as a listed company at Burgers’ Zoo, employees had the opportunity to meet up in a relaxed setting. In 2023, we will continue to focus on our employees’ vitality, well-being and employability.
Overall absenteeism at Hydratec Industries was relatively high compared to previous years: 5.7% (2021: 4.8%), the increase was partly due to some cases of long-term sickness absence. Due to minor Covid-19 effects, sickness absence had a fluctuating trend during the year. Absenteeism remains a subject that we continuously focus on. The organisations are locally responsible for their own health and absenteeism policy, but they do mutually coordinate it.
