Responsibility Towards People

SUSTAINABILITY

Responsibility Towards People

We are a People Company, and our success is founded on the skills and wellbeing of our employees. Accordingly, we invest willingly in wide-ranging training and talent-building programmes, promote the values of meritocracy, diversity and respect for human rights.

Our Social Ambition 2030

During 2021, Prysmian outlined its Social Ambition 2030 plan, meaning the targets for diversity equity & inclusion, digital inclusion, community empowerment, employee engagement and upskilling that it intends to achieve over the coming decade. We believe that combining Social Ambition with environmental objectives is one of the cornerstones of our ESG Identity. Our aim is actively to encourage transition to a fair, more diverse, inclusive and prosperous working environment, and to have a positive impact on development of the communities and societies where we are present.

These goals are underpinned by a specific mission:

Working in a partnership with the numerous local communities where we operate, by promoting technical and professional training, social and cultural awareness and growth of its human capital.
Developing an inclusive working environment at all its facilities, focused on enhancement and respect of people, based on their diversity in terms of gender, culture, origins, nationality, ethnicity, religion or abilities. It will also foster a global approach to recognition and rewarding of merit and results.
Accelerate the creation and development of a skilled and informed workforce, developing an organisation that works to promote gender equality at all levels, with a specific focus on increasing the number of women in the technical and scientific sector.
Promoting programs to extend inclusion to all its collaborators and partners in digital technologies, overcoming past challenges and working to eliminate any kind of discrimination associated with role or position.

Prysmian will continue to maintain occupational health and safety as an absolute priority for all its collaborators, through programs based on everyday prevention, as essential prerequisites for the continuity and success of its business.

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The Value of Human Capital

The Group employed 30,525 FTEs at 31 December 2022, of whom 8,016 desk workers (comprising executives and white-collar employees), and 22,509 non-desk (blue-collar) staff, reflecting our manufacturing identity. More than half of our employees were located in the EMEA area (Europe, Middle East and Africa). North America (US and Canada) and LATAM accounted for respectively 20.5% and 15.2%, while the remaining 12.4% were in the APAC area. Given our type of manufacturing business, men made up 80.7% of our workforce, and women the remaining 19.3%. The Group continually strives to implement equal opportunities programmes.

Find out more about our “Diversity & Inclusion Policy" .

The majority of employees (54.2%) were between 31 and 50 years old. About 29.8% of employees are above the age of 50, while the remaining 16% are under 31 years old.

PEOPLE & CAREERS

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

Prysmian has identified the promotion of diversity and equal opportunity as a strategic objective, and seeks to improve the gender balance of our overall workforce by 2022, raising female recruitment to 40% of the total (from 38.7% in 2021 and 30% in 2016) and to increase the percentage of women in all management positions (from junior to top) from 22.4% in 2021 to 25% in 2022.

The Group has improved gender balance in executive positions: from 6% in 2016 to 13.5% in 2021, and aims for 18% in 2022. Our Side by Side diversity and inclusion programme organizes initiatives that aim to create a working environment where all employees, regardless of culture, gender, age and leadership style, are offered equal growth opportunities through recruitment, mentoring, flexible work hours, leadership programs, and paid maternity leaves.

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Human Rights

As part of our commitment to sustainable development, our goal is to ensure that we are not involved in any way, directly nor indirectly, in activities that infringe on human rights. We believe that safeguarding the dignity, freedom and equality of all human beings is at the heart of who we are as a global company.

We reject discrimination of any kind, and all illegal acts and activities. With this in mind, we operate within the general reference framework of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and of the Fundamental Conventions of the International Labor Organization (ILO) and seek to uphold their recommendations across all our locations, implementing our own Human Rights Policy (link). Since 2018, we have implemented a Human Rights Due Diligence process, enabling Prysmian to map the potential Human Rights impact of Group operations.

Applying this Due Diligence process, we began an assessment of 100% of production locations in 2020 that was completed during 2021. Following this assessment, six plants found to be at high risk of violating human rights were audited to check if there was any substance to this analysis. The Prysmian also requires suppliers to show rigorous respect for human rights, applying a specific Due Diligence process that assesses the risk at supply chain level.

We carried out over 27,000 hours of training in 2021 on the topics of Ethics and Human Rights, with a view to raising and disseminating awareness about them within Prysmian.

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PEOPLE & CAREERS

The Development of Talents

Our People strategy enables us to identify and attract talents with the right technical and human skills to guarantee the success of our projects and processes, and establish their development paths. We do this through targeted Employer Branding and Talent Acquisition programmes for young graduates in management, sales, industrial control and engineering. Our international recruiting program “Build the Future, the Prysmian Graduate Program” reached its tenth edition in 2021. During the first half of 2021, 39 young people from all continents were taken on, while 40,000 applications were received in the second half of 2021. This will lead to the selection and recruitment of another 60 new graduates in 2022. Furthermore, 2021 also saw the launch of a new graduate program called “Empower your community,”, to recruit new graduates who will support local communities and the teams that hire them on issues of digitalisation and sustainability. In addition, we have three recruitment programs -- Make It, Sell It, and Sum It -- respectively targeting engineering, sales, and industrial control/business candidates.

To develop our professional and managerial staff, we set clear objectives and provide continual feedback about the results. We develop specialized development paths within the group through the Prysmian Academy, which offers three modular schools that offered a total of over 54,000 hours of training in 2021. The Prysmian Business School focuses on the development of high-potential talents, and course work is carried out in close collaboration with a pool of international business schools and universities. The Professional School is linked to development of technical careers for high performers, and organized into HQ expertise centers comprising around 40 courses and a teaching staff of over 50 colleagues. The Prysmian Digital school offers 20 full courses and training paths on demand, which are open to everyone.

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The Wellbeing of Employees

Our goal of creating sustainable value for all our stakeholders means our employees share the results we achieve, through remuneration systems that establish a real and verifiable link between pay, sustainability targets, and performance, both individually and at Group level, also through a share ownership plan under which around one third of employees are also stable shareholders and own around 3% of the share capital. Further benefits such as supplementary welfare, additional medical care, personal accident policies, a company car for staff who are entitled to one, and company canteen or restaurant vouchers are adapted to local conditions. Part of the variable remuneration of all Group managers is linked to the achievement of sustainability targets, which are monitored using both internal indicators (gender diversity in management, culture of safety in the workplace, reduction of emissions) and the third-party assessments provided by sustainability indexes.

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Commitment to the community

One of the drivers of the sustainability strategy consistently adopted by the Prysmian over the years is to contribute to the development of people and communities, creating value for all parties concerned, and contributing to the sustainable development of areas where we operate. In 2022 we donated over €1,700,000 to local communities in cash, in kind, and in the form of time. The Group has joined the Business Volunteer project, taking part in social programmes supported by the concrete contribution of employees who “donated working hours.”

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Our Human Rights approach

Our commitment towards Sustainable Development is to respecting and protecting the Human Rights of all our employees and those affected by our business activities. As a company who operates across the globe, we believe that safeguarding the dignity, freedom and equality of all human beings is at the heart of who we are as a company. We reject discrimination of any kind and all illegal acts and activities. With this in mind, we operate within the general reference framework of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and of the Fundamental Conventions of the International Labor Organization (ILO) and seek to uphold their recommendations across all our locations, implementing our own approach to Human Rights.

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Health & Safety

Our strategy regarding Employees Health & Safety is guided by our “Zero & Beyond” Safety Culture program with the goal of achieving “ZERO injuries in the workplace and daily life and ZERO professional diseases.” To do so, we safeguard the integrity, health and welfare of workers in their workplaces through policies, training, and good management practices.

The Group’s deep commitment to safety has resulted in the reduction of the number of injuries to an Injuries Frequency rate (calculated in accordance with the OSHA LTA) of approximately 1.40 at the end of 2022. The Group also focuses on uniting employees around a shared vision and reducing the cultural differences between plants, not least by standardising the Health, Safety & Environment monitoring and managing practices adopted.

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Working for the Community

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