Sustainable Development Goal 3
Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages
Our mission to work together to create an inspiring living environment for everyone, which is also expressed in our pay-off ‘Happy People Make Happy People’, means that Facilicom Group is committed to the wellbeing and health of our employees during their entire career. Last year, we invested in a range of initiatives ensuring that our colleagues work in a safe, healthy and pleasant environment. We also make steps to reinforce sustainable employability.
1. Working on a healthy work floor for everyone
Facilicom Group employs professionals in a wide variety of work environments, performing cleaning work, serving meals in restaurants, ensuring safety in and around buildings and providing care and support to clients and patients on a daily basis. This concerns work that our employees perform with high commitment and involvement, but at times can also be demanding. This is why vitality on the work floor is a continuous point of attention for Facilicom Group.
Prevention
Compared with the previous financial year, Facilicom Group’s sick leave rate increased in 2018, from 5.8% to 6.5%. Our aim is to limit the sick leave rate to a maximum of 5%. We aim to be one of the healthiest companies in our sector, showcasing our full commitment to caring for our employees and their families. This is why we are looking for measures that have a positive impact on the work-life balance, a healthy lifestyle, motivation and skills. All divisions have prepared prevention plans that give insight into the concrete points of attention and actions to encourage and support our employees regarding health and wellbeing - both for themselves and for their families.
Genuine, personal attention for our employees is considered a basis for good prevention in our company. Our focus on happiness at work is a central theme in all we do for that very reason - also in our sick leave policy. In addition to the measures and actions we take as part of our sick leave policy, this also involves a cultural change. Based on the pay-off Happy People Make Happy People, we prioritise activities that contribute to happiness at work at various levels in the organisation. We listen to our employees, we are aware of what goes on in the work environment, and give space to autonomy and development. This also enables us to take the right preventive measures concerning health and vitality.
HelloFysio
Training and supporting programmes
One of our popular measures to keep the work floor healthy is HelloFysio, which consists of online physiotherapy sessions that employees can attend online, at work or at home, for example using a webcam or telephone. Employees discuss their complaints with a qualified physiotherapist and receive a personal treatment plan. What's more, all employees can use online videos to do exercises designed to prevent complaints.
Facilicom Group helps its employees live a healthier life with a range of training courses. We offer training for quitting smoking and online coaching via Actify, an initiative of Zilveren Kruis healthcare insurers to help the employees reach a healthy weight. Last year, Facilicom Belgium organised a range of training sessions regarding ergonomics and used a campaign in the catering and cleaning divisions to create awareness of the benefits of flu vaccinations.
Last, year Facilicom Group highlighted preventive measures for flu during the flu season. On a theme page of the online platform ‘How comfortable are you with your work?’, we shared tips to get through the winter in good health and fitness. Managers highlighted prevention in team discussions.
Steptember
Walk at least ten thousand steps every day for one month. That is the idea behind Steptember, a worldwide initiative to enthuse people about a healthy lifestyle. The average employee takes no more than three thousand steps per day. Joining in with Steptember gives more insight into different ways to have a healthy level of daily exercise. The Steptember foundation supports combating cerebral palsy (CP), an incurable posture and motion syndrome cause by brain damage.
Facilicom Group joined Steptember for the first time last year with over one hundred teams. A total of almost four hundred employees, encouraged by boot camps, lunch walking routes and a stair-walking promotion, took no less than 113,107,629 steps in September. Facilicom Group’s performance was good for a national top three Steptember place. Additionally, we collected over ten thousand euros for charity.
Safety
A healthy workplace also implies attention for safety and preventing accidents. For this reason, all Facilicom divisions are SCC certified. Moreover, the divisions frequently organise training about prevention of aggression. All these factors serve to ensure awareness of safety and risks on the work floor, both in terms of our own employees and other people present.
Facilicom Group uses the Injury Frequency (IF) Index to measure safety on the work floor. Gom, Trigion and Facilicom Solutions annually measure this IF Index, comparing it with sector-wide figures if available.
For Facilicom Solutions, safety is a specialist field of the department focusing on quality, occupational conditions and the environment (QHSE). The team members perform workplace visits to encourage the safety awareness of operational employees. This approach increases the employees’ engagement in the safety theme and provides the organisation with additional insights about the safety risks on the work floor. In 2018, Facilicom Solutions updated its safety policy, highlighting the risks of working alone, the options of reinforcing desired behaviour and the use of personal protection equipment. An e-learning about safety issues was developed for new employees. This year, we will continue and expand pilots training employees to detect risks quicker and addressing colleagues accordingly.
2. Sustainable employability
acilicom Group considers it important for employees to be fit, healthy and motivated at work, and continue to be employable. This is why we offer a wide range of training, study and retraining options. Because people who continue to develop know more and can do more. That contributes to both short-term and long-term happiness at work.
Platforms and programmes
Sustainable employability is a recurring agenda item for the HR Committee, in which the HR Directors of our divisions convene. The theme receives structural attention and is specified via various action lines. For example, the platform ‘How comfortable are you with your work?’ gives employees tips about being healthy, fit, motivated and engaged in their work, and about the work-life balance. Furthermore, fifty of our ambassadors for happiness at work have completed a training programme, enabling them to embed this theme within all levels of the organisation.
GoodHabitz
In addition, we stimulate employees to continue to learn with various online and offline training programmes. Gom allows employees to attend training for specialist cleaning and Dutch language training. Via GoodHabitz, we offer employees of all Facilicom Group divisions free online training. The over one hundred available modules serve to give employees practical, applicable insights that contribute to better performance and more happiness at work. In 2018, almost two thousand employees started one of the training courses. In particular the modules on advice-style selling, company emergency response (BHV) and Excel were popular.
Mobility Center
The Mobility Center helps Facilicom Group employees find a new internal or external position. Employees can discuss their talents, skills and career options with consultants. Additionally, the Mobility Center organises application training, workshops on career development and training for managers supporting their employees regarding sustainable employability.
Facilicom Foundation
The Facilicom Foundation supports initiatives that contribute to an optimal living environment for everyone. This support consists of sharing expertise, deploying volunteers and/or allocating budget.
The Facilicom Foundation has ANBI status (Public Benefit Organisation) and accepts applications from Facilicom employees and external foundations and charities. Facilicom Group makes 400,000 euros available for this purpose. The board - consisting of Facilicom staff and external persons - and a network of 23 ambassadors from all divisions are committed to further expansion of the foundation.
In 2018, seventeen projects nominated by employees were granted financial support. Among other things, our contributions served to buy special swings for children with multiple handicaps. We also organised a garden party for physically handicapped people and developed course materials for language coaching of asylum seekers. A long-term partnership was established with ten foundations. These foundations will receive financial support and Facilicom employees have committed to volunteering.
In June 2018, the first edition of the Facilicom Challenge took place. A total of 346 Facilicom employees were made available for volunteering for a charity for half a day. The experiences with both the foundations and the employees were so positive that we have decided to make the Facilicom Challenge an annual event.
Young Facilicom
The internal Young Facilicom network gives employees up to age 35 the opportunity of sharing new contacts, ideas, knowledge and skills. This way, Young Facilicom provides an important contribution to making the organisation future-ready. The network is a key instrument in engaging and retaining young and ambitious professionals within Facilicom Group and the divisions.
Inspiration, connection and development are key themes in all activities organised by Young Facilicom. During training sessions, conferences and seminars, themes such as visibility, networking and influence are highlighted. Young Facilicom simultaneously serves as an advisory body for management (including the top layer), representing a new generation of professionals and managers
In October 2018, the new board members of Young Facilicom took office. Ara Hovsepjan (Gom), Linda Zandink (Trigion), Nesrin Ozcan (Albron), Rogier Kelderman and Judith Scholtes (Facilicom Solutions) will do their utmost to increase the relevance of Young Facilicom and increase the number of active members.
Enthusing students about clean
In an ageing society, engaging and binding employees starts at school. The Zadkine Startcollege, an MBO (Senior Secondary Vocational Education) with three locations in the Rotterdam area, has partnered with Gom to prepare students for a successful trainee placement or job with the cleaning division for some years now. A special programme gives students new insights into the balance between working, learning and living. Simultaneously, the school and the cleaning company are committed to enthusing students about a trainee placement or a job with Gom.
Students are also actively involved in Gom’s new initiative to counter litter in school buildings. At the main location of Zadkine at Benthemplein in Rotterdam, an experiment is currently conducted, aiming to persuade 16,000 students to keep the restaurant clean and orderly. For this purpose, the pilot uses interactive bins and positive psychology principles. Furthermore, Gom and Zadkine are partners in conducting an action programme for awareness of students and pupils of their share in waste and pollution.
Anniversaries
In line with our vision of sustainable employability and our commitment to our employees’ happiness at work, Facilicom Group pays a lot of attention to service anniversaries. On 11 October 2018, the company celebrated the anniversaries of 597 employees in the Beatrix Theatre in Utrecht.
Incluzio makes every neighbourhood a better neighbourhood
Incluzio provides assistance and help in living, working and at home, contributing to a society where everyone counts and everyone joins in. In 2018, the over 2,600 employees personally supported a total of 34,000 people. We also ensured that another 54,000 people received the remote-assistance that they needed. This is based on technology such as personal alarms and medication checks.
Incluzio explicitly works at district level. For example via community centres, sports clubs, schools, health centres and general practitioner clinics. In 2018, we were operational in 75 municipal areas, including large cities such as Utrecht. Our clients rated our Utrecht district teams with a high score of 7.9.
