Our civic responsibility
Promoting our civic responsibility as an employer
Eurovia is committed to creating sustainable employment and does so whenever possible. The Company fosters professional development by providing its personnel with custom training opportunities and career paths that allow them to optimize their knowledge and skill sets, creativity, and motivation. Strategic Workforce Planning allows us to monitor and forecast business developments and determine short-term and medium-term needs in terms of professional skills. In efforts to give every employee opportunities to move forward, different centres have designed, organized and provided professional training in accordance with their business needs. Eurovia has two training centres in France (the Gevrey-Chambertin campus dedicated to roadwork expertise and Mérignac to management know-how). In all, over 951,000 hours of training were delivered in 2009 at sites all over the world.
Prior to recruitment, Eurovia is actively involved with schools and employment professionals to promote its business lines, qualifying courses of study, and labour market entry - and also to contribute to back-to-work initiatives for youths and other persons currently outside the job market.
Our efforts as a responsible employer also include open and active dialogue with employee unions and respect for their autonomy and wide-ranging perspectives. Our group savings plan is accessible to everyone and our program of matching contributions is of particular interest to employees who can only make modest payments.
Finally, agreements connecting employee benefits to corporate financial performance have been established in most subsidiaries within the Group, with 94% of staff, or 22,867 employees, benefiting from profit-sharing schemes, and 95%, or 23, 107 employees benefiting from incentive schemes.
Eurovia's employees demonstrate their sense of civic responsibility through the VINCI Foundation. The Foundation supports projects that foster social cohesion in disadvantaged neighbourhoods and promote access to job opportunities for the unemployed or the disenfranchised. Its support is two-pronged: financial (funding of projects) and human (sharing of Group employees' expertise). Since its establishment in 2002, the Foundation has undertaken 181 sponsorships with Eurovia employees in support of 160 projects, mainly in France, out of a total of 861 projects for the Group as a whole.
Eurovia human resources policy is based on the principle of "equitable reciprocity." The Company provides its employees with a working environment and conditions that foster professional development, the sharing of knowledge and skill sets, self-reliance, and openness. In return, the Company expects employees to be active partners and to be responsible for their actions, their duties, and their safety. Eurovia seeks employees that can invest themselves in and enrich Company culture - employees with strong interpersonal skills who can work as a team. These professionals must be self-reliant, be responsible, and take on complex missions and manage them with transparency. The Company recruits people who are intellectually curious, drawn by technology and innovation, and focused on results and customer satisfaction.
Foster all talents
In the area of human resources, Eurovia complies with the European Union's Charter of Fundamental Rights, basic conventions of International Labour Organization, and the United Nations' Global Compact and Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Like all other VINCI Group subsidiaries, Eurovia is audited by VIGEO, an independent corporate social responsibility rating agency. Our first audit in 2008 enabled us to promote good practices and identify areas for improvemet with regard to managing diversity.
Eurovia does not discriminate on the basis of age with respect to recruitment, professional mobility, training, job classification, promotion, and pay. It also considers knowledge sharing and sustainable teams as major strategic issues. That is why it promotes senior personnel's expertise through such initiatives as their mentoring of new employees and participation in evaluating employee skill sets.
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Eurovia supports commitment made as part of the VINCI Manifest, especially with regard to diversity and equal opportunity. Traditionally, construction companies belong to a sector of the economy that is particularly welcoming to all nationalities. Eurovia is committed to diversity in the workplace, including operations and management positions, with a focus on hiring more women and people with disabilities for all positions.
Over the past several years, Eurovia has made efforts to adapt its business model to the global multicultural reality in order to favour the flow of knowledge and skill sets, the dissemination of a common technical and managerial language, and the sharing of values. For young engineering graduates in France and the European economic space, Eurovia favours the Volontariat international en Entreprise (VIE) program, an international business volunteer initiative.
Achieving our zero accident objective
Eurovia is active in sectors where risk is ever present. Building infrastructure and producing construction materials are professions where accidents may easily occur. Consequently, Eurovia has placed its employees' safety at the top of its priorities; similarly to other VINCI Group subsidiaries, the Company pursues a "zero accident" objective. Every year, over 212,000 hours of training are delivered and 21,500 safety tests carried out for all employees at our sites around the world. This proactive prevention policy, which has been in place at Eurovia for several years, has led to a 44% drop in the accident frequency rate in 5 years.
Eurovia is moving forward in providing a safe workplace not only for permanent employees, but also for other employment partners, including temporary staff and subcontractors.
The Company is committed - through its prevention, health, and safety initiatives - to making safety top of mind among all personnel. Our Quality, Safety and Environment network implements tangible action toward achieving this objective. It has devised numerous programs to raise awareness of risk, prevent risk behaviour, and promote personal accountability with regard to safety in the workplace. Upon hiring, all new Eurovia employees receive basic safety training. Follow-up initiatives at all entities help employees stay aware of basic safety rules at all times.
Other specific initiatives are organized, including Eurovia's International Safety Day and the dissemination of best safety practices Company-wide.
Vigiroute® promotes alert driving
At Eurovia, two road accidents out of three, resulting in injury or material damage, could have been prevented. And they represented up to 70% of deadly workplace accidents. In 2003, in efforts to remind all employees of the importance of remaining alert behind the wheel, Eurovia implemented Vigiroute®.
This prevention program includes rules of conduct displayed in all work settings, a driver's guide, a stick-on reminder distributed to all new employees, and a quiz included in our hiring procedures. Four years following the implementation of Vigiroute®, the number of road accidents involving Eurovia employees has dropped by 35%. It is worth noting that Vigiroute® is being rolled out to all VINCI Group subsidiaries.
The traffic supervisor – a “traffic cop” for our worksites
The operator's cabins in the trucks and heavy machinery in use at our worksites are not like the driver's seat in a car - they include many more blind spots. As a result, machinery operators and truck drivers have a limited view of their surroundings - which increases the risk to employees working in close proximity and to the operators and drivers themselves. The solution? A traffic supervisor.
This is a team member who is easily identifiable from his red safety jacket and whose task is to direct vehicle traffic and machinery manoeuvres on site. This safety procedure is in use at all Company sites in France and internationally.
Eurovia invests in the education of its employees’ children
In 1994, the Company launched the Eurovia Foundation to support its employees' children's education. As a result of this internal civic-minded initiative, study grants are awarded to employees' offspring who are pursuing higher education opportunities. In 2008, 249 grants were awarded (or nearly €200,000 in total grants).
Eurovia employees take part in the VINCI Foundation for community action
Nearly 200 Eurovia employees take an active part in the VINCI Foundation. The Foundation focuses on action against all forms of exclusion in all locations where the Group is present. It support projects led by small neighbourhood associations working to promote access to employment for people in need.
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The Foundation, created in 2002, funds about 120 projects a year and brings together social organizations and Group employees in efforts to foster close operational and sponsorship ties. Participating employees become project sponsors and contribute their knowledge and skill sets to the professional development of their civic partners (technical or management advice, assistance at the organizational level, training, presentation and discussion of the industry, building upgrades, outsourcing services, etc.).
Safety is everybody’s business, including external collaborators
Safety rules apply to everyone, including Eurovia employees, temporary staff, and external collaborators, especially vehicle-hire suppliers (on-site personnel with their vehicles or heavy machinery). To promote this principle, Eurovia has developed specific procedures for external personnel. Temporary work agencies are sensitized to workplace risks through a safety training program available on a dedicated extranet.
Worksite managers are responsible for organizing meet-and-greet sessions for temporary staff at their work stations. Vehicle-hire suppliers must follow workplace safety guidelines and enjoy the same preventive measures as all other employees. Their contract imposes strict rules: safety audits for vehicles and machinery; the obligatory use of protective equipment; and adherence to worksite safety regulations.
New employees visible thanks to the colour of their helmet
New hires are more frequently involved in workplace accidents than other employees. These accidents are not only more frequent but more severe - despite preventive and safety measures that apply to all employees and specific measures (one-on-one meetings, orientation guide) designed for new recruits.
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In 2004, Hubbard in the United States came up with a simple and very low-cost solution, which was to require new hires to wear a red helmet for the first 90 days of employment. As a result, experienced employees (who wear white helmets) can easily identify new hires, be on the lookout for inappropriate or risk behaviour, and provide assistance or advice. In the first year, the number of accidents dropped from 30 to 18 among new employees. In 2008, that figure dropped to 4.
This initiative received a Management Prize in the Management category at the 2009 VINCI Innovation Awards.
This occupational safety initiative has been extended to operations in Canada; from this point onward, new employees at DJL (one of Eurovia's Canadian subsidiaries) are easy to spot thanks to their green helmet.
Raising awareness of accident risks among new hires
On worksites, new hires are more frequently at risk with respect to accidents. Consequently, in 2003, Eurovia created a "first day" training program and knowledge evaluation test for young recruits. In 2007, this initiative was extended to the recruitment of temporary personnel and to other Company business lines, including quarries, demolition sites, and laboratories.
It has also been deployed in Germany, North America, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and the United Kingdom. Since 2009, it has been in application in Construction, civil engineering and at VINCI Concessions. Since its inception, 32,000 tests have been delivered to new hires and 9,500 to temporary personnel.
This initiative garnered a Dissemination Prize in the Vendor Dissemination category of the 2009 VINCI Innovation Awards.
