Main activities

Discrimination prevention

PROTECTION OF HUMAN RIGHTS

• We value each employee and strive to ensure equal hiring and internal career opportunities, regardless of employee’s age, gender, race, ethnic origin, beliefs, sexual orientation or other aspects that are not directly related to work. The Group respects and protects its employees’ rights, stands against any human rights violations and encourages equal opportunities in the environment where it has impact.
• Employee working conditions, remuneration, benefits and other organisational aspects are determined with equal opportunities in mind while striving to help employees balance work, personal life and carry out their family obligations.
• The Group’s Code of Ethics and Equal Opportunities and Diversity Policy establish the principles of equal opportunities and diversity that are fostered throughout the Group as well as their key implementation measures. One of them is the Trust Line, a communication channel of the Group where employees and other stakeholders can report in confidence on any potential violations of sustainability principles, including human rights and equal opportunities violations.

JOB ADS

• All our job advertisements indicate that we ensure equal opportunities and do not discriminate candidates.

COMMITMENT NOT TO DISCRIMINATE

• We have a rule that any hiring manager must sign a commitment before launching a job ad about ensuring equal opportunities during the selection. This means that they will not ask discriminatory questions, but rather apply equal selection criteria and adhere to the equal opportunity principles. If they do not commit to this, the job ad remains unpublished. We encourage our managers to treat the obligation not to discriminate as their personal responsibility.
• The talent acquisition team and personnel business partners have also committed to ensuring equal opportunities.
• We prepared and distributed a memo on how to avoid discrimination in employee selections while encouraging diversity.

TRAINING

• The Group has mandatory training for all employees aimed at preventing various forms of violence, harassment, and sexual harassment. After training, employees must take and pass a knowledge verification test.
• Trainings, lectures, and discussions on topics such as gender equality, equal opportunities, inclusion of LGBT persons, antidiscrimination, good diversity and inclusion practices in other organizations, etc. are also organized for employees.
• The Group periodically train all managers to ensure equal opportunities in recruitment. Managers are taught how to ensure equal opportunities when creating a job offer, interviewing and evaluating candidates.
• Managers are educated about diversity and inclusion in three leadership programs where these topics are integrated into the content of the programs. 

Women in leading positions and gender equality

GENDER EQUALITY CULTURE

• The Group has introduced an #EnergiseEquality initiative, where we encourage a culture of dialogue on the topics of gender equality and equal opportunities. The initiative is based on international method called ‘Barbershop Toolbox’, which was created by the initiative of the UN Women in Iceland. The method outlines the guidelines on how we can discuss sensitive and complex topics more effectively, including gender equality and equal opportunities. This method includes an equal number of men and women into the development of gender equality culture.
• Employees (men and women) who were interested in the method were trained to apply it in practice and are currently organising and leading discussions on gender equality with their colleagues.

WOMEN IN LEADING POSITIONS

• We aim to improve gender balance in the succession programme for strategic positions and in the high-potential employees list through targeted communication measures.
• We encourage recruitment agencies to consider the gender balance principles when drafting short-lists for the top-management positions.
• We are increasing the public visibility of female energy experts through communication measures.
• To increase the number of female candidates, job titles in all our job advertisements are given in the feminine form first, and the masculine form in parentheses (the opposite is a common practice in the market).
• We have an ongoing Inclusive Recruitment Program as a tool to improve the number of women candidates in selection for top-management positions.

MENTORSHIP

• To encourage women to choose IT and engineering positions, we continued our collaboration with the Women Go Tech programme for several years. Every year our colleagues have been improving their technology skills in a 6-month-long mentoring programme. 

LGBT awareness

• We have created a tradition to celebrate an International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, and Transphobia every year, where we encourage employees to get to know the LGBT community and its experiences, try to create a welcoming and comfortable environment for LGBT colleagues.

• In 2022 the Diversity and Inclusion Group operating in the Group has invited the colleagues for the first time to participate in the Baltic Pride event, thus expressing support for equal rights.

• We are trying to have a pulse on LGBT colleagues’ wellbeing, work experience and needs, therefore, we organize surveys to better understand the experiences of LGBT employees working in our organization. 

Inclusive communication

• In order to reach geographically remote employees and those who do not have a stationary workplace, we have installed a network of screens, where we present the latest news and information about the Group in an attractive format.
• While trying to stay in touch with employees on parental leave, we introduced a new practice of sending newsletters to colleagues, where they can find information about changes within the Group, various initiatives, invitations to training courses and ongoing company events.
• We care about the needs of employees who are working in remote locations and regions and who do not have a stationary workplace. If we learn that employees are suffering from stress while working with customers, we introduce them to psychological resilience training and gather their opinions on the ways to make their work better and calmer.
• Wellbeing mentors, employees who provide emotional support to other colleagues, are consulting employees working in remote regions of Lithuania, visiting their units and carrying out team activities, providing support as well as giving lectures to employees working abroad. 

Physical and emotional wellbeing

WELLBEING MENTORS

• We formed a community of wellbeing mentors, whose goal is to create a culture of openness and decrease the mental health stigma. Wellbeing mentors are a community of trained employees that provide emotional support to their colleagues. They talk with employees in person, run courses and various team events.
• Wellbeing mentors provide emotional support to colleagues, facilitate team discussions and apply other measures to help teams talk about their emotions, carry out missions (go to other cities, units to help the colleagues suffering from stress).

PROFESSIONAL EMOTIONAL SUPPORT

• The Group has an emotional support line, a special phone number, which employees and their relatives can call in order to have a completely confidential consultation with an experienced psychologist free of charge.
• If a team encounters a crisis, disturbance, accident, we provide an opportunity to get help during a crisis from professional psychologists.

SELF-HELP SKILLS

• We organise various welfare initiatives that promote healthy lifestyle habits and help grow emotionally. We have launched such initiatives as ‘Health Month’, a series of advice in a video format, trainings for an internal lecturer community on the topics of personal growth, executive trainings on burnout prevention and psychological resilience, meditation, yoga classes, etc. 

MOBILITY AND SAFETY

• The Group has ambassadors, employees who create and foster internal traditions. To support them, the ambassadors organise annual events to promote mobility and health, encourage volunteering initiatives and invite colleagues to join the sustainability and clean-up events.

Work-life balance

BURNOUT PREVENTION

• We encourage employees to maintain a work-life balance by, first and foremost, planning their work time attentively. We have organised a campaign encouraging employees to mark their breaks and focus time in their calendars, adhere to the meeting and email policies and common practices. We communicate these rules on the organization's intranet.
• We prepared a series of advice in a video format, where psychologists talked about the best ways to regain energy after work, how to plan your time, how to balance working from home and your family’s needs, they also shared advice on sleep hygiene and other useful ways to spend time. 
• We constantly monitor the burnout risk scoreboard - an indicator mechanism that allows us to identify burnout risks in teams. When we identify teams that are at higher risk of burnout, we take steps and solutions to reduce this risk.

FAMILY-FRIENDLY WORKPLACE

• Some employees encounter difficulties with engaging their children during the summer holidays, so we are organising weekly one-day camps for children at the office. During these events, children are taken care of by experienced educators and introduced to their parent’s workplace.
• The main office of the Group has a children room where employees’ children can spend time while their parents are working.
• We have created guidelines for executives and employees on how to prepare for a career break related to parental leave, how to maintain a relationship with the workplace during that period and, ultimately, how to have a smooth transition back to their position.
• We provide financial benefits to employees who give birth to one or more children (adopt one or more children), who raise three or more underage children or a disabled We offer additional paid leave days to get married, after losing a relative, in case of a short-term illness, if a child under the age of 16 gets sick, etc.