Staying well: corporate welfare

For Snam, putting employees at the centre also means offering them a structured corporate welfare system that meets the needs of employees and their families and improves their quality of life. As a testament to its commitment to its people and to track, monitor and ensure the alignment of welfare initiatives with employee needs, a new 2020 target of 54% employee participation in welfare activities was presented in the ESG Scorecard by 2023. In 2020, the participation rate was 39%, which is in line with the Scorecard’s intermediate target of 50% in 2021.

Since 2018, the Welfare Plan has been developed on a digital platform called “Snammy” around five areas of intervention: Family, Education, Work/Life Balance, Well-being and leisure time, Health. The platform was equipped with a welfare assistant, activated as a single point of contact and mediator between personal needs and corporate welfare responses.

In the Family and Education areas, in addition to the “dediCARE” service, which helps solve small and large family problems, from assistance for the elderly to school tutoring, Snam has set up services and counters to assist families through listening services, legal and tax advice and discounts on the purchase of books and school supplies, as well as offering scholarships for employees’ children.

In the Well-being and leisure time area, Snam offers the possibility of using sports centres at advantageous conditions and has devised the “SnammyBene” project, an awareness-raising initiative focused on individual well-being issues.

In the Health area, employees have access to concessions and incentives in the health field, thanks to insurance coverage paid for by Snam, in mobility, with public transport passes at advantageous prices, and in catering, with the company canteen and take-away service for private use. In addition, Snam offers its people a system of flexible working, including smartworking, flexible working hours in and out, and “short Fridays”, i.e. the possibility of ending the working day at 1 p.m.

In addition, the Flexible Benefits system continued, which increases the purchasing power of employees who participate in the initiative, transforming a portion of the participation bonus, up to the entire amount, into welfare credit that can be used to purchase services to support health, school and training, cultural and sports activities, travel, mobility and supplementary pension plans for themselves and their families. The advantage of converting part of the bonus into a welfare credit is that, on this amount, no tax is due and the company recognises an additional bonus that increases proportionally from 8% to 20% depending on the amount converted.

In order to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic, Snam has implemented all the necessary precautionary actions since the end of February 2020, immediately authorising all of the Group’s Italian territorial offices to work remotely, subject to a minimum and necessary presence to guarantee activities on the plants and therefore preceding the government provisions of March 2020 (which provided for the closure of all production activities that were not necessary or strategic). Subsequently, all areas of the welfare system were strengthened and enriched with services to respond and help employees cope with the issues arising from the pandemic. In the Family and Education areas, Snam has activated specific psychological, relational and family support services, also making available to employees a circuit for finding baby-sitting services with partial reimbursement of expenses incurred, and activating a platform with online lessons for the children of employees at all levels of education with a school guidance service.

In the Well-being and leisure time area, “SnammyBene” has been expanded through the activation of online fitness subscriptions via app and numerous workshops on pilates, yoga, postural gymnastics and mindfulness, healthy eating and digital detox. In particular, this last topic was dealt with through the intervention of an occupational psychologist who illustrated today’s scenario on digital, giving interesting ideas on when technology can become a real problem, and then moving on to practical advice by sharing tools, good practices and alternatives to rediscover analogue and feel good in digital. In addition, a webinar on psychological support and resilience was set up with a psychologist specialising in these issues.

In the Health area, cross-sectoral support was provided through a number of health initiatives, such as the activation of vital parameter monitoring services by assigning all staff members pulse oximeters suitable for remotely signalling abnormal saturation values, and finally health guidance that directs employees to their general practitioner or suitable specialist. In addition, an insurance policy, fully paid by Snam, has been stipulated for all employees, which allows coverage in case of hospitalisation for Covid-19.

Many of these initiatives have been made possible thanks to the strong relationships between Snam and its suppliers, key partners in tackling the pandemic in the best possible way: during the year, Snam invested Euro 11 million in sanitary equipment, temperature measurement devices at site entrances and sanitisation to ensure the safety of its employees.

Company welfare system

In the area of parental support, Snam is committed to making a concrete contribution to ensuring a work-life balance through incentives and benefits that go beyond the requirements of the law. Throughout the maternity leave, the employee retains the company benefits and, during the period of compulsory abstention, maternity benefits are paid at 100% of salary instead of 80% as required by law. In confirmation of the Group’s commitment and the possibility of taking care of the family while working at Snam, in both 2020 and 2019, 100% of employees remained at the company one year after returning from maternity or parental leave. In this regard, from 2019, Snam has launched the BE PARENTS programme, which supports new parents in transferring to work the many skills that can be acquired by raising a child, training the soft skills most sought after in the world of work, including relational, organisational and innovative skills. BE PARENTS is offered on the MAAM platform, which allows access to a network of colleagues to share thoughts, organise meetings and grow together as parents and workers.