Gamesa has made progress towards strengthening its principles of equality of opportunity between female and male employees and in facilitating work-life balance among all of its staff.
Gamesa’s Managing Director for Human Resources, Juana María Fernández, and trade unions representatives CCOO-FITEQA, CCOO-FI, MCA-UGT, FIA-UGT and ELA at midday today signed Gamesa’s Equality Plan, applicable to all of the company’s workplaces worldwide. The plan, agreed upon with trade union representatives following a negotiation period, will remain in force until 31 December 2012 and will be automatically renewed thereafter – in the absence of an updated version –, in accordance with Spain’s Law for Effective Equality between women and men.
This initiative is intended as a general framework for action at all of the workplaces worldwide in which Gamesa has a presence, subject to local legislation. The plan includes a workplace harassment prevention protocol and outlines measures to provide support to victims of gender-based violence.
The Equality Plan is geared towards strengthening Gamesa’s culture of diversity and equality, encouraging non-discriminatory hiring and fostering equality of opportunity between women and men in career development and promotion and facilitating work-life balance. Twenty-five percent of Gamesa’s global workforce is now made up of women, which sets a good example for the energy industry. “We hope that initiatives like this one will contribute to improving our awareness and activities in the areas of our corporate culture, career development and promotion, recruiting processes and internal communications”, say the signatories to the agreement.
Standing Committee on Diversity and Equality
To ensure compliance with and a successful roll-out of the Gamesa Equality Plan, the company creates a Standing Committee on Diversity and Equality, made up of five company representatives and 10 trade union representatives. The company will establish a series of indicators for assessing its progress on equality issues, subject to quarterly review by the Standing Committee and annual review by the Gamesa Management Board.
The Gamesa Equality Plan’s areas of action
Gamesa’s Equality Plan is divided into seven areas of action:
* Leadership and culture. Encourage and raise awareness of Gamesa’s culture of diversity and equality. To this end, the company creates a Standing Committee on Diversity and Equality, establish assessment indicators (subject to periodic review) and conduct training sessions and periodic employee opinion surveys.
* Communications. Strengthen Gamesa’s culture of diversity and equality, at both the in-house and external levels. Highlights of these activities include developing a guide on language and image which advocates for diversity-related issues, enhancing the visibility of women in management positions at the company, and notifying stakeholders of the commitments Gamesa has adopted to promote equality issues.
* Recruiting. Continue to encourage non-discriminatory hiring and establish specific programmes for recruiting and promotion of the under-represented gender.
* Career development and promotion. Implement programmes to identify in-house talent, to provide a candidate base of qualified women and men with the potential to be promoted to management positions. Similarly, design management skill development programmes geared towards women in all areas of the business who have been identified as having development potential.
* Work-life balance. Encourage a culture that facilitates work-life balance. To this end, the company will distribute a framework document among all employees, outlining their basic rights in work-life balance issues.
* Prevention of harassment, through implementation of a Protocol on Sexual or Gender-based Harassment and on Harassment or Bullying. This protocol has been in force since 2009.
* Safeguards for victims of gender-based violence. In addition to the provisions of Spain’s Law on Comprehensive Protection against Gender Violence, Gamesa will institute supplementary measures to lend support to victims of gender-based violence.
A commitment integrated into human resource management policies
Gamesa’s commitment to cultural diversity, the fight against discrimination and support for equality of opportunity is fully integrated into the company’s human resource management practices. These policies are embodied in a range of initiatives, and the level of commitment now increases thanks to the agreement and trade union representatives’ decision to sign it. These commitments are also outlined in Gamesa’s Corporate Social Responsibility Principles and Code of Conduct.
Meanwhile, the company offers measures to promote work-life balance, tailored to the diversity of its workforce and its business operations, which will be applicable depending upon local legislation and the characteristics of each workplace around the world.
With more than 15 years’ experience, Gamesa is a world leader in the design, manufacture, installation and maintenance of wind turbines, with more than 18,000 MW installed in 20 countries on four continents.
The company is also a global benchmark in the market for the development, construction and sale of wind farms, with more than 3,500 MW installed and a wind farm portfolio totalling 22,000 MW at varying stages of development in Europe, America and Asia.
With 30 manufacturing facilities in Europe, the USA, China and India, and 4,400 MW of annual manufacturing capacity, Gamesa has an international workforce of more than 6,300 people.
