Our employees

Our employees are definitely one of the most important drivers of the Company. Therefore we consider it extremely important to involve employees in the decision-making process, inform them regularly and treat them equally. We use numerous channels for that, such as the meetings of management team members with the staff and the quarterly published internal newsletter. In addition to the notification of the staff, we deem the involvement of people in the best possible manner very important. We also continue to be committed to transparency in communicating both internally and externally. To ensure clarity, transparency and involvement, we make changes in the organization of our work if needed.

Each year, an employee satisfaction and commitment survey is carried out. The results of the 2014 survey were positive. Compared to the previous year, the employee commitment has further increased, reaching clearly higher level than the Estonian average. This year, also the participation rate in the survey was higher than ever before, all together 92% of our employees gave their feedback and opinion.

As of the end of 2014, the Company and its Subsidiary employed a total number of 321 employees under permanent employment contracts. Compared to the same period previous year this number has increased by 10, due to the subsidiary starting to provide the new asphalting service.

Development of employees

The development of employees continues to be one of the main pri¬orities for the Company. Besides the traditional in-service training and development programmes we offered also international trainings for our staff in 2014.

The average age of the staff in the Company and the Sub¬sidiary is high (47 years) and in big¬ger operational units a considerable number of employees are over 50 years old. Therefore, it is of critical importance for the organization to support the managers in coping with the change of staff expected to occur in the coming years. We aim to maintain the high level of operational and service performance at the same time.

From the staff development perspective we deem the sharing of knowledge and experience very important. There was a significant increase in in-house guidance and involvement of mentors (incl. outside of the Company).

In 2014, the total number of training days in the Company was 365, which is similar to the year before. Employee induction programme was made more systematic, including its inseparable part which is a training on company’s environmental policy. In 2014, following in-service trainings were carried out with an aim to raise employees’ environmental awareness: labelling of building materials, occupational hygiene (4 training groups), chemical safety consultancy, modern pipe renovation methods (e.g. no-dig method), training for assessors. Managers attended several international seminars and conferences (e.g. drinking water conference), to obtain new knowledge and inspiration on how to better organize the work.