Case study: How Greenalia promotes employee development
Greenalia is an Independent Power Producer (IPP) with renewable technologies exclusively and more than 12 years of experience in the sector. Greenalia’s main activity is the generation and sale of electricity, being present in three technologies: Wind, solar photovoltaic and biomass. Greenalia understands that professional growth is connected to the integral development of the person Tweet This! and, through its Social Policy, is committed to investing in learning opportunities and personal and professional training for its employees, promoting a working environment free from discrimination and any conduct that involves harassment.
This case study is based on the 2019 Sustainability Report by Greenalia published on the Global Reporting Initiative Sustainability Disclosure Database that can be found at this link. Through all case studies we aim to demonstrate what CSR/ ESG/ sustainability reporting done responsibly means. Essentially, it means: a) identifying a company’s most important impacts on the environment, economy and society, and b) measuring, managing and changing.
Abstract
In 2019, Greenalia identified training needs and redefined its training objectives, developing its talent management strategy and elaborating a new Training Plan. In order to promote employee development Greenalia took action to:
- implement a development programme
- apply a general training programme
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With this case study you will see:
- Which are the most important impacts (material issues) Greenalia has identified;
- How Greenalia proceeded with stakeholder engagement, and
- What actions were taken by Greenalia to promote employee development
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What are the material issues the company has identified?
In its 2019 Sustainability Report Greenalia identified a range of material issues, such as good governance and ethics, climate change, financial excellence, impact in local communities, biodiversity. Among these, promoting employee development stands out as a key material issue for Greenalia.
Stakeholder engagement in accordance with the GRI Standards
The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) defines the Principle of Stakeholder Inclusiveness when identifying material issues (or a company’s most important impacts) as follows:
Stakeholders must be consulted in the process of identifying a company’s most important impacts and their reasonable expectations and interests must be taken into account. This is an important cornerstone for CSR / sustainability reporting done responsibly.
Key stakeholder groups Greenalia engages with:
| Stakeholder Group |
| Environmental organisations |
| Universities |
| Investors/ Funders |
| Local Communities |
| Employees |
| Public Administration |
| Suppliers |
| Social NGOs |
How stakeholder engagement was made to identify material issues
To identify and prioritise material topics Greenalia gathered stakeholders’ feedback through 30 surveys and personal interviews with representatives of each group.
What actions were taken by Greenalia to promote employee development?
In its 2019 Sustainability Report Greenalia reports that it took the following actions for promoting employee development:
- Implementing a development programme
- Within its Talent Strategy framework, Greenalia designed a professional development programme that allows it to accompany new talent throughout the different development stages, from the onboarding phase. This programme allows Greenalia’s specialists, middle managers and executives to actively participate in the development of the most junior talent (through Coaching and Mentoring programmes and training initiatives) and foster a collaborative, agile culture focused on self-leadership, excellence and high performance.
- Applying a general training programme
- This programme, as implemented by Greenalia, focuses on training for basic professional skills and general competences, in line with the objectives of Greenalia’s new Training Plan and with priorities that are reviewed annually. Some of the training areas Greenalia identified are: languages, productivity and work systems/methodologies, cybersecurity, risk prevention, gender equality, sustainability and culture of the organisation, among others. For its execution, Greenalia uses a combination of in-house training and specialised consultants. In 2019, 1,060 hours of internal training were completed (490 hours for women and 570 hours for men), corresponding to 19 hours of training per employee.
Which GRI Standards and corresponding Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have been addressed?
The GRI Standard addressed in this case is: Disclosure 404-1 Average hours of training per year per employee
Disclosure 404-1 Average hours of training per year per employee corresponds to:
- Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4: Quality Education
- Targets: 4.3, 4.4, 4.5
- Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5: Gender Equality
- Targets: 5.1
- Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth
- Targets: 8.2, 8.5
- Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 10: Reduced Inequalities
- Targets: 10.3
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References:
1) This case study is based on published information by Greenalia, located at the link below. For the sake of readability, we did not use brackets or ellipses. However, we made sure that the extra or missing words did not change the report’s meaning. If you would like to quote these written sources from the original, please revert to the original on the Global Reporting Initiative’s Sustainability Disclosure Database at the link:
http://database.globalreporting.org/
2) https://www.globalreporting.org/standards/gri-standards-download-center/
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