Case study: How IIAC improves employees’ quality of life

What are the material issues the company has identified?

In its 2016 Social Responsibility Report IIAC identified a range of material issues, such as anti-corruption, compliance with social regulations, customer safety and health, compliance with environmental regulations, customer privacy protection. Among these, improving employees’ quality of life stands out as a key material issue for IIAC.

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:

“The reporting organization shall identify its stakeholders, and explain how it has responded to their reasonable expectations and interests.”

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 IIAC engages with:

How stakeholder engagement was made to identify material issues

To identify and prioritise material topics IIAC engaged with its stakeholders through an on-line stakeholder survey among business partners/ construction companies, employees, in-house retailers/ logistics companies, customers, the local community and airline/ ground staff. Stakeholders were asked to rank issues according to importance, on a 5-point scale.

What actions were taken by IIAC to improve employees’ quality of life?

In its 2016 Social Responsibility Report IIAC reports that it took the following actions for improving employees’ quality of life:

• Reducing customary overtimes
• IIAC seeks to reduce customary overtimes so as to improve employees’ quality of life and create a happier workplace. Accordingly, IIAC implemented the refresh and recharge (5 consecutive days of leave) vacations, to encourage its employees to take days off, and designated every Wednesday as no-overtime day. Additionally, IIAC introduced the Smart Work System, increasing work efficiency by dispensing of unnecessary work procedures. IIAC is monitoring these programmes, to make sure that they are effectively improving employees’ quality of life.

• Offering flexible working hours
• To support a balance between work and family IIAC implements various forms of flexible working hours, to cater to the needs of child-rearing employees, long-distance commuters, students, and employees with health concerns. Application procedures for flexible working hours were, however, complicated, and IIAC established the one-stop flexible working hour registration system, to facilitate application and approval. IIAC also updated its flexible working hour system, to improve its effectiveness. Before the update, flexible working hours had employees work 3 – 6 hours a day, 5 days a week. After the update, employees can choose to work on any 3 days of the week, for a total of 25 hours.

• Creating a family-friendly working environment
• IIAC has created and supports a family-friendly culture that enables its employees to balance work and family. Accordingly, IIAC has implemented 119 dinner campaign and family days to create a culture conducive to family life, and has also implemented the “change over plan” (enabling transition from maternity leave to child-rearing leave), installed nursery homes at the workplace, and reduced working hours for pregnant employees. In addition, IIAC encourages its male employees to also take parental leave, to lessen the burden of child care.

• Promoting occupational health and safety
• IIAC implements various support programmes to improve employees’ occupational health and safety. For example, IIAC established the Occupational Health and Safety Committee, jointly run by labour and management, which makes key decisions regarding employee health and safety in order to prevent industrial accidents and provide a safe work environment. Additionally, IIAC provides safety education to employees for at least one hour every month on the Safety Check Day (more than 3 hours each quarter). IIAC also provides professional services that include an annual medical check-up and a biannual complete check-up, follow-up examination for select conditions, and consultation with doctors. In addition, IIAC has introduced the EAP (Employee Assistance Programme) to measure and manage employees’ stress levels (8 times a year), to care for employees’ mental health as well.

Which GRI Standards and corresponding Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have been addressed?

The GRI Standards addressed in this case are:

1) Disclosure 401-2 Benefits provided to full-time employees that are not provided to temporary or part-time employees

2) Disclosure 401-3 Parental leave

3) Disclosure 403-1 Workers representation in formal joint management–worker health and safety committees

Disclosure 401-2 Benefits provided to full-time employees that are not provided to temporary or part-time employees corresponds to:

• Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 8: Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all
• Business theme: Earnings, wages and benefits

Disclosure 401-3 Parental leave corresponds to:

• Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5: Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls
• Business theme: Parental leave
• Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 8: Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all
• Business theme: Parental leave

Disclosure 403-1 Workers representation in formal joint management–worker health and safety committees corresponds to:

• Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 8: Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all
• Business theme: Occupational health and safety

78% of the world’s 250 largest companies report in accordance with the GRI Standards

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References:

1) This case study is based on published information by IIAC, 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) http://www.fbrh.co.uk/en/global-reporting-initiative-gri-g4-guidelines-download-page

3) https://g4.globalreporting.org/Pages/default.aspx

4) https://www.globalreporting.org/standards/gri-standards-download-center/

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