Promoting participation, through listening to the needs of people and requests for improvement, contributes to building a positive internal climate and to increasing the degree of satisfaction of employees in conducting their activities.
Systematically planned listening tools for the management and development of personnel consist of motivational interviews with young graduates and manager/employee feedback meetings held as part of the assessment process.
In addition to consolidating the traditional channels and surveying the quality of the internal organisational climate, 2009 also saw some other important initiatives. the experiment with forums on the intranet platform in Snam Rete Gas (with almost 50 discussions begun over the course of the year) and the Italgas CEO’s blog (begun in December).
The “energy” programme also represents an important initiative for promoting participation: those involved in the project activities are actively contributing to build the effective functioning of the activities of the new structure, while a great many information instruments have been put in place (videonews and newsletters) to serve the rest of the corporate population.
Also in this area, we have created a common intranet platform - a further example of integration - the aim of which is to disseminate the main information about the organisation together with news and projects. The dissemination of information on a single platform for the four companies helps to create the awareness of belonging to a single Group, and helps to consolidate a common culture with which everyone can identify.
As well as this, to make the processes of involvement and participation even more effective for all personnel, at all Maintenance Centres and Compressors Stations of Snam Rete Gas we have installed a computer access point, which is available to the operations personnel and with which they can consult information of general interest, access the principal corporate services and consult technical standards. The access point also allows the employees to avail of a useful tool for work and up-to-date information, so that they will feel involved in the changes currently underway.
the network of our opinions
The survey on the climate in the organisation, known as “The network of our opinions” (“La rete delle nostre opinioni”), was conducted in December 2008 as a continuation of similar experiments conducted in previous years (2003 and 2005). The difference from previous years is that this survey involved the entire corporate population. The personnel of Snam Rete Gas were asked to express their opinions and expectations of the company, in order to be able to focus on the areas considered to be most important and so identify possible measures to improve our way of working. The survey was based on the anonymous completion of a questionnaire of 66 questions. The questionnaire could be completed online or in hardcopy, to enable everyone to participate. The structure, contents and methods of the survey were outlined to the union representatives before the survey was carried out.
The percentage of participation was 89.9% of all personnel (a percentage that rises to 90.3% if we also consider the number of responses “on paper”). This is an important result, which demonstrates the sense of belonging and the desire to participate in the improvement process. This value is significantly higher than the rate of participation found in similar surveys, as noted by the Hay Group consulting company, which provided methodological support for the entire project, both in preparing the questionnaire and in analysing the results.
The overall index of satisfaction (calculated on the total number of answers submitted) is 44%, which is in line both with similar surveys conducted in Italian industrial companies by the Hay Group and also with the previous surveys conducted in Snam Rete Gas.
The profile that emerges is positive: the perception is that of an established and solid company, with a positive external reputation, confirmed by an acknowledged priority accorded to the environment and to personnel. The strong sense of belonging, the sharing of the corporate values and culture, the clarity on the results to be achieved and the guarantee of organised relations within the units are all important, tangible characteristics of daily working life, expressed by the majority of personnel. In addition to these positively-assessed aspects, personnel also perceive the need for a company that is more flexible, dynamic in its decisional processes, and featuring greater interfunctional integration. Personnel have shown an explicit willingness to do more and do better, and to actively participate in the processes of internal improvement.
However, female personnel (who are generally more critical) perceive, much more than their male colleagues, the inadequacies of the company’s attention to the need for balance between private life and working life, and to the assignment of reasonable workloads.
At the annual meeting held in early April and after the summer we presented the principal results of the survey to the executives and to the union representatives, respectively. Obviously, with the reference scenario changing in February while defining the areas of intervention, with the integration of Stogit and Italgas, the points that emerged were, and will continue to be, important inputs to the process of drawing up the new company programmes (for example, for communication and training) necessary for implementing the new organisational model. The “energie” program and the communication actions associated with them are also a response to the requests for greater involvement and information found by the analysis.
