SOCIAL PERFORMANCE

Recruiting in difficult times

Against the backdrop of an ongoing financial crisis, last year was a challenging year for the building and heavy construction industry. Experience from previous recessions shows us that the industry risks losing valuable skills if we stop hiring people, which in the longer term, could set us back many years. Short-term cost savings, which may seem sensible, can make us less competitive in the long-term when market pressures reappear. In the previous recessionary periods from 1988 to 1993, the building and construction industry lost five years worth of newly educated building engineers. It took nearly ten years to satisfactorily rebuild the competency level. This turned out to be an expensive experience. We will not make this mistake again. Despite difficult economic times for the industry in 2009, we chose to continue recruiting apprentices. We also continued to employ trainees, although the number has declined slightly from 80 to 60 in the past year.

We will increase our focus on recruitment in the year ahead as the need for expertise is high in the industry, and is one of the greatest constraints on future growth. We will work more closely with NTNU in 2010 to increase motivation among young talents to choose the building and heavy construction industry as a career path - and Veidekke as their employer.

Apprentice and trainee scheme

In parallel to our focus on recruitment, we will continue to develop our own craftsmen in the Veidekke. Veidekke is a leading apprentice company and at the end of 2009, we had a total of 206 apprentices. In 2009, our annual apprenticeship meeting was held at Folkets Hus in Oslo. With 130 apprentices in attendance, there was a good discussion of Veidekke's values and an exciting poll on different value dilemmas. Sweden and Denmark are also wagering on apprentices, and in 2009 there were 23 in each country.

We continued our venture with Olympiatoppen (Norwegian elite sport) in 2009, to better educate our apprentices in diet, health and correct use of the body. Working in the construction industry can be physically stressful. Musculo-skeletal disorders account for a large proportion of sickness absence in the Group. Olympiatoppen uses their expertise to help our apprentices develop good working habits so they are less likely to suffer stress-related physical injuries. As the rest of the industry, we are struggling with a high turnover among our young employees, and this is one of several measures implemented to help reduce these numbers.

Diversity and workforce composition

The community around us is changing, and it is important that Veidekke as an organisation adapts itself accordingly. If we are to maintain our competitiveness over time, the organisation must, as far as possible, reflect wider society in terms of age, gender, cultural background, religion or disability. Our industry has traditionally been very male dominated, especially among craftsmen. There is a better distribution among our salaried staff, of which about one quarter are women (see table). These numbers are consistent with industry-wide studies. Our main challenge is, however, that qualified staff with diverse backgrounds is limited. This is one of the reasons we signed a cooperation agreement with Swedish athletics star Carolina Klüft last year, in hopes that it will help us to inspire more young women to choose our industry.

According to figures from Statistics Norway, there are currently 508 000 Norwegians of minority background, and the proportion of young people in this group who choose to pursue higher education is proportionately higher than young people with a Scandinavian background. We also know that these young people tend to prefer technical-scientific subjects, for which there is a great need in our industry. With the workforce increasingly composed of more highly educated professionals of minority backgrounds, it's increasingly important that Veidekke's workplace accommodates different cultural and religious preferences. Here we have done little as of today, but this is a theme which will be increasingly on the agenda in the coming years. Diversity is also an important prerequisite for new and innovative thinking, and therefore we believe greater variation in the workforce will be a competitive advantage over time.

At the end of the year, Veidekke had 5 858 employees: 968 employees in Sweden, 488 employees in Denmark and 4 402 employees in Norway. The proportion of salaried and craftsmen is similar in Denmark and Sweden, while in Norway craftsmen are predominant (see table).

More good working years for everyone

At Veidekke, we want our employees to avoid being injured at work and to stay physically and mentally healthy. We want job satisfaction in Veidekke to be high so that Veidekke is regarded as the best and most attractive company in the industry for all of our occupational groups. The figures below in this report were compiled from the 2009 occupational health survey carried out by Veidekke's Norwegian occupational health service, and apply to a total of 1 124 employees in Veidekke Entreprenør and Kolo Veidekke. All employees undergo an occupational health examination every third year.