Society

The Board of Directors of Reykjavik Energy appoints the CEO of the company, writes the job description and determines the terms of employment. The Board of Directors takes into the account the provisions of the ownership policy of Reykjavik Energy, which stipulates that the salaries of CEOs shall be on a par with comparable jobs, but take into account the fact that the company is owned by public entities. 

The Compensation Committee of Reykjavik Energy shall review the salaries of its CEOs on an annual basis with regard to the objectives and yardsticks of the company.

Reykjavik Energy places a great deal of emphasis on gender equality and received an Equal Rights Award from the Equal Rights Council in 2014 and a Motivation Award from the Confederation of Icelandic Employers in 2015. Reykjavik Energy is a member of the United Nations Convention on Gender Equality. In 2017, Reykjavik Energy adopted a new model which the staff of the Group developed in collaboration with scientists. This examines the impact of every single pay decision on gender wage differences. This facilitates the company in its objective to eliminate them. 

Reykjavik Energy is a workplace with a wide gender distribution and the evaluation of gender pay differences takes into account recognised factors. These are mainly: working hours, percentage of full-time position, responsibility, performance, education and expectations regarding the employee’s evolution in the job. This leaves unexplained gender pay differences, which are not part of Reykjavik Energy’s remuneration policy and were eliminated in 2017. These Reykjavik Energy figures are taken from PwC every year and were last taken in June 2017. The figures for 2017 have not been confirmed by external parties, but were calculated in the same manner as last year. The Company is working towards gender pay equity certification, in accordance with amendments to Gender Equality Act no. 56/2017. 56/2017.

Reykjavik Energy monitors employee turnover in the Group according to, among other things, age and gender. There is a correlation between the economic situation and employee turnover. Employee turnover increased from 2016. This is due to two main factors: Changes in the company and increased demand in the labour market. Some of the staff of large and small contractors work substantially for Reykjavik Energy or a subsidiary. That group has not been analysed and Reykjavik Energy does not possess any numerical data on the group.

Reykjavik Energy is a workplace with a broad gender diversity and efforts are being made to increase the number of female technicians and specialists and the number of males in office jobs. According to a study conducted by Ernst&Young in May 2017, the impact of women in the energy sector is greatest in the Reykjavik Energy Group. 

In 2017, the working hours of technicians and field workers at Veitur Utilities and ON Power were changed to increase the opportunities for the men in these jobs to shoulder greater responsibility in the management of their households and also ensure that the working hours would not be a hindrance for women applying for these jobs. Reykjavik Energy has no figures on the gender diversity among contractors.

There is a long-established tradition among utility companies to hire youths for summer jobs and they make up the majority of temporary appointments. Other temporary appointments have decreased slightly in recent years. Reykjavik Energy and its subsidiaries buy a lot of labour from big companies such as engineering companies and building contractors. Some of the staff of large and small contractors work substantially for Reykjavik Energy or a subsidiary. That group has not been analysed and Reykjavik Energy does not possess any numerical data on the composition of that group.

The non-discrimination policy constitutes Reykjavik Energy’s commitment to steadily improve on non-discrimination issues. Reykjavik Energy uses the human rights provisions of the constitution as the basis for its non-discrimination policy. In 2017, work on, among other things, the Idnir Vocational project continued with a group of students from the Árbær school, in addition to work on implementing equal pay certification in accordance with the provisions of the law, as well as the working hours of working groups where the vast majority of men's working hours are shortened.

 An Equal Rights Committee operates in all of the companies in the Reykjavik Energy Group and works according to an implementation plan and it is the responsibility of the head of each company to ensure that it complies with the non-discrimination policy of the Reykjavik Energy Group, which is approved by the Board of Directors.

Reykjavik Energy believes that no project is important enough to place the safety of any of its employees at risk in its implementation. Reykjavik Energy’s safety, health and working environment policy was reviewed by the Board of Directors in 2017. The objective is to achieve an accident-free workplace. That goal was not reached in 2017. Reykjavik Energy imposes clear safety requirements in all its calls for tender and requires that building contractors comply with safety regulations. Reykjavik Energy has also issued a Safety Handbook. 

The employees of contractors are required to take recognised safety courses. Reykjavik Energy runs a notification database in which staff can log hazards. This logging forms the basis for the safety improvements that increase from year to year. In contracting, the monitoring of safety elements forms an integral part of work supervision. The activities of all companies in the Reykjavik Energy Group are certified in accordance with the OHSAS 18001 standard. .

Reykjavik Energy has a Safety, Health and Working Environment Policy, which is regularly revised by the Board of Directors of Reykjavik Energy. In 2017, extensive health checks were conducted on the staff. The staff were offered the option of receiving advice if the results warranted. There are gym facilities at the headquarters of Reykjavik Energy and a decision was made during the year to allow staff to spend up to two working hours a week in fitness activities. An emphasis was placed on mental health with courses for executives to enable them to better identify the symptoms of unease among the staff. Some of the offers this year included a mindfulness course and strength-building workouts during working hours. 

This year serious moisture damage was discovered in part of the Reykjavik Energy headquarters in Bæjarháls. It was considered to have had an effect on the health of some employees. The infected premises were cleared. Those who continued to complain of ailments caused by it were offered a workplace which was considered the least likely to contain dampness and consequent mould.

Reykjavik Energy strives to work in compliance with Icelandic labour laws and the Group’s Safety, Health and Working Environment Policy goes further than the legislation in these areas. Reykjavik Energy has never received any complaints from its staff or unions on these issues. Reykjavik Energy is aware of the risk of contractors working on Reykjavik Energy’s behalf or their sub-contractors not following the rules. For this purpose, Reykjavik Energy has, among other things, laid down joint liability in its calls for tender and work contracts, and imposed the requirement that invoices for purchased labour may not be for periods longer than seven hours per day, unless licensed to do so by Reykjavik Energy (such a licence has not been issued) and it also sets the requirement that in work contracts wage and insurance payments must comply with Icelandic law. 

In 2017, data regarding these latter requirements were requested and the payments turned out to be in line with union agreements. Since there is no international certification system for child and forced labour, it is difficult for Reykjavik Energy to confirm that this does not occur within the company’s entire liability chain, e.g. In the purchase of goods, but termination clauses exist in many procurement contracts and Reykjavik Energy would invoke them if this was found to be the case.

The non-discrimination policy of Reykjavik Energy is founded on human rights elements, which are defined in the Icelandic constitution. The company's code of conduct also contains a special chapter dedicated to human rights and non-discrimination. These issues are publicised on a regular basis. 

In 2017, informative material on sexist/sexual harassment was issued electronically, and a course on the subject, which all employees were required to attend, was run in collaboration with the Human Rights Bureau of Reykjavik. Written work procedures are in place regarding responses to complaints about intimidation or sexual harassment and employees can anonymously approach external parties in confidence if they consider they are subject to violence of this kind in the workplace.

Reykjavik Energy closely follows the development of issues concerning working conditions and culture. There is considerable gender segregation in the workplace and responses to complaints of intimidation or harassment follow written work procedures. In the workplace analyses, which are carried out every year, questions are asked about intimidation and sexual harassment. Participation in these surveys is higher than 95% and answers are not traceable. 

A number of harassment issues were reported in 2017 and these were dealt with in accordance with the defined procedures. Executives in the Reykjavik Energy Group participated in several events relating to the #metoo movement in the latter half of 2017 with a view to starting an extensive and structured discussion among the staff of the Group in 2018.

With the Reykjavik Energy Group there are five active companies that are subject to special boards. The members of the Board of Directors of the mother company, who also appoint the board of directors of OR Eigna, shall, among other things, possess the knowledge and experience suited to the responsibility which the chair on the board entails. Corresponding requirements are placed in the members of the boards of directors of the subsidiaries. On the boards of directors of the subsidiaries, three of the members shall be Reykjavik Energy employees, one of whom shall be from the executive level and he/she shall be the chairperson. 

On the boards of directors of ON Power, Veitur Utilities and the Reykjavik Fibre Network, two of the board members shall be external experts in the fields of the relative company. 

Since 2014, the Board of Directors of Reykjavik Energy has not fulfilled the legal requirements regarding gender equality on boards of directors. Women make up two thirds of the board members. There are a total of 27 chairs on the board. 14 are women and 13 men.

In recent years, Reykjavik Energy has systematically worked on improving the collection of business claims. Reykjavik Energy handles the issuance of bills and collection of claims for all of the companies in the Group. There are 5.5 million bills issued a year and 40% of them are now electronic. Reykjavik Energy places an emphasis on helping people who are in arrears with their payments. 

The remedies offered by the service desk to solve issues have multiplied and the entire collection process has been tightened. As a result of this, the number of customers being cut off from services has been substantially reduced. The number of cut-offs at Reykjavik Energy has never been as low as it was in 2017.

Through its activities, Reykjavik Energy, which places an emphasis on steady improvements, accumulates multifarious knowledge that can be of use to others. This is due to, among other things, the companies in the Group’s leading position in the utilisation of geothermal energy, the fact that Veitur Utilities is the largest company of its kind in the country and the Reykjavik Fibre Network possesses the most widespread fibre network in Iceland. Reykjavik Energy believes it is its role to disseminate experience and know-how to others who can benefit from it. 

Every year the Reykjavik Energy Group hosts a Science Day in which various development projects are presented. The Land Reclamation manager of ON Power held a course and an instructive video was made on how to heal damaged mossy areas. The most widely used knowledge is undoubtedly the knowledge that scientists of Reykjavik Energy acquired in collaboration with many other scientists on the sequestration of geothermal gas emissions in basalt. A broad variety of media outlets around the globe have covered Reykjavik Energy and ON Power’s project in the Hellisheidi Geothermal Power Plant, which is considered unique. Several staff members of the Group regularly teach at the university and the School for Renewable Energy Science (RES) in Iceland and deliver lectures at specialised conferences both nationally and abroad. 

Expert knowledge of geothermal energy is in great demand, but this year people’s focus shifted increasingly to the company’s achievements in equal rights issues. The CEO of Reykjavik Energy delivered a lecture on this issue at the Barber Shop Conference of the Nordic Council of Ministers in Copenhagen in October.

Reykjavik Energy and its subsidiaries have set themselves the ambitious climate change objective of reducing emissions by 60% by 2030. Because of the nature of its activities, they can also have an effect on the carbon footprint of others, directly or indirectly. ON Power’s development of charging stations on national highways and in populated areas has turned electric cars into a real option for people and businesses. ON Power is at the forefront of developing infrastructure to enable energy switching in Iceland. A lot of effort went into development this year and, by the end of 2017, the number of charging stations had grown to 25.