Boskalis CSR report 2017

CSR 2017 – BOSKALIS 51

SUSTAINABLE EMPLOYABILITY At Boskalis we aim to support the continued employability of our employees by enabling talent and skills development and looking at ways to keep employees healthy, safe and motivated through to their retirement. We enable talent and skills development through our training and development programs. Shaping one’s own career is a fixed item in performance reviews. Employees can say whether they would like to retrain, for example for a different, less physically demanding job. We are open to this approach and try to accommodate the various life stages as much as possible. For example, by enabling Dutch staff to work on projects in the Netherlands for a number of years, if that is more fitting in their phase of life. In 2018, the pensionable age in the Netherlands will be raised to 68 years. This will inevitably have consequences for pension schemes and sustainable employment. Especially amongst employees with physically demanding jobs, sustainable employment will increasingly become a challenge. In anticipation thereof, and in order to improve the work/life balance of our operational staff, Boskalis introduced a 3:2 (six weeks on/four

weeks off) rotation schedule on international projects in 2017, replacing the previous 2:1 (eight weeks on/four weeks off) schedule. We continue to collaborate with the Dutch Works Council and the Dutch trade unions to further explore how to keep employees healthy, safe and motivated. In 2017, a program was introduced that aims to encourage employees to work on their own health. Next to this, we offer various training programs to our fleet staff, including the module Fit for Duty, which aims to provide employees with tips for a healthy lifestyle and stimulates them to put these into practice. Because lifestyle involves more than just physical fitness, attention is also given to mental health in a course on effectiveness and mindfulness at work. At Boskalis Nederland, the SamenFIT (FIT Together) program was launched in 2017. Two hundred employees were invited to undergo a health check to measure their health, lifestyle and sustainable employability and were given the opportunity to improve their score with the help of a lifestyle coach. It is the intention to offer this health scan to all Boskalis Nederland employees.