11Personnel
VKG most important strategic partners in achieving the sustainable development objectives are its employees. Our employees support and share the corporate values. Our priority is to find and retain good employees by offering them excellent development opportunities.
Our people are loyal and hard-working. The average job tenure in the company is 10 years, and the longest job tenure has so far been 53 years.
Viru Keemia Grupp is one of the largest employers in Ida-Viru County. 1,760 people are employed by the Group directly (1,335 men and 425 women), and several thousands of people more are involved indirectly in the shape of the family members of our employees. Good financial indicators for the year 2018 are not a mere accident. They have been achieved owing to our diligent employees who have acquired new skills and been open for changes.
Focal points of our personnel policy
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We value
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We recognise
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We create a safe working environment
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We support team spirit
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We encourage and develop successors
We continue implementing the principles of the personnel policy adopted in 2018, with all the employees participating in it and the managers having a leading role. Our employees’ national, gender, age and language diversity places higher demands on us with regard to equal treatment, engagement and notification. In 2019, we completed the analysis stage of the human resource management (HRM) software and we plan to make the transition to the new and uniform software in 2020.
When paying our employees for their work, we proceed from the situation on the labour market in our area, the terms and conditions that are valid on the salary market in different sectors, the level of responsibility of the employee, his or her skills, and other factors that can affect the basics of wages accounting. The Group has established a transparent performance pay system based on clearly defined principles.
In 2019, the average gross salary paid to VKG’s employees amounted to 1,633 euros, which is nearly 500 euros above the average gross salary of the Ida-Viru County. Employees get bonuses for doing evening and night shifts. The Group follows the Working Hours and Rest Time Act strictly. The working hours are established in the internal rules of conduct, in accordance with laws and collective bargaining agreement. Regarding the employees, whose working hours differ from the general rules established by the employer, this issue is regulated by the employment contract, with due consideration of the nature of work, its specific character, and working conditions. Among other things, shift work is opted for when the duration of the production process exceeds the permitted duration of daily work, and with the aim of using the equipment in a more efficient manner, increasing the output, or the volume of services provided. If employees work in shifts, every group of employees must work within an established period, in accordance with the shift schedule. When preparing the shift schedules, the employer takes due consideration of the opinion of the representative body of employees and informs them about the new schedule against signature no later than one month before the schedule comes into effect.
In addition to salary, tenure bonus is paid to the employees of the company as well as a child birth bonus, anniversary bonus, and funeral bonus on sadder occasions. Mothers with small children can take an additional paid leave.
Our employees have a good professional qualification and are experienced and eager to learn. Every year, more than ten employees of the Group obtain a higher education in parallel to work. Together with our employees, we can implement even more innovative ideas, making plants smarter and creating an environmentally friendlier living place for the residents of the Ida-Viru County, as that is the basis of the Group’s sustainable business activities.
Head of HR
Our employees have a good professional qualification and are experienced and eager to learn. Every year, more than ten employees of the Group obtain a higher education in parallel to work. Together with our employees, we can implement even more innovative ideas, making plants smarter and creating an environmentally friendlier living place for the residents of the Ida-Viru County, as that is the basis of the Group’s sustainable business activities.
Head of HR
Cooperation with educational establishments
VKG has been providing scholarships via TTÜ Development Fund since 2006. Within 2006-2019, we issued grants for the total amount of 105,000 EUR.
VKG's bachelor’s degree scholarships are provided for up to two successful bachelor’s students of electrical engineering, mechatronics, earth sciences and geotechnology, environmental and chemical technology or thermal engineering at TalTech's School of Engineering. One scholarship is 1,300 euros.
VKG master’s degree scholarships are provided for one successful master’s student of environmental and chemical technology, fuel chemistry and technology, thermal engineering, and electrical engineering at TalTech. One scholarship is 1,400 euros.
VKG's professional higher education scholarships are provided for up to four successful professional higher education students of fuel technology, industrial automation, machine building engineering, energy technology, chemistry technology, energy technology processes control and telematics and smart systems at TalTech's Virumaa College. One scholarship is 1,000 euros.
VKG scholarships support the students' motivation to acquire professions necessary in the Group and send a clear signal that we expect young professionals to join us.
Safe working environment
Occupational safety is one of the basic values of Viru Keemia Grupp. We believe that all serious work accidents can be prevented and we apply the 0 accidents vision in our activities. In order to achieve that, we have formulated four development areas: visibility of safety, safe conduct, learning, and indicators.
The visibility of safety is based on 9 lifesaving rules which are mandatory for all the Group’s employees as well as partners working in our territory.
When talking about safety with our employees, we do not just mean compliance safety rules at the workplace, but also outside working hours. We have set an aim to achieve a culture where everyone is responsible for the safety of themselves and their colleagues. In 2019, we ran an awareness campaign – ‘Safety Starts with You’, where we reminded people that we are all responsible for our own and for our colleagues’ safety.
Training plays an important part in developing safe conduct. For that purpose, we have actively developed a digital training and testing platform in 2019. We have also made various training videos for illustrating the safe performance of different work sections.
In 2019, we had 15 accidents, four serious and 11 light ones. First aid was also administered on two occasions. We are still dissatisfied with the yearly results and make an effort every day to improve the situation. As a preventive measure, we analyse risk situations, thus gaining valuable feedback for making the working environment and conduct safer.
In our everyday work, we contribute to preventive activities, as these are the basis of a safe and efficient working environment
We continued with several preventive measures in 2019.
- Visualisation of basic guidelines via videos.
- Constant registration of risk situations and near misses. In 2019, we registered 715 risk situations
- Determining the root causes of occupational accidents that have happened
- Development of the Edutizer training environment.
- Improvement of the working environment (construction and reconstruction of stairs and working platforms at VKG Oil).
- Joint exercises with the Rescue Board crew.
- Organisation of the traditional Safety Week
- Monitoring the work protection management system (analysing the indicators and creating measures on the basis of the results).
- Increasing the awareness of employees via information channels.
- Organising a risk situation reporting and registration campaign (focus on unsafe conduct).
- Close work safety cooperation with our partners and contractors.
- Using a training environment for instructing the employees and testing their knowledge.