Employee Involvement

Personal social involvement is an essential part of social responsibility at E.ON. It offers our employees the chance to gain important experience which they will also be able to use at work. At the same time volunteers make a contribution to cementing E.ON in the regions it serves. This can be in projects like Energy for Children, as well as in other community projects.

Our groupwide employee involvement program is based on the Energy in the Community program successfully implemented in early 2000 by E.ON UK. It is based on the pillars of matched time, matched funding and employee volunteering. The program offers employees incentives for volunteering. Employees who volunteer in their spare time receive a financial contribution from E.ON for the non-profit organization they support (matched time).

The Donate your Pennies promotion is an example of such a program: employees at E.ON Energie, E.ON Ruhrgas and Corporate Center are voluntarily donating the penny amounts from their monthly salaries. E.ON matches the total amount collected over the course of the year. In 2007, E.ON Energie and E.ON Ruhrgas collected a total of EUR395,000 in donations for needy children and youths. At E.ON UK, 1,170 employees donated about EUR265,000 in 2007.

E.ON also supports employees who volunteer – alone or as a team – during working hours. Subject to the approval of the respective superior, E.ON gives employees time off on a case-by-case basis. The main objective of this initiative is to encourage cooperation and teamwork while benefiting society.

Volunteering was quite widespread among our employees in 2007. For example, workers at E.ON UK donated 45,866 hours of their time to social causes. Other market units are also developing initiatives and structures in order to integrate volunteering into the company. This is the case at E.ON Nordic and E.ON U.S., while operations in Hungary and Romania we are trialing different projects.

In June 2007, an Employee Involvement Day was held at Corporate Center in Düsseldorf. The Board of Management and employees at Corporate Center had the opportunity to meet representatives of various children's and youth organizations in a relaxed atmosphere. The objective was to give employees an opportunity to learn about projects for which they may wish to volunteer their time. This year, E.ON Ruhrgas also drew attention to voluntary social causes and commitment with an exhibition on Volunteering Day.

In the fall of 2007, 200 employees at E.ON UK exchanged their business suits and outfits for rubber boots and gardening gloves. Over the course of two weeks, they helped preserve valuable landscapes in a national park in Nottinghamshire. In 14 days, industrious volunteers erected natural barriers against vehicles and excavated a fish pond from the middle ages. "This was a great opportunity for all of us to get out of the office and make an important contribution towards the preservation of landscapes for future generations," is how one participant described the experience.

In 2007 some managers from E.ON Netz took part in the Changing Sides program. It offers company managers the chance to work in a social institution for a week. Before being deployed, participants and representatives from different social institutions meet at a so-called market day. Depending on managers’ interests and preferences a decision is taken on which specific institution to place them in. Managers meet people in their own social setting and face a new situation helping managers to gain deep personal experience. In the future they will be able to pick up on their experience to develop their professional identity and integrate what they have learned into the leadership culture of the company.

In the USA, over 200 employees at the LG&E business unit of E.ON U.S. got involved in the Weatherization Blitz project. They helped weatherproof 300 homes of elderly, low-income and disabled people before the onset of winter. In teams of three to five employees, project participants frequently used very simple means – such as plastic in front of the windows or sealing holes and cracks – to make a big difference. They helped citizens make their homes much more energy-efficient and save up to 25 percent in heating costs.