Healthy and engaged staff

Vreugdenhil wants to be a place where people work safely and in good health, and enjoy helping to create a successful company. We stimulate health and vitality among other employees in various ways.

We have set up various programmes at Vreugdenhil that are focused on improving our employees’ health and fitness. Like in the previous year, the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic was felt in 2021, as in-person meetings and staff outings were still not possible. As part of the BRAVO programme, we regularly post messages on topics such as exercise, smoking, alcohol, diet, and relaxation on various internal channels. We are proud of the fact that Vreugdenhil is a 100% smoke-free environment. Our weekly bootcamp session in Nijkerk brings vitality and enjoyment. In order to continue to stimulate exercise as employees work from home, all our employees were able to attend work-out sessions online. During the ‘week of work enjoyment’ in September, we organised various activities, including an online Mystery Talk for colleagues to get to know each other better. Customised individual training also continued in 2021, mostly online. Over the coming year, we hope to be able to organise yet more activities for our employees. 

Employees who come under the collective labour agreement for the dairy industry again had access to the TipTrack tool last year. In an effort to boost sustainable employability, TipTrack offers training and coaching in four areas: vital, flexible, skilled, and financial insight. Employees can choose for themselves how they want to use the budget that is made available to them. They can also opt to save it for additional leave, or to take more birth leave. At present, there are 179 registered TipTrack users at Vreugdenhil.

In 2021, we launched the Vreugdenhil Academy for all employees. On this platform, we now offer online food safety and workplace safety training. Based on job profiles, a number of these training courses are compulsory and attendance is recorded. We have drawn attention to the Vreugdenhil Academy through various channels, and with success! Nearly all employees completed basic safety training last year. In Scharsterbrug and Barneveld, 96% of employees have meanwhile also completed food safety training. In Nijkerk and Gorinchem, approximately 80% of employees have completed the same training. We are planning to further add to the curriculum and also offer training on other subjects, such as dairy. 

In order to gain greater insight into our employees’ engagement and job satisfaction, we conducted an employee engagement survey in 2021. In total, 346 employees (73%) took the survey and the employee engagement score came in at 8.4 out of 10. The three aspects with the highest score were i) commitment within the teams, ii) feeling proud of Vreugdenhil, and iii) commitment to our company. These results show that our employees are engaged, satisfied, and loyal, and that fills us with great pride! Our aim for the coming years is for the employee engagement score to top the benchmark score of 7.8. 

Employees and external stakeholders have the possibility to report abuses (in the supply chain) via the SpeakUp feature on our website. If they want, they can raise concerns anonymously. Over the past year, SpeakUp was not used. Our employees can also turn to an internal or external confidential counsellor when they want to report certain conditions at work or behaviour by colleagues. In 2021, various employees did so. It is good to see that our employees feel comfortable taking their concerns to these counsellors.

Safety is top priority for Vreugdenhil. At all our sites, we make employees aware of the importance of safety on a daily basis. We continuously analyse and invest in the workplace to see if working practices can be made safer. Through our internal communication channels, we regularly launch messages to raise safety awareness and our employees attend compulsory safety training. Additionally, we organise toolbox meetings to stress the importance of safe working practices.

ISO45001 is the global standard for health and safety at work. Our goal is for all our sites to be ISO45001 certified by 2023. Nijkerk and Scharsterbrug have been certified since 2020. In 2021, the first preparations got underway for the Barneveld site, while we hope to have the actual certification in place by mid-2022. We will also start preparing the certification process for our Gorinchem site in the coming year.

At all our sites, we took measures to increase safety. This led to our Scharsterbrug site being completely accident-free for a whole year. By accidents we mean lost time accidents. It is a result that fills us with great pride and it sets a fine example for our other sites. We have implemented a visitor registration system on all our sites. This way, we know exactly who is on site in the event of an emergency situation. At our Gorinchem site, we have appointed a second safety coordinator and implemented technical improvements, including the creation of a rescue plan for enclosed spaces, the use of more lifting devices, and the set up of a new and safer production line. Various improvements were also implemented at our Barneveld site to further increase safety. An additional escape route has been created, passageways have been fireproofed, and work instructions and procedures are now also available digitally to ensure that everyone always has access to the most recent version.

Like in 2020, Covid-19 dominated our safety efforts last year. Our employees’ health and safety, both at work and at home, received our undivided attention. At all our sites, we implemented various measures to reduce the Covid-19 infection risk among employees. Examples include the testing facility we set up in Gorinchem, separate staff canteens and dressing rooms, staggered shift changes, and, of course, keeping a physical distance from each other and wearing face masks. Under a home working scheme we set up, we are making funds available to enable employees to purchase the equipment they need for their home workplace and to be able to work from home in an ergonomically responsible manner.

‘Incidents are often caused by wanting to do something quickly’

‘After joining Vreugdenhil on an internship five years ago, I’m now an HSE (Health, Safety, and Environment) coordinator. My role is to describe safety procedures for the factory, such as how to work in enclosed and hot spaces. What is important is how factory workers want to adopt these procedures. They work with these procedures every day, so a pragmatic approach is key. We have put a lot of time into raising awareness of safe working practices, through our internal communication system, work meetings, and simply by going out into the factory. I do a safety round every month, for example, and invite management to join me. Workers themselves also provide input for improvements.’

‘At our Scharsterbrug site, we have regular toolbox meetings, which are short meetings of no more than 10 minutes that focus on a specific subject. This allows us to, in a very low-threshold way, raise safety awareness together and pass it on to external parties as well. This has already brought down the number of incidents. Inspired by the success of this meeting format, we are now also going to do this at other departments.’

‘When it comes to technology, we have made various improvements to increase safety. The preventive check in Ultimo Jobs is one example, as is the fire detection system, the evacuation alarm, and explosion protection. Incidents are sometimes caused by wanting to do something quickly, such as with repetitive tasks. It is important, therefore, that workers be well aware of the risks and perform all their tasks with due care. Over the past year, there were 18 incidents, which could fortunately all be dealt with by our internal emergency response organisation. Our internal emergency response organisation is made up of a group of employees who are trained to give first aid in case of accidents and to coordinate if external emergency responders are called in.’

‘In 2019, we had seven lost time accidents here in Scharsterbrug. We reduced that to one lost time accident in 2021. In early 2022, we had been completely accident-free for 12 months. There is a downward trend in the number of incidents and accidents and an upward trend in the number of reports. I find this latter point very positive: near accidents and hazardous situations are now increasingly reported to me. We then together look into how to prevent them. After all, prevention is still always better than cure.’

The sickness absence rate was down to 5%, from 5.3% in 2020. The national average rate for the industry was 5.9% in 2021. This means that we did not hit our target of being 1% below the national industry average. Especially in the final quarter of the year, the sickness absence rate was relatively high, partly on the back of rising Covid-19 cases. In 2021, more people went on Covid-19-related sick leave than in 2020. This created a challenge with respect to staffing levels and production continuity.

In 2021, there were eight lost time accidents in total across Vreugdenhil, i.e. one more than in 2020. None of these accidents resulted in serious injury or had to be reported to the authorities. Our target continues to be zero lost time accidents. But what is even more important to us is that we learn from the accidents that happen, so as to be able to prevent them from happening again. Our CEO and HR Director visit all our factories on an annual basis to discuss accidents with everyone involved. Every six weeks, we have a safety meeting with the safety managers for the factories. In order to increase safety, we implement (technical) improvements on an ongoing basis. And since 2021, we have been giving compulsory safety training through the Vreugdenhil Academy.

"The most important thing is and will continue to be our employees’ satisfaction and engagement"

"Our employees are our most important assets, they keep the organisation running and provide all the knowledge and skills needed for our company to grow and improve. Over the past few years, we have achieved a number of concrete results. Vreugdenhil has become a 100% smoke-free environment, the number of lost time accidents has dropped significantly over the past years, and there has been greater focus on improvement teams. We have also invested heavily in safety and all our sites will have ISO45001 safety certification by 2023. Aside from that, our sickness absence rate is lower than that at similar other companies, we continue to invest in training and courses, and we have launched various initiatives to boost employees’ vitality."

"The most important thing is and will continue to be our employees’ satisfaction and engagement. We monitor that through the employee engagement score, whereby the target is to do better than the benchmark. The results from 2021 show that we have amply succeeded in that aim. On all of the more than 20 topics from the survey, we at least match and often exceed the scores of other similar companies.’"

"While we are, of course, proud of these results, we believe we can do better. We want to do more, for example, to prevent bad workplace behaviour. Even though we are outperforming the benchmark on this point, it is extremely important to us that all employees feel safe at Vreugdenhil. This is why we have various improvement initiatives lined up. Over the coming year, we will organise training and workshops and set up code of conduct training for all employees. The survey shows that employees are aware of the internal and external confidential counsellors, which is positive."

"The employee engagement survey is repeated on a regular basis to monitor progress. I see it as a challenge, therefore, to maintain our high scores. Additionally, our ambition on several points extends beyond merely outscoring the benchmark. We will, for example, continue to work together in creating a safe place to work, both physically safe and socially safe."