4.1 Working from home as a way to stay organised

Working from home (WFH) is a flexible way of organising work that consists of staff continuing to work without being physically in the workplace for a large part of their working day. In the beginning of the pandemic, in the first quarter of 2022, WFH started to become more widely accepted in the business world, and it has ended up becoming the norm in a great many Spanish businesses. Even though the figures are much lower than for other European Union countries, WFH in Spain has grown exponentially: from close to 1.6 million people working from home before the pandemic began, in March 2021 the number doubled, rising to almost three million people.

Working from home and digitalisation were two of MRG’s major commitments in 2021. Both were applied practically across the board for the entire workforce, while maintaining a 24/7 emergency response service. To implement this new way of working, we opted for the most widespread formula among the various agreements that regulate remote working, by which the company provides the means and an explicitly predetermined remuneration for costs resulting from this way of working.

Prior to implementing its WFH protocol, MRG ran a diagnosis of the situation, with the involvement of various company departments, which identified which roles were best suited for WFH, devised a model to cover any problems that may arise and implemented measures such as reducing the office’s physical space.

The benefits afforded by WFH include greater access to talented individuals, retention of qualified staff, lower office costs, improved metrics and lower emission levels, due to fewer journeys between work and home. For our workforce, working from home was a motivating factor and allows for greater flexibility, resulting in an improved work/life balance, increased productivity and considerable savings in both time and costs associated with the daily commute to the company’s offices.

As proof of how successful WFH has been is the fact that 99% of remote working agreements across all areas of the business were formalised over the course of 2021.

4.2 Women in the organisation

In 2021 our workforce had the shortest length of service in the company’s history, as MRG continues to adapt to new circumstances with a workforce that is both more agile and more flexible.

Average MRG seniority fell by 30%. Specifically, in the past five years, the average length of time a staff member has been at the company has dropped from 19 years to 16 years.

And in the past five years the company’s workforce has dropped by 13%, from 145 employees in 2016 to 126 in 2021, with nine staff members retiring in the 2021 financial year. The overall workforce has dropped by 16%, from 162 employees in 2016 to 135 in 2021.

In 2021 there were more women on the workforce than ever before. The number of women employees had been on the rise over the 2010-2021 period, with the percentage doubling over the past five years, up to 80%. Whereas in 2016 the percentage of women on the MRG workforce was 17%, today it is 37%. At the financial year’s close, this meant 46 women and 80 men.

Furthermore, over the past five years an average eight people have joined the company each year, of whom 58% are women. In the 2020 financial year, all of the people joining the company were women, and in 2021 half of the new employees were women.

Of the individuals joining the workforce, 75% are university graduates, bringing added value, versatility and expertise to the company.

4.3 Training

If we have learned anything over the past two years of the pandemic, it has been to place our focus once again on people and on developing emotionally intelligent organisations. This need to look after ourselves and protect one another from a common enemy, such as COVID-19, has reaffirmed the relationship between company and staff.

Since March 2020, MRG has focused on protecting the health of its workers, and today we are one of the few companies that has kept its staff working from home since then to prevent people from becoming infected. In 2021 we continued working to encourage active listening among our workforce as a way to share and understand situations that they have gone through over the past two years and help them to cope with their day-to-day issues in a friendly, positive way. As part of this work, seven workshops were organised, totalling more than 200 hours.

If 2020 gave us the opportunity to reinvent ourselves at all levels and plant the seeds of projects aimed at managing the change that a global pandemic entails, 2021 was the year in which all these projects have germinated and we have gained ground on the uncertainty that concepts such as lockdown, vaccination or remote working caused among us all. This has happened partly as a result of the ongoing training provided, both in terms of health and safety and in the form of workshops aimed at providing tools for our staff to deal with this new work backdrop, which means acting as leaders for change, initiative, being proactive, cooperation and teamwork.

The 2021 financial year was characterised by ensuring continuity and consolidation of these types of programmes, with more than four thousand hours of training, investment of more than €120,000 and more than 500 people taking part. This training work also helped us to move forward in other aspects that are just as important for the company, such as equality, digitalisation and emotional intelligence.

In 2021, MRG devoted more than four thousand hours and invested more than €120,000 to staff training. The various courses given have helped us move forward in terms of equality, digitalisation and emotional intelligence

For years now at MRG we have operated with the aim of being a leading example on matters of equality. In this regard, and by continuing to work according to these best practices that are aligned with MRG’s commitment to achieve equality between women and men, in 2021 we took a step further by incorporating specific training (100 hours) on issues relating to equality within the company’s training plan.

Finally, and with the aim of MRG bring the very best natural gas distributor for its customers, in 2021 we also invested in training on digitalising field operations, big data and cyber security in order to provide a service that is better, quicker, more comfortable and, above all, safer.

4.4 Prevention

In 2021, at MRG we worked to ensure the continuity of our prevention policies implemented as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, which in practical terms involved establishing working from home as the preferred option for office-based staff whose roles were suited to this way of organising their work, as well as a raft of other measures aimed at staff whose work is only partly office-based and/or who carry out work in the field.

In this context, a significant percentage of the company’s health and safety resources needed to be allocated to issues related to COVID-19. Faced with this situation and in compliance with the business contingency and continuity plan, the most relevant actions taken in 2021 were related to defining criteria that could be applied to processes and activities, standardising and procuring protective equipment and materials, coordinating preventive activities and applying the protocols indicated by the Ministry of Health regarding contagions and close contacts.

Once working from home had been standardised, a series of data-gathering surveys were conducted aimed at devising the appropriate workplace risk assessment by the independent prevention service. As a result of this process it became clear that there was a need to provide staff with further means in order to promote a way of working from home in conditions of appropriate health and safety.

On matters relating to self-protection and emergencies, reviews were completed of the self-protection plan for LPG plants and the emergency plans of five LNG plants were updated. Work also continued on the second management cycle of assets affected by Royal Decree 840/2015 Seveso III, completing the review of eight interior emergency plans for LPG plants with storage capacities of more than 50 tonnes, and five regulatory inspections were carried out, emergency drills were run at LPG and LNG plants and distribution networks, and the appropriate necessary training was given.

Work also continued with new batches for testing explosive atmospheres in LPG storage centres. A new cycle of regular visits was also carried out of ADR advisors for affected installations, and operational control visits were conducted in terms of prevention, environment and quality of a range of our most significant processes.

Finally, in 2021 there were fewer work-related accidents among internal staff compared with previous years. As a result of a single recorded accident resulting in sick leave, we scored 3.86 points on the accident frequency index. The voluntary legal health and safety audit was also conducted.