A player in sustainable development - Dalkia

OUR EMPLOYEES
In August 2007, torrential rain
in North Korea led to fl oods
and landslides. One million people
were aff ected, with 170,000
left homeless. Water treatment
and distribution facilities
were damaged.
Veolia Water Force provided its
technical expertise to Unicef –
which rehabilitates pumping
stations – providing emergency
repairs and rehabilitating
damaged stations.
32 2007 ANNUAL REPORT VEOLIA ENVIRONNEMENT
Diversity: a pillar of our growth
Because its business units are located
throughout the world and its work
anchored in local contexts, Veolia
Environnement boasts wide-ranging
cultural, economic and social diversity.
It employs people representing more
than a hundred nationalities and the
proportion of employees of a foreign
origin is signifi cant in many business
units.
This trend is set to gather momentum
and has to be managed around a nucleus
of shared values. In 2007, a wide-spread
campaign called “Promoting diversity and
equal opportunities” was launched.
Following an initial diagnosis, several
guidelines to achieve progress were
defi ned: keeping handicapped workers in
their jobs or fi nding them employment,
facilitating women’s access to specifi c
business activities and positions
of responsibility, and ensuring the
internationalization of management
teams.
Several projects have been started. They
focus on equal opportunities and the
implementation of best practices aimed
at guaranteeing non-discriminatory
access to employment; fundamental
employment rights the company has to
undertake to comply with in all
countries; and the various kinds of
discrimination that need to be combated
as a priority in business units.
At the same time, the Company
Disability Team, set up in 2006, has been
reinforced. It works on raising awareness
among recruiters and designing tools
shared by the four business activities by
running division-wide working groups on
how to employ and retain disabled
people.
Acting in a humanitarian and socially
responsible way
Veolia Environnement is a socially
committed and responsible company.
The diversity of its humanitarian
initiatives underscores the extent to
which it seeks to tackle social problems.
We are a member of international
partnerships working on giving
disadvantaged categories of the
population access to essential services.
We also run health and environmental
education programs; and we back
non-profi ts involved in humanitarian
work, via the Veolia Environnement
Foundation, such as facilitating access
to employment and protecting the
environment as well as emergency relief
operations and development aid
projects.
Such initiatives are long-term
commitments and are implemented
with local players (institutional partners,
experts and NGOs): examples include
programs aimed at providing
hygiene-related education or assessing
the impact on health of clean drinking
water and wastewater treatment
delivered by Veolia Morocco.
They can result from an initiative taken
by company employees, such as
educational tutoring schemes in schools
in disadvantaged French suburbs or
charity operations for underprivileged
categories of the population in China.
The emergency humanitarian action cell
Veolia Water Force set up in 1998 is a
leading partner of NGOs and major
institutions, including the French Red
Cross, UNICEF, Secours Catholique, and
others. Since its inception, it has carried
out more than 60 interventions in
40 countries. It draws on a network
of more than 500 volunteer employees
of Veolia Water who can be rapidly
mobilized. In addition to emergency
humanitarian initiatives, it is continuing
its aid development programs via the
Waterdev program, aimed at ensuring
the supply of water and sanitation
for poor categories of the population.