Employee participation
We aim to enable all our employees to become shareholders in the company. Preserving our Sligro culture and identity and continuing to motivate employees and ensure they feel a sense of loyalty and, most importantly, commitment to our group will also be a critical success factor in the future. Traditionally, our corporate culture has attached great importance to commitment as our origins are those of a family business, with a strong sense of us all working together. And being a shareholder is an important part of this.
Owning shares is not, however, the only aspect involved. We at Sligro Food Group are keen to promote sustainable, long-term ownership of our shares and to relate any growth in such ownership to performance. That performance may be joint, as in the contribution that all employees make to the profitability of our business, or individual, as in each individual employee’s contribution to low illness-related absenteeism. In both cases, share ownership is the result of performance. In 2008, employees received shares with a total value of €2.8 million under the profit-sharing scheme.
150 AEDs for Sligro Food Group
We are planning to equip all Sligro Food Group locations with an Automatic External Defibrillator (AED). This equipment, which is used to resuscitate people after, for example, a heart attack, will be available in all Sligro wholesale outlets, EM-TÉ Supermarkten, distribution centres and production companies and also at the head office in Veghel.
After a successful pilot scheme we started equipping the first locations in November 2008. In due course all Sligro Food Group locations will have an AED and, importantly, staff trained to use it. Sligro Food Group’s 800 first aid officers are being trained to use the equipment, and their knowledge and skills will be checked annually. In this way Sligro Food Group is helping to reinforce the survival chain and playing its part in saving the lives of customers, visitors and employees.
Gas detection in sea containers
The fumigation of sea containers and the problem of people suffering ill effects after opening sea containers featured regularly in the news in 2008. One of the ways used to destroy vermin and viruses from containers originating from Asia and South and Central America is methyl bromide. However, the amounts permitted to be used are often exceeded, or containers are not properly fumigated. We therefore insist on our suppliers signing a fumigation or non-fumigation declaration. As we believe that we also have a responsibility for our employees’ health, we decided to invest in a gas detection meter so that all containers can be tested for the presence of harmful gases before being opened. In early March, Dutch environment minister Cramer announced that restrictions would be brought in this spring (2009).