SCOPE
This Gender Equality Plan applies to Airizon (the Company), the employees and the external collaborators without exception. Likewise it covers consultants, agents and anyone who has relationships with our company, whether permanent or temporary. Each individual, regardless of his or her position, is considered part of the Company and receive similar treatments and benefits, especially as to the gender equality promotion in the society. This document aims to promote gender equality at Airizon by implementing the request of the European Commission to have a “Gender Equality Plan”. This document was drafted by the Upper Management with the support of external stakeholders with specific expertise in the topic. The content of this Gender Equality Plan is made known to the recipients through publication on the company website and through distribution in digital and paper form. As regard to specific aspects, this document is complementary to the Code of Ethics, which is published on the company website too. Within the Organization, Management and Control Model pursuant to Legislative Decree 231/2001, the aspects related to the verification and compliance with the Code of Ethics, the related reports of possible violations and the sanctioning system related to them are dealt with and deepened.
Reciprocity and Validity
Airizon encourages all stakeholders to adopt conducts similar to that described in this document and is committed to respecting it by acting with integrity. In addition, Airizon prohibits the involvement of third parties in direct or indirect actions that would contravene any gender equality measure contained in this plan. This Gender Equality Plan is in force from the date of adoption, approved by our president, and does not expire. Any amendment or addition to the Code must be approved by the President to ensure its consistency and effectiveness over time. The Document is available in Italian and English. The text in Italian is authentic for all purposes provided for by law, for its application and for clarifying its content
GENERALITIES
The GEP is a programmatic document that looks to the next three years of the SME (2025-27), outlining the actions necessary to reduce the gender asymmetries that unfortunately still characterize any enterprise involved in engineering field. Since its incorporation, in September 2022, Airizon equipped itself with an internal Gender Equality Plan curated by a dedicated working group in cooperation with external stakeholder. This official release intends to set the objectives and related actions to improve and strengthen gender equality within the organization in a single strategic vision that increases the awareness of both the existence of a gender gap and the importance of a gender approach in a sector such as engineering and R&D where the achievement of levels of excellence also involves the implementation of strategies aimed at mitigating inequalities. Starting from this assumption, in the wake of the Thematic Areas identified by the European Commission in the Horizon Europe Guidance on Gender Equality Plans (GEPs) document of September 2021, the following five Thematic Areas of action have been identified:
- Work-life balance and organizational culture
- Gender balance in leadership and decision-making
- Gender equality in recruitment and career progression
- Integration of the gender dimension into research and/or teaching content
- Measures against gender-based violence including sexual harassment
For each of these five Thematic Areas, summary sheets have been drawn up, which describe the actions, objectives, personnel who will be responsible for their implementation, as well as the potential budget in Man Hours suggested for the achievement of each objective.
GENDER GAP ANALYSIS
The gender gap analysis is a fundamental tool for the analysis of the variables that characterize gender gaps and for evaluating the effectiveness and sustainability of the measures adopted by the GEP, improving the results and settling the contradictions.
It is a snapshot of the existing situation that provides a picture of the main gender characteristics within the profiles and career paths of the enterprise and that will provide the basis for actions in favor of gender policies. It is crucial that the Gender Gap analysis is issued every three years but subject to annual updating for the purposes of the GEP monitoring actions. It shall become an integral part of the broader strategic planning of the company in order to make the objective of fully achieving equal opportunities more concrete.
Despite the company is configured as a very small enterprise (microimpresa), it is worth starting this analysis to better track the evolution over time while consolidating on the market and growing. During any update, the analysis will be broaden in order to include the eventual increase of the capacity of the company. For that reason, and given the high dynamics of startups, the investigation is carried out both at employees and shareholders taking into account also the breakdown of the board of managers. As to the employees, the data is reported in Figure 1, showing the breakdown of the amployees’ gender in Airizon.
Figure 1. Breakdown of employees’ gender in Airizon
In addition, the employees have similar educational background and salary. The balance of the contractual classification with respect to the highest educational qualification reflect that of the pay levels of the population by gender. Hence, there is not any gender pay gap in Airizon.
Instead, as to the shareholder level, there is instead a hard mismatch, as all the shareholders have male gender.
Despite there is margin of improvement, the gender gap in Airizon is rather limited to the founders composition and reflects the initial gap as they inherently own the main management positions. However, this is mitigated through the inclusion of qualified personnel in the management board, regardless of the gender and according to the expertise and attitude of the employee. This will help achieving gender balance in leadership and decision-making.
MEASURES TO MAXIMIZE WORK-LIFE BALANCE
Women’s career paths are certainly affected by the specific needs related to the sphere of parenthood and family care. However Airizon has always fostered the best balance between personal and working life, through work-life balance measures that in fact are configured as measures aimed at promoting equal opportunities As a result of people involved in social affairs and well-being, Airizon extends measures to improve paternal support in order to extend the work-life balance not only to the employ, but rather to the whole family.
Generally, being a post-covid enterprise, Airizon has always supported an orientation in favor of company policies that take to heart the importance of guaranteeing a certain flexibility for the conciliation of life and work times and this through the tools already provided for by the relevant CCNL but also perfectly integrated through second-level bargaining. In this regard, Airizon motto is: “the better office is located where you feel better”. The aim is improving the quality of working life and achieving greater performance results in a positive work environment, capable of attracting and retaining talent by improving the quality of working life and ensuring the perfect balance between professional and private life. Percentage of Managers Male Female For the sake of conciseness, the main measures implemented by AIRIZON in compliance with the Thematic Area ”Organizational well-being and balance between private and working life” is listed below:
- Remote Working and Smart Working the introduction of flexible working methods, such as remote and smart working, promote time management and the balance between private and working life, offering employees the possibility to eliminate any geographical barriers and reduce the gross amount of work hours (i.e.: including organization and travelling time). According to the European Memorandum of Understanding on remote working, Airizon implements full remote working under specific requests. So far, 3 different employees opted out for full remote activities and they come to Airizon premises under special circumstances. In addition, all the employees can have smart working in principle, as far as this is compatible with the specific activities. So far, all employes work in agile mode and can decide whether to work from home or in the office daily;
- Hourly vacation: The possibility of requesting holidays hourly, rather than by whole days, represents an additional flexibility that allows employees to manage their personal needs more effectively, promoting well-being and job satisfaction. In addition, P.A.R. can be accumulated to take whole day vacation when needed.
- Flexibility working hours: Offering the possibility of adapting working hours allows employees to better organize their daily activities, improving their psychophysical wellbeing and increasing the level of satisfaction in the work context. Airizon employees are granted the right to take advantage of a flexible entry time slot between 7:30 and 10:30.
- Parental leave: The extension of parental leave beyond the legal requirements sets a high value of attention to the family needs of workers. The measures to support parenthood that, together with the flexibility of working hours and the Smart working, have contributed to creating a more inclusive and attentive work environment to the needs of its own. In particular, the employee can ask for 10 additional non paid days to support children illness up to 14 years old.
SUMMARY OF CURRENT STATUS
Examining the data of the Gender Balance, Airizon shows a positive trend towards gender equality, with higher than the average. Naturally, some of the feedback still reflects the context that characterizes the current conformation of civil society and STEM situation, but the enterprise is not far from achieving a gender equality standard. Indeed, there is no gender pay gap and the non-equal career opportunities up to the ”conquest” of top roles depends also upon the deficit of women in science.
It is also clear that the protection of gender equality must first and foremost involve the valorization of personnel understood as ”human resources”. From this point of view, in the last year, also with a view to ensuring a more equitable remuneration policy, AIRIZON has started a complex process of mapping skills with the aim of implementing a strategic plan for the management of human resources that, through effective management of performance evaluation, guarantees correct implementation of personnel development policies. Indeed, though a six-monthly employee performance review, the key performance indicators and objectives fulfillment are mapped and reviewed.
All in all, the idea is to ensure merit based valorization of human resources and disrupt any barrier limiting excellence. This is because Airizon should not be the place where to work, but rather the place where to growth together.
OBJECTIVES AND ACTIONS
In this section, the objectives and the actions to achieve these objectives in the next three years are detailed according to the thematic areas highlighted by the European Commission.
Work-life balance and organizational culture
| Objective | Action |
|---|---|
| Dissemination of Guidelines for the right to disconnect and better planning of meetings and work activities. | Raise awareness of respect for work hours compatible with private life, by sending quarterly company commnications |
| Support for balancing work and parenting and/or care activities | Implementation of agreements with institutions providing assistance and personal care services |
Gender balance in leadership and decision-making
| Objective | Action |
|---|---|
| Promoting gender equity in top positions | Continuous monitoring of gender gap in managing positions Introduction of measures to reduce gender gap in managing positions Made the monitoring results publicly available |
| Promote a broader focus on gender equity by raising awareness of how biases can influence decisions in career progression policies | Organization of training events on mandatory gender equity for top managers |
Gender equality in recruitment and career progression
| Objective | Action |
|---|---|
| Ensure gender equality in the composition of the evaluation committees for the recruitment | Introduce internal rules to ensure gender equality during interviews. |
| Monitoring of participation data in the job applications with respect to the gender variable | Ensure data collection and processing respect to gender variable |
| Data monitoring to analyze gender effects in career progression and the pay gap (if any). | Annual Gender Balance Update |
Integration of the gender dimension into research and/or teaching content
| Objective | Action |
|---|---|
| Promoting Gender Equality for R&D activities | Promote R&D activities which minimize gender gap |
| Enhance the role of women in engineering and R&D by organizing events aimed at involving the younger age groups as a stimulus to undertake STEM paths | Implementation of agreements with institutions like schools and university to coorganize events |
Measures against gender-based violence including sexual harassment
| Objective | Action |
|---|---|
| Raise awareness among all staff on diversity issues and inclusion well being | Promote yearly seminars on the topic Send company communications to promote inclusion through respectful behaviour and inclusive language |
| Foster knowledge of tools useful against gender violence | Implement a section of the code of ethics with references to the different forms of gender violence/harassment and related support tools. Introduce dual mentorship, to allow employees to have more opportunities to discuss any inappropriate circumstance |