Our Family members are valuable and the key to our success. It is important that they feel part of our ROTO Family, that they feel safe and valued and that, based on our core values, they are challenged and supported to be the best they can be. For this reason, ROTO is working on strengthening its HR capabilities. The recruitment of HR directors, both for Prestia and Staco, will simultaneously increased capabilities within the HR community.
ROTO Family Survey
In 2023, the number of Family members fluctuated between 1,122 at year-end and 1,196 after Q1-2023, reflecting a downward trend in economic activity.
After the first baseline measurement at the end of 2021, the ROTO Family Survey (RFS) was carried out for the second time at the end of 2023. Again, this gave us valuable information on the level of engagement and on which improvements should be made to align with our ambitious goals. The results were shared and discussed with all our Family members, with the request to implement concrete improvement plans where necessary. ROTO’s Management Board intends to repeat the survey every two years, so the next one is scheduled for the end of 2025.
In 2022, ROTO started with improved performance management: based on our strategy, core values and core themes, specific personal goals are set annually together with the Finance, HR and SHEQ Communities and the ROTO Leadership Team. This will be continued and further improved in 2024.
In 2023, Rezinal conducted a new employee satisfaction study, reaffirming our commitment to a thriving workplace. Our goal in conducting this study was to gain valuable insights directly from our employees, enabling us to continuously improve our workplace environment, foster a culture of collaboration and wellbeing and ensure that every member of our team feels valued and engaged.
Patricia Denier – finance and administration manager Rezinal
Further implementation of our core values
All ROTO Business Units are aware of ROTO’s core values, thanks in part to the visualisation created for these core values. Uniformity in presentation ensures that everyone is on the same page and makes it clear that the core values apply to all our Family members. In 2023, communication about the core values continued, including in our onboarding procedures, development interviews, staff handbook and staff regulations.
Gender quota on female leadership within ROTO
Via the diversity portal of the SER, ROTO has expressed its ambition for a gender quota on female leadership: 50% for the Management Board by 2030, 50% for the Supervisory Board (already realised since 2022) and 30% for the Leadership Team by 2030. In 2023, this ambition was only realised for the Supervisory Board. Since the beginning of 2024, the ambition has also been realised for ROTO’s Management Board. It is, however, still challenging for the Leadership Team: in 2023, only 10% was female. Since female representation is low in all levels of the organisation, ROTO will need to focus on external female talent to achieve this ambition.
Continuing investment in learning and development
To stimulate our Family members to grow and develop themselves, we continue to invest in learning and development. Not only in training programmes to comply with the latest guidelines or required licences but also in individual or team development training. Prestia, Rotocoat and Staco are working on their own academies: complete learning and training programmes to increase knowledge and provide opportunities to work on capabilities, skills and hence employability. This way, we show our long-term commitment to our Family members. In addition, both Rotocoat and Staco are working on traineeships for young talent.
Recruitment, diversity and inclusion: a challenging task
As The Sustainable Colourful Metal Family Group, we respect and welcome Family members with all kinds of background, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation and views. To promote inclusion and attract a more diverse workforce, we are improving our diversity and recruitment policies and focusing more on equal opportunities for all.
Recruitment is challenging and the availability of skilled people is a major concern in all countries where we operate, whether for straightforward production work or production work that requires specific skills. To mitigate the risk, we partner with multiple agencies, work on our propositions based on the employee journey and provide continuous training and development. We have set up preferred employer programmes and involve our Family members more in recruitment. Last but not least, ROTO’s HR Community chose an interactive communication tool in the form of a dedicated app (ROTO Connect) to improve communication from ROTO and its Business Units to employees and among employees themselves. The app will be launched in the first half of 2024.
Rotocoat is developing, and with the implementation of ROTO Connect, we are showing that the organisation wants to move forward. ROTO Connect is an interactive platform that improves the internal communication so that everyone can find the information they need at any time. The trust and freedom that we were given as a project group provided extra motivation and enthusiasm, which ultimately led to a beautiful end result.
Aukje van der Weij - HR employee Rotocoat
ROTO Management Board and Supervisory Board
As of 1 January 2021, Ditmar Koster (CEO) and Tom van Lindert (CFO) formed ROTO’s Management Board. During 2023, the Management Board mainly focused on the strategy of the five Business Units and the ROTO Strategy House, the core values and the eight core themes, leading to broad value creation based on the seventeen SDGs. As per December 2023, Ditmar Koster left the Management Board. Petra van Saaze, a member of the Supervisory Board since 2022, assumed the position of CEO from 1 January 2024.
Roto B.V. applies the provisions of the mitigated two-tier regime and has an independent Supervisory Board. In 2023, this consisted of four persons: Coert Zachariasse (chairman), Heleen Cocu–Wassink, Petra van Saaze and Arnaud de Boer. As per 1 January 2024, Petra van Saaze left the Supervisory Board, which now consists of three persons. At the moment, no decision has been taken on recruiting an additional member.
Hybrid working is here to stay
As a result of Covid-19, a scheme was introduced to facilitate working from home. After the Covid period, this scheme was continued to enable more flexibility and less travel time. Family members are now allowed to work from home up to a maximum of 50% of regular hours. In practice, most of them choose to work 60-80% in the office as they like personal interaction at our sites. However, it is necessary for most Family members at our production sites to work on site 100% of the time.
Absenteeism due to illness
For ROTO, the absenteeism rate due to illness was 6.9% in 2023 (2022: 7.7%), well above our long-term target of 4% (or less), which we aim to achieve with a different and more personalised employee-oriented approach by the Family members responsible for HR. Challenges and lessons learned are discussed in the HR Community.
The absenteeism frequency, ranging between 0.9 and 2.1 over the whole year, is relatively high compared to our goal of 0.8 and is, on average, slightly higher than in 2022 (0.9 and 1.6 respectively). This can partly be attributed to the recurring ‘yearly’ flu.
