Social dimension

Diversity & inclusion

Why is this important?

At Alpiq, we believe that diversity and inclusion contribute to better and stronger cooperation between employees and thus to our overall success. Alpiq relies on a diverse base of employees and the diversity of thought that they bring fosters innovation and creativity within the organization. By embracing diversity and equal opportunity and attracting candidates from different cultures, demographics and identities, we benefit from diverse perspectives and experiences, which can lead to better decision-making processes and give us an even better understanding of and connection with diverse customer bases. By fostering diversity and equal opportunity, we also make a contribution to creating a more equitable and inclusive society.

What are we doing?

The company offers a wide range of internal training courses and supports individual training and further education. High employee satisfaction is also very important for Alpiq, as this is an important driver of innovation, commitment and good performance (see also section “Corporate culture”). Since 2021, Alpiq has been a member of Advance (https://weadvance.ch). Advance is the leading business association for gender equality in Switzerland and is committed to increasing the share of women in management. The Advance programme includes high-quality workshops for talented women to boost their core competencies, skills, and leadership understanding that are critical to moving up the career ladder. In addition, there are special workshops for male managers to help them become inclusive leaders. Alpiq’s goal is to employ around 35% women in senior management positions by 2030. In 2022, Alpiq employees attended seven external workshops, several online sessions, two mentoring programmes and the Advance CEO breakfast.

As a member of Advance, Alpiq benefits from the programme in four areas: 

- Skill development workshops 

- Cross-company mentoring 

- Networking and further education 

- Exchange of best practices

How do we track the effectiveness of our approach?

Alpiq cultivates work relationships based on trust and self-discipline. This also applies to flexible working models. Alpiq does not use people analytics tools and has no plans to introduce them in the future. People analytics tools are surveying technologies that could be used to identify, categorize and analyse employees and their social relationships.

KPI for diversity & inclusion are currently being collected and statements can be made in the following years.

Overall, Alpiq conducted equal pay analyses for 68% of its employees during the reporting year. This pay equity analysis takes place on a regular basis. Taking into account personal and job-related characteristics, women earn 0.1% less.

Milestones in 2022

In 2022, we launched our diversity and inclusion concept. By working together on diversity & inclusion measures, employees become familiar with the topic. Alpiq works with a top-down and a bottom-up approach. The top-down stream includes a transparent dashboard for which we will start collecting data in 2023. The bottom-up stream consists of workshops in which we develop a common understanding of diversity & inclusion for Alpiq. The input from the employees in the workshops will be looked at and a guideline will be developed out of it.

Numbers

- 1,180 – employees 

- 48 – number of different nations represented among employees 

- 35 – targeted percentage of women employees in top management by 2030

Frameworks/guidelines

- Advance charter

GRIs 

- GRI 405-1: Diversity of governance bodies and employees 

- GRI 405-2: Ratio of basic salary and remuneration of women to men

Sustainable Development Goals 

- SDG 8

Karin Manser: An inspiring journey from family to business

Karin Manser joined Alpiq in 2022 as Strategy Implementation Advisor. The qualified engineer had spent most of the previous two decades on a career break to focus on the needs of her five children. Her career path reflects Alpiq’s determination to leverage diversity and embrace non-traditional career paths.

The challenges can be daunting for women attempting to enter the workforce after a career break. A lack of flexible work options, the fear that industry changes have rendered their skills outdated, potential discrimination, and the difficulty of rebuilding networks can leave mothers with a sense of uncertainty about their future on the job market. These are concerns familiar to Karin Manser, Strategy Implementation Advisor in Alpiq’s CEO Office. Having gaining a degree in engineering sciences from the ETH Zurich in 1999, Karin embarked on a successful career in engineering and financial consulting. Then, in 2002, as her young family was expanding, she gave up her career to become what she calls the ‘Family CEO’.

Getting back to business

For Karin, her time at the helm of the family management didn’t mean a complete break from her career. She took on a wide range of voluntary and political functions, as well as lecturing in maths and economics. She was also active for 3.5 years as a lecturer in economics at the HSO Business School in Rapperswil.

Keen to get back into business, she took part in the Women Back to Business programme at the University of St. Gallen. She then re-entered management consultancy for a few years and completed the Aiming Higher Women’s Leadership Programme. “The course aims to help women succeed professionally, in particular women who desire to return to the workforce, reposition themselves in the job market, or take on more sophisticated tasks and responsibility,” says Karin. “This paved the way back to the consulting industry for me as a strategy consultant.” Her ambitions didn’t stop there. “I was striving for even more. The Aiming Higher Women’s Leadership Programme taught me the necessary skills to become a successful leader.”

Fulfilment of a dream

Her ongoing education, training as an engineer and broad experience in voluntary political functions were key elements in getting a job as strategy implementation advisor at Alpiq. Now, her role involves working closely together with Alpiq’s top management. “Together with my team, I support our Executive Board in developing and implementing strategies,” she explains. “And with this job, a dream has come true for me.”

Karin’s dream-come-true bears out the importance of embracing non-traditional career paths at Alpiq. “It was exactly Karin’s current non-linear career path which attracted my attention,” says Alpiq CEO Antje Kanngiesser. “The time that she dedicated to her family, her kids, the time that she dedicated to contributing to association, various organisations and to her own personal development showed to me a richness that I wanted to exploit for Alpiq.”

Antje is determined to ensure Alpiq continues to focus on increasing the diversity of its employee intake. “At Alpiq, we want to leverage diversity, the diversity of non-linear career paths, of experiences in various fields that contribute to our company and to how we create value every day,” says the CEO.