Where do our employees work?
The parent company Lerøy Seafood Group ASA has its head office in Bergen, Norway. In addition to the Group’s CEO, the parent company has 15 employees. Administratively, personnel functions for the parent company are conducted by the wholly-owned subsidiary, Lerøy Seafood AS. In 2018, the Group had 4,589 full-time equivalents, of which 2,964 men and 1,625 women. Of this figure, 1,336 full-time equivalents work outside Norway. The ratio of female employees is 35%, slightly up from 2017.
Independently of the demand for equal opportunities for men and women, the Group has always emphasised individual skills, performance and responsibility in its recruitment policy and salary systems.
The Group seeks at all times to ensures equal employment opportunities and rights for all employees, and works hard to prevent discrimination based on national origin, ethnicity, colour, language, religion or personal philosophy.
One of the company’s goals is to provide a workplace without discrimination because of disabilities. The company will arrange for individually adapted workplaces and work tasks where possible for employees or work applicants with disabilities.
The company is a player in a global industry and the company’s working environment changes continuously. This requires flexible employees who are dynamic and willing to adapt and learn.
As in previous years, the Board of Directors would like to take this opportunity to praise the employees' efforts, their understanding of the need for a results-oriented operational focus and for their willingness to adapt to change throughout the organisation.
Lerøy's main activities are in Norway, but we trade with numerous countries worldwide. It is therefore important for us to ensure that all our activities comply with our set of values.
Lerøy Seafood Group is a corporation involved in global business and working relationships with suppliers and subcontractors worldwide. In order to safeguard all our activities, we have drawn up a set of values that apply to us and our partners in our daily work. Our ethical code of conduct has been reviewed by the Board of Directors and implemented in every Group company. The Group is responsible for ensuring that the ethical code of conduct is put into practice, but each employee also bears an individual responsibility to follow the code of conduct when carrying out tasks for the Group. The company management is responsible for ensuring full implementation of and compliance with the ethical code of conduct.
Key words for the contents of the ethical code of conduct:
Independently of the demand for equal opportunities for men and women, the Group has always emphasised individual skills, performance and responsibility in its recruitment policy and salary system.
Furthermore, the Group at all times ensures equal employment opportunities and rights for all employees. The Group works hard to prevent discrimination based on national origin, ethnicity, colour, language, religion or personal philosophy.
One of the company’s goals is to provide a workplace that is free from discrimination based on disability. Wherever possible, the company will arrange for individually-adapted workplaces and work tasks for employees or work applicants with disabilities.
Our Code of Conduct sets out good practices defining how management and employees should handle various situations arising within working conditions.
The Group complies with the laws applicable in the different countries in which we operate. Our compensation policy means that no employee is paid less than the official national minimum wage. All our employees have working contracts in which compensation is listed. Our personnel system and the presence of labour unions ensure that all employees are compensated fairly.
This cooperation is also very much evident at the core of the Group, where the corporate management and a working committee representing the majority of trade unionists exchange information and discuss shared challenges and opportunities, both at regular intervals and whenever required. Formal discussions and negotiations are also conducted when necessary.
All our employees are free to organise themselves in various unions, including the right to engage in collective bargaining. The various companies in Lerøy Seafood Group have their own employee representatives who look after formal cooperation between the company and employees/trade unions.
Companies in the Lerøy Seafood Group work closely with employee representatives, based on a close working relationship between local representatives and local management at each company.
Independently of the demand for equal opportunities for men and women, the Group has always placed emphasis in its recruitment policy and salary system on individual skills, performance and responsibility.
Furthermore, the Group ensures equal employment opportunities and rights for all employees at all times, and works hard to prevent discrimination based on national origin, ethnicity, colour, language, religion or personal philosophy. One of the company’s goals is to provide a workplace that is free from discrimination based on disability. Wherever possible, the company will arrange for individually-adapted workplaces and work tasks for employees or work applicants with disabilities.
On 27 January 2019, a fire started in the smolt facility in Laksefjord, Finnmark, resulting in a fatality. An employee of a company carrying out maintenance work died in the fire. Our thoughts are with his close family and colleagues. After the incident, Lerøy Seafood Group has assisted and will continue to assist the police and other public agencies in identifying how this tragic accident occurred.
The Group maintains a strong focus on procedures and compliance with these, and on measures to protect all employees. This is a perpetual process moving us forwards to our vision of zero injuries.
Total sick leave registered in the Group in 2018 was 4.96%. This is down from 5.97% in 2017. Sick leave comprises 3.03% long-term sick leave and 1.93% short-term sick leave. The Board is pleased to observe that sick leave is on the decline, and that the Group works actively to keep sick leave low. The organisations in the individual subsidiaries are continuously being developed to ensure that they can deal with new challenges and changes in framework conditions. The working environment and cooperative atmosphere are good.
Numbers of accidents, near-accidents and safety issues are recorded monthly.
With the seafood cluster in Bergen, the Group has played a strong role in creating customised training programmes for the seafood industry in recent years. Together, the cluster has developed:
Since their development, these programmes have proved extremely popular, and a number of new programmes and places for students have been and continue to be created.
The Group also has other trainee programmes, “Kysttrainee” and “Komtrainee”.
In 2018, Lerøy in Norway had about 15 trainees in Norway and 60 apprentices. The Group invests substantial resources in recruitment work, since future availability of labour is important to us.
In 2015, Havfisk was named “learning company of the year”. The company has about 2 apprentices per trawler at all times.
Each company organises different types of events. These might be family days, social gatherings, motivation meetings or events involving sports. The majority of our subsidiaries offer various types of sporting activities for their employees.
The Group has a strategy of promoting good health and a healthy diet, with a focus on children and young people, whom the Group targets via a number of channels. The Group, via its subsidiaries, has also provided plenty of opportunities for Group employees to keep fit and improve their health, with a number of measures including weekly fitness sessions, participation in company sports teams, mountain hikes, cycling, skiing etc.
The Group companies maintain a constant focus on the working environment and carry out regular evaluations in this area. Measures are implemented to ensure that the working environment is optimal for all parties involved.
Lerøy Seafood Group has an international working environment. A number of our employees are from other countries, and several of our companies have multinational workforces. Some of our companies are located close to local refugee centres. By employing residents of such centres, we make an important contribution to successful integration in the local community. A number of the people who live in such centres work at our facilities for longer or shorter periods of time. They contribute towards value creation while, at the same time, gaining valuable experience of working life in Norway.
Within the group, we focus a lot on health – the health of our employees and of both current and future consumers. The individual human being, the consumer, is important both for the community and for us in Lerøy, as these are the people who will buy our products and therefore secure our jobs.
Within the focus area of health, we work in a number of areas:
1. EMPLOYEES:
2. CONSUMERS:
3. FUTURE CONSUMERS:
Energy from the sea
To have a healthy and balanced diet is important to us who work in Lerøy, but it is also very important for children and young people. We clearly see what positive effects seafood can contribute with through people's diet. Therefore, we work actively with our collaborators to get seafood on the menu for children and young people through increased expertise and access to seafood at various sports and cultural events around the country.
Our Collaborators
The Norwegian Rowing Federation
The Norwegian Skating Association
The Norwegian Handball Federation
The Norwegian Athletics Association
The Norwegian Volleyball Federation
Brann
As a corporation, Lerøy Seafood Group has decided to support various activities involving children and young people in local communities. Diet, health and healthy eating are important elements in our efforts to help children and young people, and they are essential for young people if they want to achieve their goals. Each year we support a number of teams and associations that are involved in physical activities for children and young people with free seafood products. In Bergen last year we delivered:
We are therefore always happy to see children and young people enjoying healthy seafood at different events.
The UN has adopted 17 global goals for sustainable development to transform the world over the next 15 years. The new goals for sustainable development encompass the environment, economy and social development, all within the same context.
All 193 UN nations have participated in compiling the goals. Lerøy has chosen to adopt some of these 17 goals. The goals we have selected are those most relevant to our processes, but we also have other goals that are closely associated with some of the other UN goals. Internal goals have been established for these areas in our underlying companies.
The group works in many different areas to reduce the use of electricity and fossil fuels. Among these measures, we can mention the following:
The various measures require technological development and a high level of expertise, and in many ways they represent a breakthrough in the industry.
POWER FROM LAND
Power from land usually makes good overall economic sense. Power from land results in:
The further development of power from land should entail a degree of overcapacity, thus enabling any future electrified boats to be recharged.
More than 50% of our sites now run on power from land – a figure that will increase in the coming years.
HYBRID FLEETS
This solution is best suited to new projects and it works very well at sites where it is difficult to obtain power from land. It can reduce the run time on generators significantly – by about 50%.
The generators run at higher power when in operation, but for shorter periods.
OCEAN SUN – FLOATING SOLAR CELLS
At one of our sites in the south, we have a project that uses floating solar cells in the sea, with the aim of generating enough electricity for the site. This will allow us to stop using diesel generators for prolonged periods every day. An array of solar cells is mounted on a 160 m floating cage. To date, the project has produced very promising results.
WORKING BOATS
In the farming division, we are working on various projects investigating how we can work to reduce the emissions from our working boats. So far we have seen numerous expensive solutions with only moderate environmental benefits, but we are looking closely and carefully in order to find a good solution in this field.
We do not currently have any working boats that run on clean electrical or hybrid power, either in operation or in construction. Early solutions in the market have been found to be expensive and not good enough.
We have been working closely with system integrators throughout the year to establish a hybrid propulsion plant which we believe will be reliable and not too expensive. Once we have this in place, we will initiate a pilot project and build a working boat based on this concept. The cost and the properties of the boat will be decisive for future efforts in this area.
Fishfarming nets
Lerøy is recycling our fishfarming nets: In 2018 Lerøy recycled 295988 kg Fish farming nets.
Environmental benefits:
Lerøy Seafood Group's activity is based on sea life and products created in the sea.
70% of the Earth's surface is covered by sea and only 3-5% of the protein we eat currently comes from the ocean. We strongly believe that tomorrow's food will be increasingly sourced from the ocean, and we are therefore concerned with preserving the ocean as an important resource.
Ever-increasing amounts of plastics in the ocean are potentially one of the biggest challenges in the near future. Lerøy Seafood Group has been involved in the process of recovering plastic waste because we consider it to be a very important activity.
What do we do?
In addition to these measures The Group management has decided that for the next 5 years we shall:
This is ambitious goals, but if we join forces throughout The Group and the value chain, we can succeed!
“Til Låns” is a project in which Lerøy Seafood Group works together with waste and recycling company Norsk Gjenvinning to ensure that the packaging for products packed in aluminium trays is returned for recycling after use. Such packaging is therefore only “on loan”. Waste is a resource that is not properly utilised, and we aim to do something about this. An extra label will be attached to these products telling the user what to do with the packaging after use. This informative label is meant as a careful nudge in the right direction and is therefore only the first step on the road to ensuring correct processing of packaging. This is an exciting project that is heading in the right direction. We also focus on using the correct packaging and the correct size of products in order to avoid waste.