Together we build the local community

Leadership is the foundation of our success

Secure and appreciated leaders are vital for our ability to achieve the targets we set and for our employees to flourish in their professions. Continually developing our management is therefore a prioritized area.

During 2023 we carried out Peab’s ordinary leadership development program, which is offered to managers on four different levels. We also had a special program for supervisors to facilitate success in their roles. In total we trained 173 supervisors, from Tromsø in the north to Trelleborg in the south, and all in all we carried out developmental measures for some 2,000 (1,200) managers during the year. Additionally, we offered a wide range of seminars as well as coaching and mentorship. Very often our supervisors take a leadership role right after graduation and therefore this is an important group for us to recognize and support.

In recent years we have further developed our digital methodology for competence development and now digital learning is our everyday channel for training at work. We currently have a range of 859 (890) courses available for our employees to access on their cell phones, then apply to and, to a large extent, participate in online. In connection with annual goal and development discussions, employees and supervisors can plan for digital courses and add them to the employee’s individual development plan. Within our support functions, and based on research insights in behavioral science, we have produced a new tool in goal and development discussions that reduces the risk of subjectivity in managers and promotes merit-based evaluations.

What our employees think

In our annual work environment evaluation employees are given the opportunity to evaluate their work environment in the categories working hours, workload and equal opportunity. The result for 2023 continued to be stable and well in line with the benchmark. The area of workload has improved even if difficulties to relax after work are still reflected in the numbers. Equal opportunity has also improved but the outcome is lower among skilled workers than white-collar workers. In August we once again held Peab’s Nordic annual health and work environment week where employees paid particular attention to matters concerning preparation and planning at the start of the workday, which is vital to eliminating risks and preventing workplace accidents. A number of activities were carried out during the week such as training in risk assessments, introduction of new co-workers to the workplace, PPE and how to integrate Peab’s core values into day-to-day work.

Focus on tomorrow’s talent

Our target of being an attractive employer is also vital for our ability to continually ensure future talent recruitment and keep the employees we already have. Because of the significant underlying demand for our services in different sections of society we need to continually recruit new employees with different skills that help us prepare our organization for the future. During the year we also worked with Group comprehensive succession planning.

As part of this work we prioritize collaboration with many different parts of the educational systems in the countries we operate in. This collaboration ranges from internships and research projects to lectures, mentorship and tutorial help with master theses. Since 2006 we also run independent upper-secondary schools through the Peab School. Read more about the Peab School in the section “Leader in social responsibility”.

Some examples:

• In Norway we work with developing how to school interns as a way to ensure our own access to engaged, proficient skilled workers.
• Peab’s operations in Norway have been a driving force in Sentralregisteret’s launch of K-REG, a digital national competence register that compiles an employee’s certificates, safety courses and education. A workplace can easily check that an employee has the right skills for their job. The system is now the industry standard in Norway.
• For several years now our Finnish business has participated in Metropolia University of Applied Sciences in Helsinki by contributing to the composition of education there and by leaders from Peab lecturing on leadership in the construction industry.
• We come into contact with a great number of elementary school students every year through our concept for the education and development of young people, Peab Life.
• Since 2020 we have our own construction teacher who assists in the national education of young skilled workers in schools all over Finland. Last year Peab launched a supervisor course led by our construction teacher in eight different places. These courses increase our ability to take on more interns at our workplaces.
• We work together with, and our management is involved in, various university applied sciences courses related to the construction and civil engineering industry.
• Peab’s one year trainee program started with 19 Bachelors of Engineering from all over Sweden that began their journey in business area Civil Engineering. The trainees in 2023 were 13 women and 6 men that received basic knowledge about the industry focused on supervision and production planning during the program period. They will get leadership training, try different workplaces, projects and work teams along with various advanced courses and development opportunities.

Safe work environment is fundamental

The construction and civil engineering industry suffers from injuries but we can never accept people are injured or get sick because of their job.

Therefore a safe work environment is crucial to our business. Everyone at our workplaces should be able to work under safe and secure conditions, despite the fact there are risks involved in the work we do. All our employees, hired staff and anyone at our workplaces have the explicit right to refuse to do a job if it cannot be done safely.

Preventative measures

Accident prevention measures are the core of our work on the work environment because every remedied risk is one less potential accident. To prevent accidents and incidents at our workplaces Peab develops quality-ensured and systematic work methods along with continually educating employees and partners. We hold regular safety inspections at construction sites and remedy identified shortcomings afterwards. We also put great emphasis on educational work environment reports intended to make it easier for workplaces to do the right thing. At the end of the year we also developed a work method so that our employees produce work preparations together before they begin a job. Risk elimination, in other words identifying risks and measures, is emphasized in work preparations to increase the safety of our workplaces and reduce accidents and incidents.

We plan and make risk assessment in projects. Employees and partners report risk observations which we remedy as far as possible and we learn from these, as we do from actual incidents and accidents. Interest in reporting risk observations during the year continued to be high with around 55,000 (60,000) reported observations.

Road safety

Peab has a large number of roadwork sites affected by passing traffic which entails a risk that requires special safety arrangements. On the other hand, the way we arrange roadwork sites also affects passing traffic. Our team of traffic engineers promotes and monitors issues regarding safe roadwork sites. For example, the team supports projects in the calculation and production phases, last year it inspected around 100 Peab roadwork sites and analyzed the some 160 inspections made by the Swedish Transport Administration. The team also helps to spread experiences and good examples in our organization through courses within “Roadwork” which is mandatory and often required by our customers.

We are involved in the Swedish Construction Federation’s member association Maintain Zero and are part of a newly formed team that works with traffic safety. Through Maintain Zero we have collaborated with the Swedish Transport Administration in “Action plan for roadwork safety 2022-2025”. We are also represented in Sweden’s Trade Association for Safer Roadwork Sites. Through these forums we have provided the Swedish Transport Administration with ideas and information to aid them in producing an action plan for improved safety in roadwork sites that the government has tasked the agency with. We have also responded to the referral on restructuring the Swedish Work Environment Authority’s work environment provisions where the responsibility of general contractors is clarified along with employers’ responsibility for safety in roadwork. We have also provided material for research on what happens when heavy, energy absorbing collision protection (TMA) is used in roadwork.

Another development we have noted, through more reports from our employees and contacts in the industry, is an increase in hate, threats and in some cases violence towards our employees by drivers passing by or residents. We have therefore inserted a mandatory section about threats and violence in our “Roadwork” courses.

When a crisis is at hand

Peab has had a crisis organization for many years that consists of around 100 employees in Sweden and Norway. Its purpose is, in the case of an accident or crisis, to step in and provide professional management to minimize unnecessary suffering and injury of the victims, both employees and third parties. Every local crisis coordinator is trained in crisis management in cooperation with the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency and participates in regularly scheduled exercises within the crisis organization’s operations. Every year the crisis organization receives around fifty crisis calls.

Target of a contracting trend

During the year we continued to work on our safety culture and preventive work concerning the work environment. We work with in-depth investigations and take measures to prevent similar accidents from happening again. We also continue to provide our information series to all our employees where we share good examples, advice concerning the work environment and safety as well as information on the latest in the industry. The quarterly Nordic exchange of experiences contributes to strengthening competence among the countries.

We also monitor the number of workplace accidents with more than four days absence, excluding the day of injury (LTI4), and workplace accidents according to the same definition per one million hours worked (LTIF4) for our own employees. At the end of 2023 there were 38 and the LTIF4 frequency rate for a rolling twelve month period was 5.9, which is a slight deterioration of the positive trend we have had for quite some time.

Progress and collaboration in 2023:

• Peab held its annual Safety Day in April and this year’s theme was the importance of preparation. This Group work environment activity is carried out in all our countries and in all Peab operations.
• Peab has implemented digital safety walks that are monitored digitally with goal cards. The purpose is to aid supervisors in assessing how well work environment work functions in practice and promote more assessments of safety at workplaces.