Our commitments
World leader in smart tubular solutions—this status carries significant social responsibility with it. We must rise to the challenges that we face every day with our stakeholders.
Our duty toward employees, shareholders, customers, and suppliers is to define the highest standards for corporate social responsibility. At Vallourec, this continuous commitment structures our work and serves as a way to make a difference.
Industrial safety: our number one priority
Health and safety are core values at Vallourec, as well as our top priorities. Thanks to the constant vigilance and mobilization of our employees and subcontractors, much progress has been made in this area. As a result, 2018 was the fourth year in a row without a fatal accident, also boasting a 28% decrease in accidents requiring a work stoppage and a 15% decrease in total accidents. We owe these highly satisfactory results to the mechanisms in force within the group, including constant reminders of the “12 golden rules,” managers’ safety visits to work stations, and 300 groups around the world dedicated to the continuous improvement of safety. These successes and best practices are shared each year during the Safety Days: at each site, employees come together to participate in safety workshops and recognize our progress. Our sole goal is to strive for zero accidents.
- -28% decrease in accidents requiring a work stoppage
- -15% decrease in total accidents
Training: encouraging talent to flourish
The most important players in our transformation are our employees. They help strengthen our competitive edge. To keep them motivated and engaged in Vallourec’s development, we do everything we can to help them match their individual aspirations with company needs. With an ambitious training program suitable for a world leader in smart tubular solutions, the company encourages employees to make the most of their talents throughout their careers.
Our vision for nurturing talent is based on three goals:
- Maintaining an appropriate level of engagement
- Guaranteeing the necessary managerial and technical skills through training and availability of the most effective tools
- Helping all of our employees to achieve the best possible work-life balance
Continuing education—a tool for strategic, managerial, and technical excellence—is primarily provided by Vallourec University (lien) This learning center offers customized training to help employees acquire and reinforce their skills. Almost half of the time spent in training is used to improve career skills, while about a third of the time is spent on safety training.
Improving working conditions
Vallourec relies on several initiatives to improve employees’ working conditions and efficiency. In France, an agreement involving employee representatives and managers made working from home possible for employees of all work sites. Furthermore, experiments are being conducted to facilitate quality control and maintenance operations using augmented reality. Finally, robots are being tested as an alternative way of performing repetitive administrative tasks.
- 7% percentage of training performed remotely
- 15 average number of hours each employee spends in training
- +7% increase in the number of training hours compared to 2017
- 75% percentage of training dedicated to operational excellence
- 73% percentage of employees who have performed at least 2 hours of training in person or via e-learning
- 303588 number of hours dedicated to professional training for employees
Remuneration: ensuring motivation and loyalty
Vallourec has a motivating, equitable approach to remuneration that includes incentive and profit-sharing schemes, which link employees to overall company performance. In 2018, these schemes totaled 16 million euros. Since 2008, the group has offered annual employee shareholding plans throughout the world. As of 31 December 2018, employees held 3.70% of the group’s capital.
Respecting parity with the gender equality index for professionals
This index is based on 5 indicators:- the gender pay gap
- the distribution gap of individual increases
- the promotion distribution gap
- the number of employees increased upon their return from maternity leave
- the number of people of the under-represented sex in the top 10 highest earnings
- Valinox score: 83/100
- VOGFR score: 81/100
- VTFR : 89/100
- SERIMAX HOLDINGS : 84/100
- SERIMAX SAS : 89/100
- VBT : Score unavailable due to index calculation methods
- VT : 50/100
- VU : Score unavailable due to index calculation methods
Parity and diversity: developing opportunities
Our gender policy focuses on two goals:
- Bringing more women into operations jobs, especially production jobs
- Facilitating the promotion of women to more senior positions
The network [email protected], composed of committed male and female volunteers, is dedicated to discussion and reflection on equality and on women’s place within the group. It proposes different measures to advance and promote gender diversity.
“With [email protected], we are part of a movement for collective progress. Gender diversity is a key element of our diversity policy. It’s a powerful driver for performance, innovation, and shared enrichment. Promoting gender diversity is an act of leadership.”
Sylvie Dubois-Decool Director of Innovation and Sponsor of [email protected]
Our customers
As a trusted partner, we offer customers solutions with high added value that help them lower their operating costs, wherever they need support, throughout the entire value chain. We know our markets and customers inside out. We welcome our customers’ feedback, since it helps us better understand their needs and anticipate their expectations.
This strength, amplified by our culture of constant innovation and technological leadership, has enabled us to design a new set of services brought together in Vallourec.smart. This bundle of integrated services, which takes our competitiveness to another level, aims to improve the performance of our existing physical services, enrich our deep knowledge of the field, and offer new services that take full advantage of the digital world. We co-develop these high-value-added solutions with our customers to ensure that they fit their needs perfectly. Our approach is innovative, proactive, comprehensive, and agile—all for an unprecedented experience.
Our investors and financial analysts
Throughout the year, the Investor Relations department organizes meetings among group executives, institutional investors, and financial analysts in France and abroad for the following occasions:
- Publication of the quarterly financial results via a conference call broadcast live and recorded for later listening on the group’s website
- Publication of the annual financial results (discussion takes place in Paris at a physical meeting)
- Events dedicated to socially responsible investment (SRI) during which group executives meet representatives of investment funds and SRI analysts
- Investor Days organized by Vallourec outside of the periods of time when financial results are announced; at these events, Vallourec presents its strategy, products, and operations to the financial community. Each Investor Day is recorded and rebroadcast on the group website
- Roadshows and conference calls headed by Vallourec or other events that the group participates in at the main international stock exchanges
- 240 meetings and conference calls
- 35 days dedicated to roadshows and conferences
Our suppliers
As a “partner for every possibility” for our customers, we seek to build the same kind of contractual, long-term relationship with our suppliers. Our desire to strive for excellence and innovation goes hand-in-hand with a responsible purchasingpolicy. Our Sourcing department follows consistent policies and balances centralized management with local guidance, using tools and processes shared by all group entities. The goal: optimize management of our suppliers, monitor their performance, and facilitate synergies.
We choose suppliers based on corporate social responsibility criteria. We have very high standards with regard to sustainable development, ethics, and safety, since the stakes for the group are equally high. We regularly perform inspections to identify supplier risks in France and elsewhere in the world, and we implement corrective actions to minimize them.
Our 9 key selection criteria
- Quality, cost, and time
- Respect for the environment, society, and safety
- Compliance with Vallourec’s general purchasing terms and conditions
- Support for the group’s competitiveness
- Support for innovative initiatives
- Trustworthiness and flexibility
- International and regional players
- Willingness to establish strong partnerships
- Ability to communicate at all levels
- 1000 number of suppliers that underwent CSR evaluation
- +3% increase in spending for group purchases
- €2.613M total cost of group purchases
Our corporate social responsibility
We are well aware of our environmental and social responsibility, which is why we uphold a proactive policy to minimize the impact of our activities on the environment and on communities living near our industrial sites.
This approach is formalized in the group’s Sustainable Development Charter.
For over ten years, our commitments in these domains have manifested in the signature of multiple international agreements and partnerships:
Protecting the environment and using its resources responsibly
- Respecting our environment and protecting biodiversity by preventing all types of pollution, reducing water consumption, recycling, and reducing disturbance
- Limiting the use of natural resources and using safe, clean technology
- Improving the energy efficiency of our equipment and reducing carbon emissions from our production processes (GreenHouse program)
To keep track of progress made, we schedule regular environmental audits in each country to evaluate compliance with regulations, environmental performance, and ecological risks.
- promotion of diversity
- promotion of renewable energies
- health and safety at work
- responsible usage of resources
- 95.8% of waste is recycled
- 39% of energy consumed is from renewable sources
- 43% of steel used has been recycled from scrap
- 80% of resources consumed are from renewable sources
- 40% of production is from ISO 50001-certified sites
- 99% of production is from ISO 14001-certified sites
Supporting local communities
We emphasize open, constructive dialogue with populations that live near our installations. This facilitates the development of local support partnerships, sometimes at the initiative of our employees. Economically speaking, we contribute greatly to local industry by purchasing a large amount of our required supplies in the local area. Local sourcing represented 45% of our total purchases in 2018.Beyond that, we are involved in numerous support programs in each of our four regions that promote education, health and development. In 2018, Vallourec dedicated about 2.45 million euros to such initiatives.
Brazil has some of the best examples of these projects. Located in Belo Horizonte, in a very urban and disadvantaged area, our Barreiro site has spent decades cultivating a close relationship with local stakeholders. In close collaboration with local authorities and with the support of tax incentives, Vallourec has launched economic, cultural, and athletics programs for the populations most in need. As a result, 500 young people benefited from the Comunidade viva academic support program in 2018. Furthermore, the restoration of a historic downtown movie theater provided the city with a large cultural center, the Cine Theatro Brasil Vallourec, which welcomed 240,000 visitors in 2018.
Indonesia features another excellent example. Our subsidiary PT Citra Tubindo Tbk promotes programs that provide educational, medical, social, and athletic support, especially those that focus on children. The “Valérie” project is for disadvantaged children in the Nongsa district. It aims to develop the pedagogical skills of schools that provide vocational training.