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Period covered by our Communication on Progress: Start: 21.06.2021 — End: 21.06.2022
Dear stakeholders,
Since 1986, İletim Mühendislik has been serving many companies in Türkiye’s electrical sector in the fields of contracting, design and engineering. With our knowledge and experience, we are a partner in enterprise, investment and development.
2020 was a difficult year. The COVID-19 pandemic affected our societies, our company and each of us individually. It highlighted the fragility of our current economic system, intensified socio-economic challenges and put many companies to a serious test on ethics and rights. At İletim Mühendislik, we came through this period successfully by strengthening solidarity, the power of our team spirit and our ability to respond to challenges. We looked after our employees, supported our communities, worked closely with our clients and continued to make significant progress.
I am pleased to confirm that İletim Mühendislik reaffirms its support for the Ten Principles of the United Nations Global Compact in the areas of Human Rights, Labour, Environment and Anti-Corruption.
In this annual Communication on Progress, we describe our actions to continuously improve the integration of the Global Compact and its principles into our business strategy, culture and daily operations. We also commit to sharing this information with our stakeholders through our primary channels of communication.
Sincerely,
Emir Birgün
General Manager, İletim Mühendislik
The Ten Principles of the UN Global Compact address the fundamental responsibilities of business in the areas of human rights, labour standards, the environment and anti-corruption. At İletim Mühendislik we act with awareness of these responsibilities and are honoured and pleased to support the UN. Achieving these principles and a better future requires humanity to act together. To contribute to these steps, we act with a shared awareness built with the support of all our employees, and we spread it as widely as we can. As a whole team, we strive to embrace the ten principles of the UNGC and to encourage others to embrace them.
The Ten Principles of the UN Global Compact are derived from universally accepted United Nations declarations:
Principle 1: Businesses should support and respect the protection of internationally proclaimed human rights.
Through their own activities, businesses should not cause or contribute to adverse human rights impacts and should manage any impacts that may arise.
At İletim Mühendislik we attach great importance to human rights and protect the human rights of all our employees through our company policies as well as legal regulations. We believe every person should receive a high-quality and meaningful education, and for this reason our company has supported the Çağdaş Eğitim Kooperatifi (Contemporary Education Cooperative) since 2004.
Principle 2: Businesses should make sure that they are not complicit in human rights abuses.
This means not being involved in human rights abuses caused by any other business, government or individual. The risk of complicity is particularly high in areas with weak governance or where human rights abuses are widespread, yet it exists in every country and in all sectors.
At İletim Mühendislik, human rights are one of our red lines. In addition to the UNGC principles, we have secured the protection of human rights through many of our policies and statements:
Principle 3: Businesses should uphold the freedom of association and the effective recognition of the right to collective bargaining.
Freedom of association means the right of all workers and employees to freely and voluntarily establish and join organisations of their own choosing. These organisations have the right to carry out their activities — including promoting and defending their occupational interests — freely and without interference. Collective bargaining refers to the voluntary process through which employees and workers discuss and negotiate all their relations, including terms and conditions of work.
We support all employees in freely and voluntarily joining organisations and taking part in them. As a company we are an active member of many institutions, and we encourage our employees to become members and take active roles in them. These include:
Principle 4: Businesses should uphold the elimination of all forms of forced and compulsory labour.
Forced and compulsory labour includes practices such as slavery, bonded labour or debt bondage, abduction, confinement to the workplace, the use of prisoners’ labour by companies without the supervision of public authorities, work imposed as punishment for freedom of thought and expression, forced overtime, withholding of documents required for work (such as passports or financial and personal documents), non-payment of wages and induced indebtedness.
İletim Mühendislik has never employed forced or compulsory labour and opposes all such practices. We have never employed anyone without social security or below the legal minimum. Since our foundation we have paid double for overtime hours. When colleagues wish to part ways with us, we always support them and try to help them build a better future. If we find places where our employees could have better opportunities or work more productively and happily, we provide them with references and help. One of the strongest indications that our employees do not work under compulsion is the 89% employee satisfaction rate in our 2021 annual employee satisfaction survey. We recommend that all companies conduct such surveys anonymously and improve themselves based on the feedback they receive.
Principle 5: Businesses should uphold the effective abolition of child labour.
Child labour is a form of exploitation and a violation of human rights. While the term “child” refers to all boys and girls under the age of 18, this does not mean that everyone under 18 should be removed from work. International standards distinguish between acceptable and unacceptable work for children of different ages and stages of development, and the ILO sets a minimum age for admission to employment.
In line with our company policies, we do not allow anyone to work unless they have completed a technical high school or university, or hold an approved certificate showing that they are qualified to work specifically on electrical works. However, we value young people seeing, understanding and experiencing working life at an early age, and we take on interns for both our sites and our office whenever possible. We expect our interns, without any work expectations, to observe us, learn and make an effort to learn new things.
Principle 6: Businesses should uphold the elimination of discrimination in respect of employment and occupation.
Discrimination in employment and occupation means treating people differently or less favourably because of characteristics unrelated to merit or the inherent requirements of the job, such as race, colour, sex, religion, political opinion, national and social origin, age, disability, HIV/AIDS status, union membership and sexual orientation.
Our recruitment takes place in three stages. Human resources publishes the vacancy and conducts the first interview; if the candidate is found suitable, they then meet the technical manager. After the technical manager’s approval, the candidate finally meets the general manager and is hired. We look for nothing other than job skills in applications, and many people of different ethnic origins, religions, languages and political views actively work in our company (Turkish, Kurdish, Muslims of all denominations, Syrian, people without religious affiliation, etc.).
Principle 7: Businesses should support a precautionary approach to environmental challenges.
When there is a serious and irreversible threat to health and the environment, prevention is better than cure even if the threat is not fully understood or established. Businesses should support economic measures to protect the environment and should not use scientific uncertainty as an excuse to postpone action on environmental problems.
We act in the awareness that we must protect our environment in order to live a healthy life. Energy demand in the world increases every year, and new plants are being built to meet it. Unfortunately, the energy produced in Türkiye and the world is largely obtained by burning fossil fuels, which causes great harm to the environment. Reducing the carbon footprint of countries and the world would have a positive effect on global warming, air pollution, climate change and many other environmental problems. Because of its high costs and low profitability, nuclear energy is clearly not a solution to the clean energy problem. Türkiye, where our company operates, has very favourable conditions for solar energy applications, which allows these systems to operate efficiently. At İletim Mühendislik, we encourage everyone to use renewable energy sources, above all solar energy, to meet existing and growing energy demand. We provide free training on solar energy and free consultancy on its applications to those who request it.
Principle 8: Businesses should undertake initiatives to promote greater environmental responsibility.
Corporate environmental responsibility is now seen as a core issue for business. Doing business responsibly towards the environment supports the long-term sustainability of the company and encourages innovation, in addition to risk management, in a world where resources are becoming increasingly scarce.
Many types of waste, especially plastic waste, cause great harm to the environment. For this reason, we work to reduce our waste as much as possible and to make all of it recyclable. For the recycling of our office waste, we cooperate with the district municipality where our head office is located and separate our waste into special sorting bins they placed in our office for batteries, plastic, glass, metal and household waste. At our construction sites, we also follow the rules of the companies we work for and separate our waste in the best possible way to make it recyclable. To reduce waste, we avoid single-use plastic products for food and drink in our office and save resources in every area. Acting together with our employees, we try to spread awareness of environmental responsibility.
Principle 9: Businesses should encourage the development and diffusion of environmentally friendly technologies.
Environmentally friendly technologies include technologies that protect the environment, reduce pollution, use all resources in a more sustainable way, recycle more waste and products and/or manage residual waste more effectively than the technologies they replace.
We always support new technologies, and we are even more willing to use them when they benefit the environment and society. Although we cannot contribute directly to developing new technologies, we contribute to their application and to the construction of new facilities. The solid waste recycling plant in Bilecik, where we carried out the electrical works, and an industrial zone water treatment plant in Bursa are examples.
Principle 10: Businesses should work against corruption in all its forms, including extortion and bribery.
This principle requires UN Global Compact participants not only to avoid bribery, extortion and other forms of corruption, but also to develop policies and concrete programmes to address corruption. The United Nations Convention Against Corruption is the legal basis of Principle 10.
We act in accordance with our published Code of Ethics Policy and Code of Ethics. Bribery, extortion and all similar acts are completely prohibited by our ethical rules and code.
At İletim Mühendislik we respect the rights of all people and stand against every possible violation. In a group that attaches great importance to ethics, it is difficult to act unethically, because ethics is part of who we are. We also attribute the 100% positive response we received this year from our employees to the survey statement “I am happy to work for İletim Mühendislik” to this understanding. As a company we work intensively on meaningful projects and are proud of everything we do. We always act in accordance with ethics, the law and our rights, and we believe this is why our survey results are so high. Everyone wants to work in a company where they are happy and proud to work, and we are very glad to have achieved this.
After becoming a UNGC member, we grouped the action plans we defined and implemented under four main headings.
At İletim Mühendislik we value the equality of people in every respect. Apart from the extra respect we show to our elders, which comes from our traditions, we do not discriminate against anyone in our company on the basis of gender, ethnic origin, age, political opinion or any other characteristic. We work in the service sector, and our employees are divided into field staff and office staff. Our field staff mainly perform physical work. Our office staff form a balanced team of 55% women and 45% men. We support women in every job and position and try to encourage an increase in the number of women working in the field as well.
We attach great importance to occupational safety and reflect this in the periodic inspection of our equipment and in our training. Occupational safety is an issue on which we can never compromise. In the last 3 years we have had no occupational accidents other than 4 minor injuries that did not require medical leave; but when it comes to occupational accidents, even one minor injury is a big number for us. We continue to improve ourselves to bring this number down to zero. When we asked our employees how we are doing in terms of occupational safety, 84.21% responded positively and 5.26% negatively. Occupational safety is an issue on which we must work together with our clients. They need to be as careful as we are, so we constantly work together with our clients to improve both ourselves and them. Even during busy periods with overtime, we make sure our employees can take a weekly day off so that they can rest physically.
From 1986 to 1990 it was an organization providing design services only; since 1990 it has continued its commercial activity as a limited company providing design, contracting, consultancy and maintenance services.
Elektromekanik İş Merkezi
626. Sok. No:28B, Alaaddinbey
Nilüfer / Bursa, Türkiye
Tel: +90 224 441 64 04
Fax: +90 224 256 56 02
iletim@iletimmuhendislik.com.tr