Obligatory published information

Period 2023-2030

Preamble

FMI promotes equality of working conditions for males and females and with this “Strategy of equal opportunities for males and females” it helps maintain equal working conditions for males and females in line with the Labour Code, other legal regulations, in-house and organizational norms of the Forest Management Institute Brandýs nad Labem (further on FMI) and basic rules of decency.

The Institute supports desirable standards of behaviour of state employees, thus creating foundations for building and keeping the trust of the public. The FMI management contributes to the application of these principles and hence to equal work performance of employees by creating an open work environment and by maintaining equal approach to employees.

Basic concepts

Gender – cultural characteristics and models assigned to biological male and female genders. It refers to social differences between females and males. These roles change in time and significantly differ according to culture of the nation and historical stage of the society’s development. Thus, they do not represent a natural, given difference between the males and females but rather a temporary developmental stage of social relations.

Gender equality/Equality of males and females – the concept is to claim that all human beings are free to develop their personal capabilities without limitations determined by gender stereotypes and gender roles. Different behaviour, aspirations and needs of males and females should be considered equal and resulting from the autonomous choice of each individual.

Identified areas – areas in which a standard occurrence is recorded of the increased risk of discrimination in the equality of males and females.

Maternal leave and parental leave – periods before and after the child birth. Maternity leave begins 6–8 weeks before the anticipated date of child birth and lasts for 28 weeks, in case of multiple birth 37 weeks. As a standard, maternal leave is followed by parental leave lasting up to child’s three years of age, with a possibility to draw parental allowance at an amount and dispatch in the standard increased/accelerated or decreased/prolonged mode of drawing the contributions, max. up to 4 years of child’s age.

Negative phenomena in the workplace – manners in a workplace that would contradict the values and principles of human dignity, freedom, justice, equality, law, legality and impartiality. This namely includes bullying, undesirable pressure (including mocking), sexual  harassment, discrimination or corrupt practices.

Flexible working hours – the regime of working hours in which the employee chooses the start (or end) of his/her working hours himself/herself within time periods determined by the employer.

Sexual harassing – behaviour of a sexual nature that can be both verbal and non-verbal, which the person affected by this behaviour considers undesirable. It violates dignity, and lowers the status and psychological well-being of person(s) to whom such a behaviour is directed.

Balancing work with the private and family life (work-life balance) – the area of balancing (harmonization) with endeavour to draw attention to the necessity to dedicate oneself not only to work but also to family and private personal life.

Equality strategy – document “Strategy of equal opportunities for males and females in the period from 2021-2030”, approved by the resolution of Czech Government No. 269 of 8 March 2021.

Practical focus in enforcing principles of gender equality

The “Strategy of equal opportunities for males and females” (further on “Strategy”) identifies areas that were worked out into individual measures for the following years. The measures were chosen to maintain the equality of rights for males and females in the Forest Management Institute following their work positions, work tasks and FMI culture, and to minimize possible risks of gender inequality. The respective areas are continually evaluated at the top management level of FMI, with further measures being introduced in case that shortcomings are recorded.

Identified areas:

1. Human resources and work conditions

In 2012–2014, an internal review and updating of personnel activities was made based on Project no. CZ.1.04/4.1.00/58.00011 “Creation and implementation of human resource management in the corporation” realized in 2011. By this the area of human resources became an important part of the work of managers who try to improve the individual areas continually together with the personnel and payroll department and FMI management so that needs of employees can be satisfied and rules of work in FMI met. In the respective areas, FMI tries to fulfil needs arising on the labour market and respond to them adequately.

2. Balancing work with private and family life

FMI is aware of the natural difference between males and females and understands their work needs that may differ too. Each employee has an irreplaceable value for the Institute, and perfect results can be achieved only together. FMI supports individual approach to the needs of employees so that they can combine job and private life at the best.

For these purposes, FMI offers part-time jobs, flexible working hours, helpfulness in planning holidays and other pro-family benefits. An important part of our good relations is alignment  between operational needs of the Institute and needs of our employees.

3. Management and decision-making

Balanced representation of males and females at decision-making positions is a precondition for the fair distribution of powers, work load and social satisfaction. Our goal is to ensure work conditions combining efficient work performance in required quality with respecting individuality of each employee, his/her personal values and goals.

Career opportunities are given by the number of vacant managerial positions. In 2022, fluctuation in FMI was 8.6 %.

Predominance of male employees follows out from the focus of our organization, with a high share of work in the field. This is why the number of males on managerial posts is high, too.  In administration and support departments, managerial posts are represented also by females.

The fact follows out also from the ratio of job applicants with the number of men applying for employment in our organization as forest experts and foresters being higher over a long term than that of women.

FMI considers the ever increasing numbers of female managers and increasing interest of female applicants for job in general to be the result of targeted and motivating advertising.

4. Dignity and integrity of males and females during work performance

With its history and traditions dating back to 1935, Forest Management Institute has been an organization at high technical level, the mission of which is to serve development of forestry. To be able to achieve the goal, FMI puts a great emphasis on ethical behaviour, moral and decency in interpersonal relationships in the workplace. The basic document which governs behaviour and acting of FMI employees is the “Code of FMI ethics”. This directive is regularly reviewed in line with the “Directive governing acts” where the developer of in-house and organizational norm is obliged to check validity and effectiveness 1x in 2 calendar years at least. Any negative elements in the workplace (sexual harassing, bullying or unethical conduct) are not tolerated in FMI. Following the law on the protection of whistleblowers and in line with the directive “FMI Internal system of notification”, each employee is given a possibility to report safely his/her suspicion of any incident that is not in accordance with the “Code of FMI ethics” and FMI moral values. FMI maintains and supports the values through open communication as well as by means of collaboration within individual departments and between them. This approach allows to build trust between employees while maintaining the right to privacy.

The risk of non-compliance with the equality of males and females is also included in the FMI Catalogue of risks.