We employ around 388,000 people in some 55 countries. As a service organisation, our success is linked to having an engaged workforce and giving people the opportunity to voice their opinion on the business, our processes and practices. Over the last five years, we have conducted a number of employee surveys to help us better understand how we can maximise employee commitment, retention and discretionary effort, in other words ‘engagement’. Our last ‘Your Voice’ survey, conducted in April 2007, gave over 150,000 people from 20 of our largest businesses (representing over 90% of total Group revenue) the opportunity to participate. The results were very encouraging and our response rate of 61% was slightly ahead of that seen in our 2005 survey. Employees have a clear line of sight with our mission and understand how they contribute to success. Managers feel the Group is making the right changes to be successful, has a clear sense of direction and is successfully focusing on both long-term strategies and short-term results.
Health and safety is at the heart of everything we do and the survey results underpin this, with the majority of our employees believing that we place a high priority on this area and around eight in ten employees feeling they are equipped to do their job safely and well.
Our next global ‘Your Voice’ survey is planned for early 2009 and will include additional countries to those which participated in the 2007 survey. We have set specific improvement targets as part of our CR metrics, to improve the employee participation rate to 63% (2007: 61%) and engagement rate to 65% (2007: 63%) in the 2009 ‘Your Voice’ survey. In the meantime several of our businesses have run an interim ‘Your Voice’ survey at a local level including the USA. Initial feedback from their survey shows a 66% participant response rate which represents an improvement on 2007 and an employee engagement score of 69% versus 67% in 2007.
Through our global employment brand, talent management and various learning and development programmes, helping our people develop their skills and fulfil their potential within the business has been an area of focus this year.
The development of leadership skills of senior managers is a key objective and during 2008 we launched a global learning and development programme called ‘Mapping for Value’, designed to embed our MAP operating framework deeper into the organisation.
The programme is a highly interactive way for our business leaders to equip themselves with the knowledge and tools to help them accelerate the development and delivery of their MAP plans. Over 400 of our senior managers (including our Executive Committee) have already attended ‘Mapping for Value’ and our plan is to broaden the roll-out to a further 5,000 managers across the Group.
We were delighted to be recognised in October 2008 by the prestigious UK Institute of Grocery Directors with the John Sainsbury award for Learning and Development, beating other high profile companies, for our new ‘One Compass Welcome’ induction programme recently launched within the UK business. The ‘One Compass Welcome’ has, to date, given over 10,000 new employees a great start in their new roles and a solid framework in which to develop their occupational health and safety and customer service skills.
We value the diversity of our people and strongly believe that a more diverse workforce is a more creative workforce, and one better able to adapt to change. We expect all of our employees to be treated with respect and dignity. Our equal opportunity policy is designed to ensure that both current and potential employees are offered the same opportunity to do a job regardless of sex, race, colour, religion, nationality, ethnic origin, age, sexual orientation, marital status or disability. The more our employees reflect the diversity of our clients and consumers, the better equipped we are to service their needs. We believe we have the right policies in place to meet or exceed legal requirements in this area and, as an example of our ongoing commitment, we have seen a 7% increase in the number of women appointed to leadership team positions in the last 12 months and women now hold 15% of global leadership team roles.
Our remuneration policy seeks to deliver improved performance throughout the business, balancing short-term success with the attainment of our longer-term business goals and shareholder return. We work hard to attract and retain people of proven ability, experience and skills. Under our pay and reward programme, in the year to 30 September 2008, the Group paid gross salary costs of £5,083 million for the continuing business. Within this figure, social security contributions, pensions and other employee costs amounted to £723 million, £49 million and £14 million respectively.
