We want to be the best at attracting and retaining a talented and diverse workforce who are motivated and able to deliver for our customers.
Highlight
- 0.98 total recordable injury frequency rate per 200,000 hours worked (2016: 0.98)
Building skills for the future
We are creating a workforce fit for the future by investing in our people’s development and providing opportunities that attract a diverse array of talent.
In 2017:
- 15,000 engineers, technicians and apprentices enhanced their skills, supported with an investment of more than £10 million in training;
- 5,800 employees seized the opportunity to learn new skills through volunteering, generating 57,300 volunteering hours; and
- 180 young people developed workplace skills on our graduate programmes. We are known for our world-class engineering apprenticeships.
We are building on this success by expanding our customer service apprenticeships and providing new ones in leadership, management and digital amongst other areas during 2018.#
My main highlight is not only the professional development you get but the personal growth that happens day-to-day.- Mal Prasad, HR Graduate
We are using our expertise to nurture the skills that our society needs. Since 2010, we have reached nearly 562,000 young people with our curriculum-based lesson plans, helping to improve skills in the key areas of science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM). Over the past four years, we have also helped 1,160 young, unemployed people to secure workplace skills through the Movement to Work scheme. Around 60% of scheme participants went on to secure permanent employment or further training. We will provide a further 300 places in 2018.
Embracing workforce diversity
Reflecting the diversity of our customers and communities in our workforce is vital if we are to attract and retain the talent to satisfy our customers. We are working hard to become a more diverse and inclusive workplace and in 2017, we launched a new Disability and Wellbeing Employee Network to complement our other employee networks. Business in the Community (BITC) have recognised our efforts in this area, awarding us a Bronze award for our commitment to gender and race inclusion.
Respecting our people
Our success depends on our people. That is why we want our people to stay safe and why we respect and respond to their needs. We have robust processes in place to uphold equal pay and reward our people fairly, which includes paying at least the Living Wage in the UK and taking action to close the gender pay gap. We also conduct an employee engagement survey to understand how our people feel, so that we can improve our result.