Dialogue with Employees

Opportunities for employees to provide feedback

Our overall internal communications strategy is to encourage dialogue, discussion and debate in the organisation through a range of channels, which are tailored to meet the different needs of our audiences.

We aim to provide an efficient and integrated communication experience for all employees – whether online, face-to-face or in print – and to provide clear and concise messaging so that everyone understands the business objectives and the part they play in delivering these.

Employee feedback plays a vital role in developing employee engagement. Through our bi-annual employee surveys and ad-hoc pulse surveys for specific business areas, we improve our understanding of our employees’ views and opinions and identify actions to provide further support to them in the delivery of our business performance. In autumn 2011, we carried out a full employee survey, which had a response rate of 75%. Overall, we have seen a decline in the 2011 results compared to our performance in 2009. Scores have remained the same in five categories, including Engagement and Empowerment, but declined in a further five categories, including Leadership, Line Management, and Training and Development, although we have seen a marked improvement in Customer Focus. The weakest result was 35% in Change, although we were pleased to see that the strongest result, at 71%, was in Safety and Efficient Working, demonstrating how our continued focus on safe and healthy working practices is having an effect.

The business has undertaken significant change in the past two years since our previous survey was carried out, which may have impacted on the results. But we need to take action in some key areas if we are to successfully build a high performing organisation. We have therefore appointed our Chief Commercial Officer as Board sponsor, working with the business to make recommendations on how we can improve in 2012.

Sharing information and providing employees with opportunities to talk to managers and our executive management team is also important. During 2011, we continued our successful Quarterly Business Updates, where our executive management team visits sites across the business to present current business issues and performance and discuss concerns with employees. We also continue to hold regular ‘Let’s Talk’ feedback sessions to provide employees with an opportunity to meet with a senior manager and discuss a specific business issue. In addition, managers are provided with monthly team briefing information to discuss with their teams.

Our locally-organised site level meetings enable site managers to understand and take action on local issues, and our regular Business Review Forums provide an opportunity to discuss business plans with a wider audience, including trade union representatives. These are attended by elected business representatives, union representatives, directors and senior HR managers, and help to reinforce the positive relationship between management, unions and our people.

In 2011, we also introduced a comments facility on the company intranet for employees to share their views and opinions on a whole host of news stories. This not only gives employees the chance to air their views and seek clarification on issues but also gives us a view of what our people find particularly engaging.