“Our most important stakeholder is our
people – our people are our
brand and our
Corporate Responsibility Programme
reinforces this.”
Our most important stakeholder
Our people are our most important value driver. Our core people principles reflect this, as can be seen by our explicit commitment to:
- Compliance with relevant legislation and regulation, particularly
relating to:
- Employment practices (for example anti-discrimination rules)
- Cessation of employment
- Professional development and training
- Health and safety and the general well-being of our people
- Maintaining high levels of employee satisfaction through appropriate performance recognition which goes beyond remuneration
- Non-discriminatory employment practices
- Fostering a fair and positive working environment and culture
- Effective, two-way internal communications and consultation with our people on issues of relevance and concern
- Fairness in the management of grievances and the resolution of disputes
- Protecting our people from all forms of intimidation and harassment
- Support and guidance for ‘whistle-blowers’
- Fair and non-discriminatory compensation policies
- Encouraging and supporting professional and personal development
- Enhancing our people’s well-being and promoting a healthy work/life balance
These core principles provided the basis for the questions in our Global Employee Survey, on which we report later in this section.
We operate a number of schemes designed to encourage our people at all levels to share in the Group’s success: performance-related remuneration, long-term share-based incentive schemes, a performance share plan (based on three-years’ return on equity), a share option scheme, an assisted share purchase scheme, a co-investment scheme and a traditional share purchase scheme.