People
Our people are our key asset
Attracting the best people, motivating them to excel, retaining them and ensuring that they progress in their careers are fundamental to the sustainability of our business.
At the year-end, Man had a total of 1,765 permanent employees. Approximately 720 are based in London and 620 in Pfäffikon, Switzerland. The remainder are located around the world in regional operating centres, supporting our investment managers and servicing investors and distributors. We have a strong culture of moving people between regions to achieve broad sharing of ideas, processes and relationships. We actively promote internal mobility between our business areas to ensure that our people have the broadest sense of our whole business.
Regrettably, we had to reduce our permanent headcount by 15% in the latter part of the 2008/9 financial year to reflect reductions in funds under management. Nevertheless, our commitment to attracting, retaining and developing the best people remains as strong as ever.
Culture
This extract from our recruitment literature demonstrates how we describe Man's culture.
'Man has a distinctive and deeply entrenched culture. We are strongly commercial, but the dominant traits are analysis and thought, rather than trading. People at Man tend to be understated, informal, personable and collegiate. They operate in a demanding work environment full of highly capable colleagues and are intensively competitive for the Company.
'Man people are clever and quick but not overpowering, and feel comfortable standing out from the herd. Our regular employee research indicates very high levels of pride in working for the Company, having the freedom to do the job well, and having management who listen to our ideas.
'This congenial and thoughtful culture in no way means that Man is not a ferociously ambitious business. Our ambition is to strengthen and grow our position as one of the world's leading alternative investment managers.'
Corporate and social responsibility
Man's role as a major public company operating in the hedge fund world means that we put particular stress on good human resource management, corporate responsibility, legal support, compliance and investor relations. These aspects of the way we do business are important to our employees. Our approach to corporate and social responsibility is described in more detail, and details of our charitable activities are can be found here.
Remuneration policy
Our people directly influence our success as a business and the performance we achieve for our product investors and corporate shareholders. This contribution is recognised in their advancement within the Group and in their remuneration. Our remuneration is heavily performance based and reflects individual, business unit and Group performance. The Group's share programmes, which are an important part of total remuneration packages, ensure that our people think and act as long-term shareholders in the Company. Find out more...
Key person risk
Man's focus on quantitative, systematic investment styles make it very different from the 'star cultures' which prevail among many of our hedge fund peers. AHL, for example, has been operating successfully for over 20 years and is managed by a third generation management team. Nevertheless, we are conscious of the risk that key individuals may leave the business, with a loss of knowledge and expertise. To mitigate this, we operate merit based performance management and advancement systems, which give clarity and focus to our people's career prospects. We have a series of training programmes in place to identify and develop future leaders from within the business, and our flat management structure gives individuals opportunities to contribute and broaden their involvement. To enable our people to understand their career potential, we have an active succession planning process in place at all levels in the organisation.
Employee engagement and support
Man Group's employment policy sets the framework for achieving the highest levels of performance by offering the provision of support, assistance and understanding to all our people.
Employees receive regular emails directly from senior management as well as e-bulletins, monthly business reports and business magazines via the Intranet.
We engage with our people through surveys which are transparently analysed and reported. Our UK and US employees are encouraged to invest in the business in which they work through a share-based savings incentive scheme.
Man's culture is grounded in mutual respect and inclusion irrespective of age, disability, gender, race, religion, sexual orientation or educational background. We offer tangible support to our people, which includes providing rehabilitation support for any employee who may have become disabled during their employment with us.
