Our business is only as strong as our people and their collective commitment to achieving our goals. That’s why we have worked hard to strengthen our employee engagement in the past year, attempting to improve levels of motivation, pride and dedication in all areas.
This work is paying off, evidenced by our overall engagement score of 76% in this year’s independently run employee opinion survey. This represents a 13% increase on last year’s result, and is 6% higher than our target for this year. The robustness of this measure is proven by the excellent return rate – 93% of our people completed the survey.
A strong focus remains on development, leadership and recruitment. Our work in this area has centred on ensuring we have the flexible, skilled and efficient workforce necessary to deliver excellent services to our stakeholders. Equally, we have worked to ensure that our people have access to the best learning and development opportunities so that they can gain the skills necessary to take on new roles.
Keeping employees safe at work is one of our key aims. In the past year, we have consolidated our Health and Safety (H&S) programme with new appointments and the creation of a strong, central H&S team to ensure good practice is driven across all areas of our business.
Our company is committed to fulfilling our obligations in accordance with the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 and best practice. As an equal opportunities employer, we give equal consideration to applicants with disabilities in our employment criteria and will modify equipment and working practices wherever it is safe and practical to do so. Evidence of this is reflected in our retention of the ‘double tick’ positive disabled people award.