| Annual Report > Home > Business review | Download pdf | Print page | Contact us | Return to BTplc.com |
|
|
Our brand helps to shape our relationships with all our stakeholders, including shareholders, customers, suppliers and employees. It is vital that they all have a clear understanding of what BT stands for, and that all their interactions with us contribute to a consistently positive image of BT. As a vital asset, the BT brand needs to be developed, protected and managed with the same rigour that we bring to other assets, both tangible and intangible. And as the world and the markets in which we operate change, so our brand needs to reflect this, becoming more confident, dynamic and forward looking. Towards the end of the 2006 financial year, we completed a thorough review of our brand, as a result of which we developed a new vision and mission. Our vision for BT is to be dedicated to helping customers thrive in a changing world. Our mission is to be the leader in delivering converged networked services. By ensuring that the services we offer customers are consistently focused on meeting their needs, straightforward and easy to use, we will help those customers succeed in their business and personal lives. The review concluded that the BT brand values remained fit for purpose. Consequently, they are unchanged:
Our aim is to create a team of high-performing, engaged and motivated people who can make a difference for customers, shareholders, the company and themselves. Only by living our values will we deliver our strategy, keep our promises to our customers, seize new opportunities in new markets and maximise the return from our traditional business.
Employees are kept informed about our business through a wide range of communications channels, including our online news service, bi-monthly newspaper, regular e-mail bulletins and senior management webchats and webcast briefings. We have a record of stable industrial relations and enjoy generally constructive relationships with recognised unions in the UK and works councils elsewhere in Europe. In the UK, we recognise two main trade unions – the Communication Workers Union and Connect. We hold regular meetings between management, employee trade union representatives and other groups of employees in order to ensure that their views are taken into account in any decisions affecting employees’ interests. We also operate a pan-European works council (the BTECC). Our Chief Executive and other senior executives have regular meetings with the BTECC and other employee representatives.
In the 2006 financial year, £22 million was allocated to provide free shares to employees under the ESIP. Employees outside the UK receive a cash payment equivalent to the value of the shares. This allocation of profits was linked to the achievement of corporate performance measures determined by the Board. In addition, employees can buy shares at a discount under our savings-related share option plan. More than 98% of eligible employees participate in one or more of these plans.
In the 2006 financial year, we ran major initiatives on lifestyle change focusing on exercise, diet and giving up smoking.
Our successful company-wide re-accreditation to Investors in People in February 2005, first achieved in 1998, demonstrates our continuing commitment to the effective alignment of our communications, training and development with our business strategy. We have created a learning governance model to ensure our learning and development objectives and practice align with the key strategic objectives of the business. Senior representatives from all parts of BT sit on the Learning Executive Council and senior learning and development representatives form the Learning Council. Both bodies provide strategic and operational guidance for the whole of BT to ensure that all learning and development activity is co-ordinated across all lines of business. In March 2006, we upgraded BT Academy, our web-based corporate learning portal, to a new platform and renamed it Route2Learn (R2L). R2L – a group-wide system – is evidence of our continuing investment in lifelong learning and education for all BT people. Providing all BT employees with an extensive range of learning programmes and facilities, it is one of the largest corporate learning management systems in Europe. In the 2006 financial year, the BT Academy Learning System delivered over 250,000 online and nearly 38,000 instructor-led course completions.
During the 2006 financial year, in the UK more than 6,600 (2005 – 3,903) people joined BT, natural attrition was running at 3% (2005 – 2.6%) and 2,169 (2005 – 2,685) people left BT under our voluntary paid leaver package. We are committed to helping our people optimise their work/life balance. At the end of March 2006, for example, around 11,000 people were working from home. We continue to create a working environment that actively supports all our employees – regardless of gender, race, sexual orientation, religion/beliefs, disability or age.
In the 2006 financial year, we invested £727 million in research and development (R&D) to support our drive for innovation. This investment comprised capitalised software development costs of £401 million and R&D operating costs of £326 million. This compares with £522 million in the 2005 financial year, which comprised £265 million of capitalised software development costs and £257 million of R&D operating costs. In addition, the 2006 financial year includes an amortisation charge of £160 million (2005 – £95 million) in respect of capitalised software development costs. This increase in R&D underpins our increased focus on developing innovative products and services for a converged, networked world. We continue to focus our innovation work on key areas which support our business and technology strategies, filing patent applications for 141 new inventions in the 2006 financial year and maintaining a total worldwide portfolio of 7,700 patents and applications. We have successfully launched eight innovative, independent start-up companies through the corporate venturing partnership unit New Venture Partners, in which we are a limited partner. These start-ups generate value by launching innovative solutions as high-technology businesses in the global marketplace.
Over the past year, we continued to enhance our approach to systems development through our One IT programme, which aims to deliver year-on-year reductions in base costs. Our objective is to transform the various IT units throughout BT into a single team, rigorously focused on customer requirements. Our IT strategy is about speed of response and the focusing of resources in selected areas – at the end of the 2006 financial year, there were fewer IT systems running in BT than at the beginning of the year. At its heart is the radical rationalisation of our systems portfolio, strict adherence to 90-day delivery cycles and an intense focus on improving the customer experience.
The majority of these UK properties are owned by – and leased back from – the Telereal Group, which is part of the William Pears Group. These properties mainly house exchange equipment and are needed as part of our continuing activities. Other, general purpose, properties consist chiefly of offices, depots and computer centres. We anticipate that our changing working patterns will continue to reduce property costs.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
| © BT Group plc 2005 | Privacy policy |