At 31 March 2007, BT employed 106,204
people worldwide – 101,701 in Europe, the Middle East and Africa; 3,688
in the Americas; and 815 in the Asia Pacific region. Our commitment to meeting
our customers’ needs means that every one of these employees has opportunities
to develop innovative solutions, generate new business, drive efficiencies and
experience personal growth.
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.
Motivating leaders
The quality of leadership in BT is
key to the successful delivery of our strategy for transformation and growth.
We are focused on ensuring that leaders at all levels understand what is expected
of them, have access to appropriate development opportunities and are able to
benchmark their performance against that of their peers.
We have,
for example, rigorously defined the capabilities we expect our leaders to exhibit
and have introduced a 360 degree feedback tool to help them measure their performance.
In the 2007 financial year, we conducted extensive research into the capabilities
of our leaders to support focused investment in their development.
Engaging and motivating
our people
Our annual employee attitude survey
was conducted most recently in February 2007 and attracted a 74% response rate
(over 78,000 responses). The survey generates around 5,000 feedback reports
for managers and their teams across the business, helping to promote effective
team working.
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.
Rewarding and recognising
achievement
We continued to provide our employees
with opportunities to acquire a stake in the company. Under the BT Employee
Share Investment Plan (ESIP), BT can provide free shares to employees and employees
can buy shares in BT from their pre-tax salaries.
In the
2007 financial year, £25 million was allocated to provide free shares
to employees under the ESIP. Employees outside the UK received the same award
of shares where practicable; otherwise, they will receive cash equivalent to
the value of the shares. This allocation of profits was linked to the achievement
of corporate performance measures determined by the Board. From the 2008 financial
year, the award of free shares under the ESIP will be replaced by free BT Total
Broadband Option 3 for all BT employees in the UK.
Employees
can also buy shares at a discount under our savings-related share option plan.
More
than 93% of eligible employees participate in one or more of these plans.
Learning now and
in the future
We believe that people, particularly
at the start of their careers, will increasingly want to work for companies
that commit to the long-term development of their employees.
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
learning and development representatives form the Learning Council, a body which
provides 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.
R2L
(Route2learn), our web-based, group-wide learning portal, 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
2007 financial year, R2L delivered over 310,000 online and 21,400 instructor-led
completed courses.
Embedding flexibility
and diversity
The changing nature of the markets
in which we operate, our focus on cost leadership and our investment in new
services all shape our permanent workforce.
In the
UK during the 2007 financial year, 6,391 people joined BT (2006: more than 6,600),
natural attrition was running at 4% (2006: 3%) and 2,151 people left BT under
our voluntary leaver packages (2006: 2,169).
The
ability to support flexibility and agile working practices is a key benefit
of many of the products and services we offer customers and is fundamental to
our own employment practices. Agile working is well established in our UK operations
– where around 10,400 employees work from home – and is increasingly
important in our global operations. In Budapest, for example, the introduction of flexible working arrangements eliminated the need to acquire additional office space.
We continue to work to create an inclusive working environment in which employees can thrive regardless of their race, sex, religion/beliefs, disability, marital or civil partnership status, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression or caring responsibilities.
Pensions
Most of our employees are members of the BT Pension Scheme (a defined benefit scheme) or the BT Retirement Plan (a money purchase scheme), both of which are controlled by independent trustees. The BT Pension Scheme was closed to new members on 31 March 2001. The majority of new employees are
eligible to join the BT Retirement Plan. (See
Pensions in the Financial review)
Health and safety
The health and safety of our people is of paramount importance and we continue to seek improvements by focusing on behavioural change. In the 2007 financial year, we concentrated our health promotion activities on mental well-being – impaired mental health is our single greatest cause of lost time and
productivity. Our sickness absence rate rose slightly in the year, in line with the CBI average – 2.43% of calendar days were lost – but is 22% lower than four years ago. During the 2007 financial year, we reduced our accident rate by 10% to 2.4 lost time incidents per million working hours at 31 March 2007.
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