Employment and skills

More young people employed

Our employees remain an important stakeholder group and we continued to improve our internal communications through use of the intranet, podcasts, conference calls, employee forums and staff briefing meetings.

The remit of our employee working groups has been extended from safety to embrace environmental, social and community affairs. At site level we have sustainability reps to take responsibility for all these elements. They share best practice through regional cross-business line sustainability matters  working groups, chaired by a divisional managing director, and representatives from the regional groups meet once a year with the executive board. Training of site-based reps is ongoing – all attended two individual training days in 2015 with a third day to follow this year.

The number of people employed at January 1, 2016 was 3,481. The age profile of our workforce changed slightly over the year as younger people were recruited. We recognise that workplace diversity is a growing area of interest and importance. You can see a breakdown of our employees by gender and age below.

We continued to develop our talent pool and bring younger people into the business through our LEAD apprentice and craft apprentice programmes. We continued with our talent management and succession planning programmes and introduced a leadership development programme for senior managers called Leading Edge. We also continued to invest in workplace training and competency focused on health, safety and environment. Employee training records and requirements are tracked in our Learning Management System (LMS).

We continue to provide a range of benefits to support employees and their families. EmployeeCare is a round-the-clock telephone counselling service providing individual and confidential support on a broad range of work-related and personal issues, from financial management and relationships to health, drugs and bereavement. Mysafeworkplace is a confidential service for employees to report anything from workplace harassment to fraud.

TeamBenefits, which was launched during the year, gives employees and their families access to a range of exclusive discounts from High Street stores and eating out, to mobile phones, insurance and travel. It includes a cycle to work scheme which allows employees to benefit from savings on a new bike used mainly for commuting.