Executive Reports
Investing in our People
- Chairman’s Statement
- Chief Executive’s Review
- Operating Safely
- Operating Performance
- Investing for Growth
- Investing in our People
- Our Responsibility for the Environment
- Our Responsibility to Society
As the electricity system operator, we are responsible for the operation of the high-voltage electricity transmission system across Great Britain. This predominantly takes place from our control centres in Berkshire.
- Employee opinion survey
- Employee engagement
- Recruitment and training
- Employee health
- Business ethics
- Valuing people through inclusion
Employee opinion survey
In July 2004, we carried out our first Group-wide employee opinion survey since the creation of National Grid Transco in 2002. Over 12,000 of our employees responded, giving encouraging feedback on our approaches to safety, environmental management, business ethics and the fair treatment of employees. This is a high response rate for a survey of this kind. Employees also identified areas for improvement, including internal communication, ensuring that our strategy and new ways of working are clearly explained, and recognising the need to reinforce our values through the continued development of leadership skills.
Employee engagement
We know from the employee opinion survey that our people are proud to work for us, are personally motivated to make the Company successful and are willing to put in increased efforts to achieve success. However, we do need to improve communications and manage change better.
We are creating opportunities to involve employees to a greater degree and the employee opinion survey, focus groups and project-specific steering groups have enabled to us to promote two-way feedback.
Recruitment and training
We continue to invest in the recruitment and training of skilled staff for the future.
Our Developing Business Leaders programme for Group-wide senior management continues to build on the strong partnerships with the Centre for High Performance Development and Wharton and Insead Business Schools.
Our recruitment schemes for apprentices, graduates and university placement students in the UK, and intern programme in the US have been successful and continue to go from strength to strength in terms of the quality of development and robustness of the programmes. The need to grow our talent from within and to address the decline in students graduating from technical engineering subjects remain essential areas of focus for the future success of our business.
Employee health
No business can be competitive and wholly productive without a healthy workforce. We are committed to eliminating work-related ill-health among our employees by identifying occupational risks and managing them, offering advice, and encouraging healthy living. During 2004/05, around 2.4% of available workdays in the UK and 3.5% in the US were lost due to sickness absence. This compared with 2.4% as an average for the UK energy/water sector. No similar comparison is available for the US.
Our employee opinion survey looked to identify any underlying causes of work-related stress. Subsequent independent expert analysis of the results has shown that we compare well with other organisations.
Business ethics
We want to operate to the highest ethical standards.
Standards of Conduct have been in place for more than a decade in the US and, in April 2004, we communicated our Code of Business Conduct to all UK employees. We operate 24-hour ethics helplines where inappropriate conduct can be reported. Reported breaches are thoroughly and promptly investigated and, where appropriate, acted on, with any necessary improvements implemented.
The employee opinion survey confirmed that the majority of staff believe we are an ethical organisation, are aware of the codes, and feel comfortable that reported issues will be properly and thoroughly investigated.
Valuing people through inclusion
We seek to encourage diversity through open, honest and mutually respectful communication and behaviour. We are committed to developing and operating our business in a way that is designed to lead to a more diverse and inclusive culture.
In January, we launched a Group-wide Inclusion and Diversity Vision and sent an information pack to every employee. We have established steering groups to develop and execute action plans and we will establish a set of measures against which to track our progress.
Inclusion and Diversity Vision
We will strive to develop and operate our business in a way that results in a more inclusive and diverse culture. This will enable us to attract and retain the best people, improve our effectiveness, deliver superior performance and enhance the success of the Company.
We will ensure all employees, regardless of race, gender, nationality, age, disability, sexual orientation, religion and background, have the opportunity to develop to their full potential. We will prevent artificial or prejudicial barriers from getting in the way of their development.
- We believe that fostering diversity is everyone's responsibility.
- We believe that open, honest and respectful communication is the cornerstone of good business.
- We believe that a positive approach to Inclusion and Diversity is not a 'nice to have' but is fundamentally the right thing to do for us as a business.