Operating & Financial Review
People – building high performance
Employee engagement
Amlin is committed to seeking the views of its employees and therefore a second Employee Attitude Survey was carried out by MORI in July 2006. In addition to obtaining valuable feedback on Amlin’s progress towards being “the place to work”, we were able benchmark performance against the results or our 2004 MORI survey.
72% of staff participated in the 2006 survey which is well above the private sector average of 57%, and provides a strong statistical reliability to the results. The survey collected staff views on seven key areas:
- Job satisfaction;
- Understanding objectives and contribution;
- Leadership;
- Management;
- Reward and recognition;
- Training and development; and
- Culture, values and communication.
MORI also provide normative data that enables Amlin to compare its results with other organisations, both within the financial services sector and more generally. The normative data is expressed as follows:
- MORI Norm: The average score of all 170 organisations surveyed by MORI in the past five years;and
- Top 10 Norm: The average score of the 10 highest scoring responses to any particular question, from all organisations surveyed by MORI in the past five years.
The survey recorded significant improvements in staff responses in all of the categories, both against the very positive results collected in 2004 and against the MORI norm groups. In many cases the Amlin result scored within the MORI top 10 norm and we are delighted that Amlin scored the highest score for overall job satisfaction (81%) of any organisation surveyed by MORI in the last five years.
Benchmarking for Job Satisfaction, Understanding Objectives and Leadership
Following a presentation to a group of senior managers in October 2006, Martin Palimeris, Research Consultant for Ipsos MORI commented:
“These results are extremely encouraging to see and are testament to Amlin’s efforts in moving towards its goal as an employer of choice. Impressive step changes have been achieved since the previous 2004 survey and many scores are at best practice level. Amlin is performing very well across some key elements of employee engagement. The challenge now for the company will be to maintain the high standards that have been achieved and to focus on attaining further improvements, based on the knowledge we have gained from this and the 2004 surveys.”
Moving forward, the results will be discussed with staff in local work areas to identify local level actions and to focus on areas for further improvement.
The Company’s Employee Consultation Forum (ECF), which meets on a quarterly basis, also provides a valuable opportunity for staff to feedback views to management. The ECF represents all employees and encourages the active participation in the affairs of the Company by providing a forum where new ideas, policy changes and business matters can be discussed freely and proactively. The ECF was established in 2004 and during the last two years has been actively involved in discussions on the following subjects:
- Business strategy;
- Benefits;
- Training and development;
- Staff communication; and
- Marketing.
Culture and values
The biggest development initiative carried out during 2006 has been the roll out of our core values. Earlier in 2006, the management team finalised its workon core values which captured its beliefs in the underlying values that will contribute to sustainingthe success of the Group. These have now been incorporated into our Code of Conduct and,in due course, will be incorporated into some of our business processes such as recruitment, induction and performance management.
The Company, together with Blessing White, a consultancy specialising in the development of corporate values, designed a series of one-day workshops for all staff. This programme is designed to help communicate Amlin’s core values across the business while providing each employee with an opportunity to consider how he or she can apply them day to day in the performance of his or her role. As at 31 December, 32% of staff had attended one of these workshops and it is intended that the remainder of staff will attend one in the first half of 2007.
Feedback from the MORI survey and from those workshops held to date has confirmed a strong correlation between Amlin’s core values and those of employees.
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