People
Rolls-Royce is fortunate to have extremely talented and dedicated employees. In the UK, the average length of service is approaching 20 years. This is important in an industry where development and production programmes may have lives of more than 50 years and in which the customer relationship with an individual product may be 25 years or more.

We continue to invest in attracting and retaining the people who will ensure the success of the company. Last year we recruited 166 graduate trainees and 144 modern apprentices and there is a comprehensive training structure that allows people to continue to develop skills and capabilities throughout their careers.

Last year, the company invested £27 million in training. In parallel with management programmes, we are building a comprehensive framework for professional development. We currently have 440 employees studying under our Management Development Curriculum, established together with the Open University. We continued to support our customers by providing them with over 3,000 person days of training during last year. We completed construction of new Learning and Development Centres in both the UK and the US.

Within the community the company focuses its efforts in the areas of science and education. We are involved in a range of activities across the education sector including the Government's Education Action Zones. We provide support to specialist language and technology centres. As part of the National Skills Festival we participated in The Skills Show 2000 at the National Exhibition Centre and we played a major part in the 'Careers in Aerospace' initiative at the Farnborough International Airshow.

We create and sponsor University Technology Centres (UTCs) as centres of excellence in research. Working with these universities is an efficient way to progress our own research and development requirements. They also provide the opportunity to identify top quality recruits. There are 19 of these UTCs in the UK located close to our major sites. In addition, we fund a further 60 research projects across North America and Europe.

The company now has 43,700 people in 48 countries with 36 per cent of our employees located outside the UK.

The growing international nature of the company has also had the impact of increasing the number of nationalities employed by Rolls-Royce. This will become one of the strengths of the organisation as we benefit from diverse experience and adopt practices that make us more effective.