Our people
During 2010 we continued our rigorous focus on our Top Five Priorities – growing market share, growing aftersales, improving margins, controlling working capital and being selective with our capital expenditure. This has meant a continued focus on our cost base. Despite this, our customer and employee satisfaction and engagement scores remain at high levels and our clearly defined people strategy continues to have a positive impact.
Our people strategy has the ultimate goal of having ‘Engaged People in Winning Teams’. We believe that in our business it is only when our people are fully engaged that we will see the fruition of our business strategy. After all, it is only when our employees really want to give the best customer service that we will become the most customer-centric automotive retail company in the world.
We continue to believe that this goal will be achieved through four areas of priority:
The Right People – by becoming a magnet for talented people who live our values and enjoy working in winning teams delivering outstanding results;
The Right Learning – by equipping our people to excel today and providing exciting development opportunities for the future, aligned to our business strategy;
The Right Reward – by recognising, celebrating and rewarding the contribution our people and teams make to delivering our challenging business ambition;
The Right Culture – by creating a great place to work, where people choose to make a real difference and deliver the ultimate customer experience for our brand partners.
Our employee base is diverse and reflects the different cultures and markets within which we operate. This diversity creates a range of perspectives that allow us to constantly challenge and improve the way we do things as we work towards our goal of putting the customer at the centre of our business.
Talent and performance management
Talent planning and performance management sit at the heart of our people strategy as we look to ensure we have the right people in every role. Whilst our processes are continuous, there is a more detailed review and planning session conducted within each of our markets and at head office at least once a year. 2010 was the fourth year for this process. The processes are designed to ensure that we constantly upgrade our talent and look to create the right development opportunities for all our people.
Arising out of the talent planning process we have made several key people decisions, including secondments, promotions, lateral development moves, mentoring, and in many cases enhanced the development plans of the individual on-the-job. As a global business we are also able to provide international opportunities to our people and this allows us to create even more stimulating career paths and personal growth for many of our talented people. In 2010 we have made changes within the Group Executive Committee and each of these changes was a consequence of this talent planning process.
Our analysis continues to validate our belief that talented people who are fully engaged and aligned with our Company’s leadership skills and values yield higher levels of customer satisfaction and profit.
In the future, we will continue to focus our efforts on ensuring that each of our employees has a meaningful growth plan that takes into account their strengths, development areas, aspirations as well as the needs of the business. We recognise that each individual has their own unique growth style and requirements and that the nourishment of this growth is core to the growth of the individual and, through that, the growth of the Company.
Ethical behaviour
The Group’s business ethics policy defines the core ethical behaviours expected of all employees. In particular, the Group:
- Has zero tolerance of bribes or facilitation payments;
- Has a zero tolerance of fraud or theft;
- Has a strict limit to the value of corporate hospitality given or received, including the provision or receipt of gifts;
- Does not make political donations or incur political expenditure;
- Seeks to avoid actual or perceived conflicts of interest;
- Prohibits the misuse of information;
- Conducts appropriate due diligence in the selection of our joint venture and other partners.
Employee communications
During 2010, more than ever before, we have regularly communicated with our employees to ensure they were always well informed of the forces acting on us as a Company, the state of the automotive industry and the actions we were taking to address these. Through the various forums and channels of communication we were able to create much higher levels of involvement with our people on business priorities. This was achieved in several ways, including Group Chief Executive roadshows, monthly employee meetings, a monthly Group-wide newsletter, weekly customer letters, and through cascading messages through line managers.
Employee survey
Our annual Heartbeat survey is an important part of our overall employee engagement programme. We encourage our line managers to use the results of the survey to create action plans that will help their teams increase levels of engagement. We were delighted that well over 90% of our entire Group’s population participated in the third year of Heartbeat in 2010. We have seen an increase in the levels of engagement in our people and going forward we intend to continue this process.
The Heartbeat survey is conducted for us by the Gallup organisation, which is the world’s leading provider of employee surveys. This allows us to benchmark our progress against other world class companies, as well as providing us with deep insights at a team level into the areas we need to work on to further increase engagement.
Employee reward
We recognise that it is our culture, our values, and the opportunities we provide our people that attract talented individuals to us. However, we also recognise the need to have well benchmarked, stretching yet stimulating reward opportunities for everyone. Our management incentive programmes have elements relating to customer satisfaction in addition to financial measures. As we have reported in the Director’s report on remuneration, this year we have undertaken a thorough review of our Group remuneration strategy to ensure that we continue to align rewards with the specific needs of our business. In addition we have several local and Group-wide schemes aimed at recognising people for high levels of performance and for demonstrating our values.
Employee safety
The safety of our people is of paramount importance to us. Many of our people handle hazardous substances and work with heavy machinery. We report and monitor accidents and lost time incidents to ensure that the safety of our staff and customers remains at the top of our agenda. We regularly review our policies and procedures for our people and have appropriate training programmes in place.
The 2010 results are set out below. There is no specific trend or consistency of accidents that has occurred, either in a given location or across the Group.
| Location | % | Accident no. |
|---|---|---|
| Australasia | 5 | 8 |
| Europe | 6 | 9 |
| North Asia | 19 | 29 |
| South Asia | 3 | 5 |
| UK | 54 | 80 |
| Russia and Emerging Markets | 13 | 19 |
| Total | 100 | 150 |
In our business we seek to eliminate discriminatory practices and to promote the support of fundamental human rights in all of our operations.
We support our brand partners in seeking to enforce positive labour practices including the eradication of child labour and a safe working environment. We support freedom of association and, as applicable, collective bargaining arrangements.
Driven by our values
We believe it is the enthusiasm and understanding of our people that will shape and empower Inchcape’s CR culture.
We combine the local knowledge, enthusiasm and expertise of our employees worldwide with our clearly defined values – Respect for each other, Winning together, Treating every £ as our own, Integrity without compromise, Pioneering new ideas, Passionate about customers, Caring for our environment – standards and policies to enable us to contribute responsibly and sustainably to society.
For more information please visit our website www.inchcape.com/about_us/values
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