Sustainability report 2009

A number of Group programmes in 2009 have aimed to unify our business. Our Zero Harm safety vision has captured the imagination of our people and been adopted throughout all our businesses. The philosophy behind Zero Harm has proved successful in engaging our employees.

The increased number of entries for our Chairman’s Graduate Prize for Innovation in 2009/2010, (61 in 2009, 15 in 2008) many of which focused on improving safety, may have been due to the successful engagement of our graduates with Zero Harm.

Conducting roadshows and deep dive safety briefings across the Group has increased face-to-face communication. The Safety, Health and Environment (SHE) intranet portal was rolled-out across the business in 2009. The portal encourages businesses to publicise their Zero Harm journey plans and share best practice in managing out risk.

“A significant benefit our journey towards Zero Harm has provided is a genuine sense of ‘ownership’ among all employees in the organisation. As a result, our employees feel more involved, empowered and inspired about the direction our safety programme is headed and their ability to contribute in a meaningful way to the change and refinements we are making in how we do business”.

Bruce Robinson, President and CEO, Balfour Beatty Capital Group Inc.

We defined our values programme in 2009. We consulted widely across our businesses and with values leaders, who were nominated by managing directors, to determine the programme content. This process is ongoing and open-ended to ensure that the programme continues to work to support us in becoming a sustainable business. The tool-kit designed to support the values programme is designed with three aims:

One aim of the values programme is to make it easier for everyone within Balfour Beatty to understand the bigger picture. The values help to make it clear that our employees belong to their individual operating company and the overall Group in equal measure. They aim to create unity, not uniformity, by emphasising our similarities while leaving room for different cultures to flourish.

We recognise that although each business will submit a programme plan in 2010 there will be some variation in terms of focus, inspiration and application within each business. The programme focuses on face-to-face communication to engage employees.

During 2010, our HR teams will be seeking to ensure that our values are embedded in a range of our people processes, including personal development reviews, recruitment processes and engagement surveys.

In Balfour Beatty, sustainability is a collective responsibility and our vision explains that by 2020, no matter where we are operating in the world, sustainability needs to be embedded into everything we do. Therefore we clearly need to engage all employees in this process.

The vision and roadmap has now been launched in all operating companies through a series of roadshows, presentations and Q&A sessions. 21 sessions with management teams have been held (November 2009 to February 2010) in the UK, US, Italy, Germany, Dubai and Hong Kong. Our sustainability branding and the alignment of this report with the vision, aims to help to inform employees about this journey, so they can see how they can play their part in it.

A direct product of our Group values is our Code of Conduct published in 2009. The Code underlines our ethics and responsibility we all have to protect the Company from risk, both legal and reputational. This document, supported by online learning in 2010, is not a rule book but works to guide our employees to do the right thing. Each employee received a personal copy of the Code.

Employee surveys are conducted in many of our businesses, some annually and others biannually. Eleven of our businesses conducted surveys in 2009 (10 in 2008). Overall satisfaction increased by 2% in 2009. In 2010 an HR working group will be set up to review employee satisfaction surveys.

Each of our businesses has internal communications systems, typically including newsletters, briefing meetings and an intranet. Our businesses aim to encourage two-way communication and so feedback mechanisms are in place wherever possible. Our joint ventures often have their own branding so that employees identify with their project and colleagues from different businesses.

Messages from Group conferences are cascaded throughout the businesses via management teams. In 2009, the top 250 managers, which included Parsons Brinckerhoff (PB) employees, attended a two-day conference in London where they were updated on the Group’s progress and encouraged to network with colleagues. Forty of the top management team meet annually to discuss key issues to the future success of the Group.

A Group intranet project was under development during 2009 and, during 2010, various portals will be launched, before these come together to form the Group intranet. This aims to connect all our employees across the world. Our Group magazine, “Update”, is distributed to all employees twice a year. In 2009, the strategy of the magazine and look and feel was refreshed to work to unite employees across the business so they feel more connected to the wider Group. In 2010, we will conduct a readership survey and feedback questionnaire to ensure we are succeeding with engaging our employees through this channel.

The acquisition of PB has increased the size of the Group by 12,500 people, and we worked hard to ensure this was a smooth transition for those involved. During 2009, the integration team worked on various forms of communication including newsletters, FAQs, roadshows and webcasts, to ensure employees affected by the acquisition were kept informed at all stages of the process. We published a Group-wide “Who’s Who” document in 2009. This mapped out the top level management teams in all our operating companies with their contact details, connecting people across the Group.

One of the reasons for engaging our employees is to retain them. Staff voluntary turnover in 2009 was 7% (10.2% in 2008) with the total voluntary turnover in 2009 7.8% (11% in 2008) Staff absence was 5.4 days per employee (6.1 in 2008).