EasyJet 2014 Annual Report Download - page 38

Corporate responsibility
OUR COMMITMENT TO CORPORATE RESPONSIBILITY
Our ambition is to make travel easy and
affordable for our passengers, delivering a
friendly and efficient service with low fares.
We remain focused on our people, passengers
and stakeholders all of whom we depend on
to achieve this. Corporate responsibility (CR)
is therefore embedded in our vision and values
and influences everything we do.
Our passengers and people lie at the heart of the airline.
The delivery of high levels of customer service depends
on motivated, connected people. As well as placing safety
as our highest priority we continually seek to improve
customer service. Central to this is our ongoing work to
embed our Customer Charter commitments across the
business. We were particularly pleased that our latest
employee engagement survey results show that 97% of
our people understand how important it is to make sure
our customers have a great easyJet experience. In addition,
86% agree they understand how they can deliver the
promises in the Customer Charter.
Improving the customer experience at times of disruption
has also been a focus this year. New developments have
included connecting our Operation Control Centre at Luton
directly with customers so they can keep in touch with
live updates – an industry first.
We continue to grow our talent to keep easyJet strong
and develop the skills and competencies of our leaders
and managers. This has included the launch of a new
People Manager Development Programme, accredited by
the University of Bedfordshire. Learning and development
opportunities have been extended for all our people and
we continue to work to improve communication and
engagement. Employee wellbeing remains an important
focus and we continue to build our programmes in this
area, in particular in relation to people’s psychological health.
Having carried out an employee engagement survey
early in 2014, we saw our overall engagement score
increase by 16%, compared to our last survey two years
ago, which demonstrates we are making good progress.
However, there is more work to do in respect of employee
engagement and supporting our people to reach their
full potential which remain important priorities for us.
As an airline we have a responsibility to reduce our
environmental impact, and our investment in 100 new Airbus
A320neo aircraft (which will be delivered from summer 2017)
over the coming years will ensure we continue to operate one
of the most efficient fleets in Europe. Due to easyJet’s simple,
efficient operations and young fleet our passengers’ carbon
footprint is already 22% smaller than that of passengers on
traditional airlines flying the same route. This year our emissions
per passenger km reduced by 1.73g/km in line with achieving
our target of reducing 2012 emissions by 2.5% by 2017.
We remain strongly committed to engaging with our local
communities and continue to support local initiatives and
activities across the network. Our community engagement is
particularly strong around our headquarters in Luton, where we
employ the most people and have forged strong links with the
local community through partnerships with schools, local
government, businesses and the local league football team.
Due to the volume of requests for charitable donations we
receive, we decided to channel our efforts and fundraising
ability into one large charity. UNICEF was selected via a
structured process involving people from across the airline.
Our partnership with UNICEF has raised over £3.9 million
since 2012, with £1.9 million raised this financial year. These
donations from easyJet and its passengers have benefitted
communities far and wide including the vaccination of
5.3 million mothers and babies across Africa and Syria.
To help us move our CR programme forward we have
this year surveyed the views of some of our passengers
and people on easyJet and sustainability. The findings
demonstrate that they feel CR and sustainability are
important issues which we must continue to address.
Our passengers think we are the most sustainable of the
airlines we compete with. Strong support for the UNICEF
partnership was balanced by the view we must continue
to support local community initiatives alongside it.
In the future we will continue to embed CR in the
business by building the capability of our people and
remaining focused on the needs of our customers.
In this section of the report we provide an overview of
our performance in our key CR areas: safety, our people,
our customers, the environment and the community.
Further details in relation to each of these areas can be
found on our corporate website at http://corporate.easyjet.
com/corporate-responsibility
Carolyn McCall OBE
Chief Executive
Carolyn McCall OBE
Chief Executive
36 easyJet plc Annual report and accounts 2014