Tesco 2007 Annual Report Download - page 16

Operating and financial review continued
14 Tesco PLC Annual report and financial statements 2007 Find out more at www.tesco.com/corporate
* TNS Prognostics Mobile Satisfaction Survey, Q4 2006.
•Telecoms moved into profit during the year and continued
to build its customer base successfully through a combination
of simple, great value tariffs, good service and innovative
new products. Tesco Mobile, our joint-venture with O2,
was the fastest-growing pay-as-you-go network in the UK
in 2006, taking almost a 30% share of new business – and
ended the year with 1.4m customers. It was also recognised
in industry surveys* as number one network for overall
customer satisfaction. Strong sales of handsets in the year
means that Tesco overall is now the UK’s largest retailer
of branded pay-as-you-go mobile phones.
Resources and Relationships
Customers Our customers have told us what they want from
an ‘Every little helps’ shopping trip and this year 46,000
shared their ideas on how to improve the shopping trip for
all customers. Clubcard also helps us to understand what
our customers want, whilst allowing us to thank them for
shopping with us – this year we gave away over £340m
in Clubcard vouchers.
We don’t always get it right but we try to make their shopping
trip as easy as possible, reduce prices where we can to help
them spend less and give them the convenience of shopping
when and where they want – in small stores, large stores or
on-line.
Employees With over 400,000 staff in 13 countries, we play
an important role in creating employment, fostering skills and
generating economic development. Our people are our most
important asset. Looking after our staff so that they can look
after our customers is one of the core values of the business.
We are committed to providing market-leading working
conditions for our staff and we encourage our suppliers to
do the same.
In the UK, we offer our staff a market-leading package of pay
and benefits:
Employee Share Schemes Through share ownership and share
incentive schemes, over 165,000 of our people have a personal
stake in Tesco. Staff were awarded shares worth a record £77m
last May under our Shares in Success scheme. 50,000 staff
were able to benefit when Save As You Earn schemes matured
in February, giving them access to shares worth £148m.
Training and Development We are committed to developing
our people to bring out the best in everyone and do what we
can to enable all our people to reach their potential. All our
staff have access to training programmes and personal
development planning to ensure that they have the right
skills to do their job.
Diversity We try to ensure that at all times and in every
aspect of employment, including recruitment, training,
and development, everyone receives the same treatment,
regardless of factors such as gender, age, colour, creed, race,
ethnic origin, disability, marital status, religion or belief, trade
union membership or sexual preference and orientation.
Suppliers To be a successful, sustainable business we have
to ensure that our drive to bring cheaper prices is achieved
without compromising our standards, reducing quality,
damaging the environment or harming the suppliers and
workers who produce the goods we sell. So we take a
partnership approach to working with suppliers – sharing
our knowledge and listening to suppliers’ feedback. This
includes providing technical expertise, advice and insight
into customer trends and making regular payment, on time.
We are one of four signatories to the UK Government’s
statutory Supermarkets Code of Practice. Since the Code’s
introduction we have run tailored training for all Tesco buyers
to promote understanding and compliance. If problems do
arise in supplier relationships we aim to air and resolve
them through constructive discussion. To aid this process
we appointed a Code Compliance Officer to hear formal
complaints, confidentially if requested, and we hope that
our annual Supplier Viewpoint Survey encourages suppliers to
give us more feedback on our relationships. Our target is for
feedback to show that at least 90% of our suppliers view Tesco
as being trustworthy, reliable, consistent, clear, helpful and fair.
We carry out ethical audits and target ourselves to cover 100%
of our high risk own brand suppliers and ensure all commercial
teams have received training on supply chain labour standards.
Corporate Responsibility As a responsible Company,
Tesco works hard to bring real benefits to the communities we
serve, the environment and the economy. This is recognised
through our inclusion in the FTSE4Good and Dow Jones
Sustainability indices.
Our fundraising efforts have again delivered great results. Each
year we contribute the equivalent of at least 1% of our pre-tax
profits to charities and good causes and a total of £43m was
given during 2006/07 in donations, staff time and gifts in kind.
Our Charity of the Year was Whizz-kids, for which staff and
customers raised £3.4m.