Vodafone 2014 Annual Report Download - page 38

Our people
One company, local roots
We believe our people are fundamental to our success – that’s why we
want to attract and retain exceptional employees. We’re committed to
providing an inclusive workplace where we offer great opportunities
for our people to build their skills and careers.
We continue to develop our people to ensure that they have the right skills
and experience to deliver an outstanding experience to our customers.
During the year we employed an average of 92,812 people
and had 97,721 employees as of March 2014. The number
of our people increased during the year following our acquisition
of Kabel Deutschland in Germany and the move to full ownership
of Vodafone Italy.
The following sections highlight our progress in the key areas behind
our people strategy.
Increasing employee engagement
Every year all our employees participate in our global People Survey
which allows us to measure engagement levels, compare ourselves
to other large companies and helps us identify ways to improve how
we do things.
Our employee engagement index measures how committed our
employees are, their desire to continue working for us and their
willingness to recommend Vodafone as an employer. The index
remained broadly stable at 77 points this year compared to 78 last year.
Crucially we retained our top quartile position. Our employee turnover
rate also remained broadly stable at 15%.
Embedding The Vodafone Way
The Vodafone Way is about ensuring our employees work with speed,
simplicity and trust so that we can be customer-obsessed, ambitious
and competitive, innovation-hungry and work as one company with
local roots.
For the third consecutive year we have run development workshops
for all senior employees with a particular focus on ensuring we provide
a superior experience to all our customers.
Building a diverse and inclusive culture
We believe that a diverse team is crucial to our success, helping us better
understand and meet the needs of our customers. Our Group-wide
diversity and inclusion strategy aims to create a working environment
which values, celebrates and makes the most of individual differences.
We do not condone unfair treatment of any kind and offer equal
opportunities in all aspects of employment and advancement
regardless of race, nationality, gender, age, marital status, sexual
orientation, disability, and religious or political beliefs. This also applies
to agency workers, the self-employed and contract workers who work
for us. We promote an open culture that encourages people to raise
issues to ensure that any behaviour which excludes or discriminates
against individuals does not go unchallenged. This year’s People Survey
showed that 89% of employees believe that Vodafone treats people
fairly, regardless of their gender, background, age or beliefs.
Creating a lean and effective organisation
We continue to make our business more efcient, simplifying processes
across our markets and sharing best practice. We continue to move
transactional and back ofce activities to our shared service centres
in Egypt, India and Europe. In the last year we undertook an exercise
to reduce our non-customer facing support functions, as discussed
on page 32.
We aim to treat all employees fairly, consulting with those affected
by change and clearly communicating developments. We support
employees through organisational changes, nding people new jobs
in the company or arranging for them to work for a partner company
where possible. We also help those whose roles are made redundant
search for new jobs, offering them training on job applications and
interview skills, and advice on how to start their own business.
During the year we completed the integration of employees from Cable
& Wireless Worldwide and we established single product management
teams for consumer and enterprise.
Strengthening capabilities
We want people to grow their careers at Vodafone and develop the skills
and talent needed to grow our business. We do this through formal
training, on the job experience and regular coaching from managers.
We conduct an annual analysis of learning needs to identify priorities
and ensure that learning plans support our business strategy. Every
employee also has a formal review once a year with their manager
to review their performance and set clear goals and development plans
for the year ahead.
Our global learning academies in marketing, technology, sales, retail,
nance and supply chain enable people to develop the critical skills
they need to excel in their functions. We work with leading business
schools and accredited external providers to develop and deliver the
training. Last year, around 180,000 online courses were completed and
we trained around 18,000 people in our Technology Academy and over
10,000 people in our Retail and Sales academies.
We conduct regular talent reviews to identify high-potential future
leaders and accelerate the progress of high-potential managers through
our “Inspire” programme, which offers development and executive
coaching over an 18 month period and may include an assignment
to another Vodafone market or function.
Our “Discover” programme for graduates accelerates the careers of high
performing graduates and we recruited 596 people from 20 countries
onto this programme during the year. We also have an international
assignment programme, “Columbus”, with 35 graduates from
16different markets taking part this year.
Note:
Employee numbers are shown on a management view and on a full time employee basis. A statutory view
is provided on page 152.
Vodafone Group Plc
Annual Report 2014
Vodafone Group Plc
Annual Report 201436