BT 2002 Annual Report Download - page 18

Business review
BT Group Annual Report and Form 20-F 2002 17
advanced communications on lifestyles, education and
healthcare.
BTexact is responsible for the exploitation,
management and defence of over 14,000 BT patents, and
has a policy of vigorous commercial exploitation of
technology through:
&patent licensing (including a contract with ipValue to
secure revenues from US and Canadian companies); and
&Brightstar, its in-house incubator which creates new
technology companies.
The BTexact proposition is complemented by a wide
range of partnerships with leading technology suppliers and
universities throughout the world. Many of these have
established a presence at BTexact's primary location,
Adastral Park in Suffolk, which has become one of the UK's
leading concentrations of hi-tech businesses.
In the 2002 ®nancial year, we invested £362 million in
research and development, primarily through BTexact,
compared with £364 million and £345 million in the 2001
and 2000 ®nancial years, respectively.
Other businesses
As at 31 March 2002, we held signi®cant stakes in a
number of other businesses, including Concert (see
page 11), a 26% stake in Cegetel, a leading French
telecommunications company, a 16.6% stake in
L G Telecom, a mobile cellular telephone operator in the
Republic of Korea, and a 29% stake in Blu, a mobile cellular
telephone operator in Italy.
Our people
Number of employees in the group
As at 31 March
2002
'000
2001
'000
2000
'000
UK 100.1 106.4 115.9
Non-UK 8.5 10.4 4.9
Total continuing activities 108.6 116.8 120.8
Total discontinued activities ±20.2 16.0
Total employees 108.6 137.0 136.8
At 31 March 2002, BT employed around 108,600 people
throughout the world, with 100,100 in the UK, making us
one of the UK's largest employers.
The sale of the Yell directory business resulted in a
reduction in BT employees of approximately 5,300 in June
2001. The demerger of mmO2 resulted in a further 15,800
people leaving the group in November 2001. The unwind of
Concert is expected to lead to over 2,300 employees joining
BT in the 2003 ®nancial year.
During the 2002 ®nancial year, as part of the continuing
programme of reshaping the group, approximately 4,200
people left BT voluntarily, by leaver payments or voluntary
redundancy.
Our search for new talent attracted 274 high-calibre
graduates, 306 Modern Apprentices and 2,456 other new
entrants. There were also 8,043 career development moves
during the year.
We recognise that our people are critical to our success
and believe that a reputation as a good employer helps win
and retain an excellent workforce, which enhances our
ability to serve our customers and generate revenues.
As part of this responsibility, we take the wellbeing of
our people seriously. Stringent targets have been set for the
reduction of occupational injury and ill health over the next
four years and have been published in Better World, our
social and environment report. These targets are aligned to,
but are more challenging than, those set by the UK
Government as part of its ``Revitalising Health & Safety''
strategy.
We recently won the Parents at Work/DTI Employer of
the Year Award for our approach to helping our people
balance their work and home lives. We have a wide range
of options to support individuals throughout their working
life, including home working, alternative attendance patterns
and career breaks. In addition, we recently introduced a
¯exible retirement policy, giving employees greater choice
about the nature and timing of their retirement.
During the year, we further developed our range of
internal electronic people management systems. We have
an award-winning e-human resources (HR) programme,
which provides our people with an online, self-service
approach to a broad range of HR products and services.
These HR services are provided to BT by
e-peopleserve, our former joint venture with Accenture,
under one of the biggest HR outsourcing contracts agreed
to date in the UK. In February 2002, we sold our 50%
interest in e-peopleserve to Accenture. A successful
strategic partnership is being forged with e-peopleserve to
the mutual bene®t of both companies. Outsourcing HR
transactions in this way, using the best technology
platforms, has enabled a smaller HR team to focus more
closely on its strategic agenda.
We encourage our employees to acquire shares in
BT Group to enable them to share in our success.
Following the introduction by the UK Government of the
new tax-advantaged Share Incentive Plan, during the year
we launched the BT Group Employee Share Investment
Plan (the ESIP). From December 2001, we have operated
the partnership shares section of the plan, which gives