BT 2011 Annual Report Download - page 23

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BUSINESS REVIEW OUR RESOURCES
We continue to support an inclusive working environment
where people can develop their careers and expect to be treated
fairly, regardless of their race, sex, religion/beliefs, disability,
marital or civil partnership status, age, sexual orientation, gender
or caring responsibilities. We also work with specialist recruitment
agencies to enable the recruitment of people with disabilities and
we run a retention service to ensure that people can stay with us
even if their capabilities change.
Diversity of the BT workforce
Target 2012 2011 2010 2009
BT will maintain a top 10
position in four of five major
diversity benchmarks; four UK
based, and one global
We look to improve customers’ experiences of BT by giving our
people the up-to-date skills, tools and experience needed to do their
jobs. This starts with our nationally-recognised apprentice schemes,
which recruited nearly 500 engineers during 2011, and continues
with opportunities to learn and develop throughout an employee’s
career. In BT Retail, we ran two programmes to provide apprentice
qualifications in job-related skills: customer service and business
administration for our advisors and leadership for our managers.
During the year 8,100 people successfully completed these
qualifications.
In order to help deliver super-fast broadband, Openreach has
recruited 200 ex-armed forces personnel, who will become part of a
mobile engineering workforce. They will be bringing their experience
of complex engineering tasks, their skills and technical expertise to
bear on one of the UK’s largest infrastructure projects.
BT people are also encouraged to participate in their local
communities. We run a formal volunteering programme to help them
do this. In 2011 BT people volunteered over 49,000 days, the value
of which we estimate at £13.8m. The community benefits from this
involvement and the business gains from the opportunity given to
our people to enhance their existing skills or acquire new ones.
People engagement and communication
Keeping our people informed of what is happening in BT is
important. We use a range of communications channels including
a daily online news service, a quarterly magazine, podcasts and
web chats. We have a record of stable industrial relations and
constructive relationships with the recognised unions in the UK
and works councils elsewhere in Europe. In the UK we recognise
two main trade unions – the Communication Workers Union (CWU),
which represents the engineering, administrative and clerical
population and Prospect, which represents managerial and
professional employees. We also operate a pan-European works
council, the BT European Consultation Committee.
We measure how engaged BT people are through a quarterly survey
and we ask 50,000 people each time to tell us how they feel about
their job, their team, their manager, senior leaders and BT. Last
year, despite challenging economic conditions, we held
engagement steady. This year we have seen improvements in how
motivated people feel to do their best work. We use this regular and
extensive feedback to let line managers know more about their
teams, how engaged they feel and what makes BT people feel
proud about what they do.
Reward and recognition
Because we value our people, we ensure that the reward they
receive is fair for the job done against external market comparisons.
We conduct a market review of salaries every year. In 2010 we
agreed with the CWU a three-year pay deal which provides
considerable stability for both employees and the business.
Discussions with Prospect reached an agreement for 2011 and
more recent discussions have concluded a further two-year pay
deal, also providing stability through to 2013. The same principles
of fair pay for the work done are similarly applied in all other
countries in which we operate.
Our managers are rewarded with bonuses linked to the success of
the business and their personal contribution to it. Our most senior
managers are also eligible for long-term incentives, but again,
payment is related to business success measured by BT’s corporate
performance over a three-year period. For more information see
the Report on directors’ remuneration on page 69. Different
arrangements apply to the most senior managers in Openreach
but remain entirely related to business performance.
We also provide savings-related share option plans in 25 countries.
Under the BT employee share investment plan we enable
employees in the UK to participate in a tax and national insurance-
efficient share purchase scheme. We are pleased that more than
50% of BT people participate in one or more of these share plans.
Pensions
Key parts of the reward package are the pension and retirement
benefits for our people. In addition to statutory retirement
arrangements, BT provides retirement plans for staff in over
50 countries. The largest of these plans is the BT Pension Scheme
(BTPS), a defined benefit plan in the UK. The BTPS has around
51,000 contributing members, 188,000 pensioners and
88,500 deferred members. The BTPS was closed to new members
on 31 March 2001. Benefits are based on pensionable salary
and service.
We also offer the BT Retirement Saving Scheme (BTRSS), a defined
contribution plan for eligible UK employees, which has around
17,500 active members. It is a contract based, defined contribution
arrangement provided by Standard Life, a leading UK insurance
company. The scheme members receive benefits at retirement
linked to contributions paid, the performance of each individual’s
chosen investments and the annuity rates at retirement.
2010
Employee engagement is measured on a five point scale
2011
3.61
2009
3.59
3.58
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