Carphone Warehouse 2009 Annual Report Download - page 31

Directors’ Report – Business Review
www.cpwplc.com 27
▪
“Bin the bin”: we started a trial in
March 2009 with a view to rolling it out
across the business as soon as
possible;
▪
water coolers: we have started the
process of replacing spring water
coolers with mains-fed units;
▪
lighting: support centre rets are using
low intensity lighting and motion
sensors; and
▪
store lighting: we are installing motion
sensitive lighting in all back ofce
areas of our stores.
Employees
We continue to take employee
engagement very seriously. We want
people to enjoy working for the Group,
to feel that they are being respected and
that there are genuine prospects for
career and personal development, and
most of all to be part of a good team.
Pulse survey
We introduced Pulse, our new employee
survey, in February 2008, and now take
soundings from employees on a range
of issues every three months. Employee
engagement, the extent to which
employees are psychologically and
emotionally attached to their work,
positively inuences customer
satisfaction, sales and other measures
of productivity. Employee engagement
is a key performance indicator within
the Group.
All managers receive data on
engagement within their team and the
majority have now been trained in how
to improve it. As a result the Group
has seen its already high levels of
engagement increase. When rst
measured in February 2008, 75% of
employees were engaged. After manager
training and work amongst the majority
of teams the engagement gure for the
group measured 81% in February 2009.
Measurement and improvement
programmes continue throughout the
year with a view to further increasing
our performance in this metric.
One area where we scored less well was
that employees do not feel that their
opinion is being valued. To address this,
we have introduced several listening
campaigns such as Bringing Back the
Magic and Every Penny Counts. These
campaigns involve us actively seeking
out our employees’ opinions, and we had
over 300 money-saving ideas in response
to our Every Penny Counts campaign.
Engagement
The highlights of our employee
engagement activities over the last year
were:
▪
the Morocco project described above;
▪
a sponsored Skydive for 50 employees
that raised over £15,000 for our charity
partners;
▪
supporting Comic Relief, with 120
employees giving up a Friday evening
to staff our call centres to take pledges
from the public;
▪
receiving the Bronze Award for Payroll
Giving by CAF for the number of
employees who make regular
charitable donations through payroll.
We are aiming to reach the gold
standard by 2010; and
▪
a mentoring scheme which encourages
business action on homelessness.
Training and development
There has been a huge amount of
change in our store proposition over the
last 12 months, as we start to offer
laptops, mobile broadband and other
connected services more widely. We
could not have done this without a highly
successful training programme, which
involved all of our UK retail employees
attending a “wireless bootcamp” – an
intensive course for 8,000 people to
teach them about the new products and
services we offer. All employees who
passed a subsequent test were rewarded
with their own laptop.
We have also continued to invest in
our leaders and managers, and have
engaged a specialist consultant to
manage an extensive leadership
development programme, designed to
maximise their own potential and also
bring out the best from their teams.
Employee turnover
Employee turnover can be a signicant
cost to a business, and given the young
average age typically prevalent in retail
and call centre operations, the Group
is particularly sensitive to changes
in leaving rates.