We recognise that a big part of our business's future success depends on us taking into account the interests of all of our stakeholders. We are committed to the operation of a responsible business model and are developing our activities in this area. We will continue to report on our progress in implementing key initiatives.

We recognise that one of our major stakeholders is our people. All our employees are crucial to HomeServe's future growth and success. Because of this, we are committed to improving our employee engagement and learning more about our staff's needs. We believe HomeServe is a good employer, but we are very aware that we need to listen to our employees in order to ascertain how HomeServe can become an even better place to work.

In the past year, we have developed various existing internal communications programmes as well as initiating some new activities.

From November of 2008, the newly designed staff magazine, Homelife, has been published every two months. This new, smaller format publication aims to both represent the entire workforce and be entertaining. The magazine is posted to the home addresses of all field-based staff, whilst other employees (including those in our overseas sites) can obtain a copy from the main office locations. Feedback from the readership has been very positive so far.

The Group intranet, which launched last year, has been developed both as a document store and business tool and as a communication medium that has wide reach and immediate appeal.

At the start of the year, the Internal Communications team conducted two surveys, one online and one print-based, as well as facilitating a series of focus groups across the UK sites. Employee forums continue to meet regularly at many sites and there are plans to develop webcasts and online Q&As via the intranet.

We realise that our staff's views and opinions are fundamental to our future success. We also recognise that employees should be rewarded when they have done a good job. Our HomeServe Heroes employee recognition scheme has seen dozens of staff across the Group celebrated and remunerated for jobs well done. All HomeServe Heroes winners will be invited to an awards event this June, which will celebrate both their success and the benefit their hard work brings to the business overall.

Training and development is also very important at HomeServe. As a business, we always look to recruit the best staff. To retain current and new talent, however, we know that we must offer our employees development opportunities and career progression. Our performance management review process enables us to identify training needs and to provide training solutions in a consistent and targeted manner. What's more, the delivery of many of these programmes is carried out by our own training specialists.

Our performance development review process enables clear objective setting for all employees of manager grade or above. This, along with the Leadership Excellence Framework, which was implemented recently, allows individual management staff to work with the Company to identify their current performance as well as their future training and development needs. Such forward planning is crucial to HomeServe's success overall: it ensures that we will have the best possible management resource to support our growth.

 

Apprenticeships are an integral part of our plans to develop a skilled workforce for the future.

We are also significantly developing the apprenticeship opportunities available at HomeServe. Apprenticeships are an integral part of our plans to develop a skilled workforce for the future and as such form a central element of our developing recruitment and training strategy.