british american tobacco p.l.c. sustainability report 2010 - People and culture
We will work to ensure we have the right people and culture to meet our goals.
2010 progress in brief
We held a stakeholder dialogue session to examine how the needs of business and the expectations of employees can be aligned to create a sustainable organisation. Ninety per cent of our employees responded to our biennial opinion survey. Our health and safety strategy was updated and we extended the human rights criteria we apply in our own operations to our business partners.
Our approach
Our employees come from diverse cultures and backgrounds, and our business benefits from the breadth of ideas and experiences they bring. We aim to recognise individuality and encourage people to perform at their best.
Our companies are required to operate according to the Group Employment Principles, with flexibility to customise their management of employee issues to best suit their local business environments.
We are experiencing a period of organisational change as the Group becomes a more globally integrated organisation. Some changes have yet to be implemented, but we know our employees have concerns about what the future might bring and we want to support them so that they feel confident about working in new team structures as we move away from traditional business hierarchies.
After a period of developing many leading practices, in 2010, we focused on making sure we’ve got the basics right – that we can attract the best people and create a great place to work. We are currently reviewing and, where necessary, adapting our approaches and processes to ensure we get these basics right.
In this context of change, our priorities remain the same but the requirement to achieve them is even greater:
- Ensuring we have a sustainable talent pipeline by attracting, developing and retaining outstanding people;
- Creating a place to work where people are recognised for the difference they bring and the contribution they make; and
- Working to protect the human rights of our employees and those within our sphere of influence.
