british american tobacco p.l.c. sustainability report 2011 - Talented people as a competitive advantage

Strengthening our core capabilities

In recent years, we have focused on simplifying and enhancing how we manage our learning and development practices. In particular, we have concentrated on giving our employees access to the leadership, managerial and functional training programmes they need to strengthen their core capabilities and progress within our business.

A range of training programmes has been made accessible to all our companies and, in 2011, we launched a new online learning and development system. For the first time, this provides our people with access to a suite of e-learning applications and gives our companies a clearer view of the learning and capability gaps in their operations.

Succession management

Ensuring clear succession plans are in place for every senior role remains our long-term objective. This means having at least one local successor ready in the short term and two local successors identified for long-term development. We also aim to achieve a 70:30 ratio of local to expatriate senior managers in each business unit. This gives our companies a valuable balance between local knowledge and international perspective.

Following our recent reorganisations, we have identified some gaps in our succession plans for a number of important roles. To tackle this, the Group launched a global recruitment drive in 2011, focusing on senior management positions. This will continue in 2012.

The issue is also being addressed at regional level. For example, with the growth of our business in our Asia Pacific region, there is a greater demand to recruit suitably qualified managers locally. The region now has a dedicated programme to identify where to accelerate development of existing employees and where the gaps are to focus external recruitment.

View the data on our succession coverage and local to expatriate management balance. Although neither target has yet been reached, we have seen an improvement in 2011 in local representation and long-term succession coverage.