Engaging employees

At the end of 2008, Rolls-Royce employed 38,900 permanent staff in over 50 countries.

The long life cycle of the Group’s products makes it imperative that we have a skilled workforce that is committed to delivering excellence to customers over the long term. To achieve this, we aim to create an inclusive working environment that attracts and retains the best people, enhances their flexibility, capability and motivation, and encourages them to be involved, resulting in improving performance.

Engaging employees

In 2005, we formed a Global Council to improve consultation and employee engagement. This meets twice a year and involves over 40 employee representatives or delegates from around the world with senior management from each business and function. In addition, an executive committee of eight elected delegates meets regularly throughout the year to support regular dialogue and timely consultation between council meetings.

In 2008, full council meetings were held in Berlin (Germany) and Derby (UK). In 2008, we conducted the annual Corporate Storyboard, an interactive Group-wide briefing on corporate direction and performance. Delivered face-to-face to all employees globally, the storyboard ensures all employees across the business have a good understanding of the Group’s key objectives and the individual contribution each can make. The initiative builds on the success of the first Strategy Storyboard, which was widely welcomed by our employees.

During 2008, our Employee Engagement Survey was redesigned and incorporated into a two-year rolling global engagement programme. This will improve our ability to test, identify necessary actions and better understand employees’ level of engagement across the organisation and will be vital in signaling the areas to focus on to improve engagement within the organisation. The new survey was launched in January 2009.

Rolls-Royce provides competitive pay and benefits in all its locations and actively encourages share ownership by offering ShareSave plans to all employees. Our employees have currently committed around £105 million to these plans. In the UK, statutory arrangements enable employees to receive part of their annual bonus in shares and to make monthly share purchases from their salary.