How are we doing?
Employee engagement
One way we measure employee engagement is through our annual staff survey. Employee engagement helps drive business performance and so increases value for our policyholders and shareholders. Phoenix Group and Phoenix Life were short-listed for the Marketing Society's Employee Engagement Award, and won the 2011 Strategic Communications Management (Melcrum) Award for Excellence in Employee Engagement, highlighting our success in this area. Read more about the 2011 awards and others short-listed on Melcrum's website.
Phoenix Group is also one of 'Britain's Top Employers 2012'. This certification is awarded only to organisations that meet the highest standards in Human Resources policy benchmarking. The companies awarded with this certification have all been independepently recognised as being amongst the best companies to work for in the UK. Read more in our media news release.
In 2011, we achieved an overall employee engagement index ('EEI') of 74% with a response rate of 93%.
Phoenix Life and Group returned an EEI of 78%, and increase of 1% on 2010, and for all questions, were at or above Financial Services Benchmark (or Private Sector Benchmark where a Financial Services comparison is not available). This was the second year that Ignis participated and its EEI increased from 60% to 68%.
Reward programme
We believe it is important that our employees have the opportunity to align their interests, through share ownership, with those of our shareholders. An employee Sharesave Scheme is available for staff to join. We also have a formal flexible benefits scheme where eligible employees can select, within defined parameters, benefits that suit their lifestyle and personal circumstances.
During 2011, we introduced two new opportunities with Corporate Responsibility in mind. The first was membership to the Woodland Trust where each member who joined, helped the Trust protect ancient woodland, and create new native woodland and educate people about our natural environment. The Woodland Trust is the UK's leading woodland conservation charity. They own and care for over 1,000 woods, covering 50,000 acres (20,000 hectares), and access to all their woods is free. We supported the Trust further during the year, by holding a fundraising / staff education day on the Environmental aspect of our CR programme. Read more about the event in our 'what we did in 2011'.
The second opportunity was a 'Cycle to Work' Scheme whereby the company encouraged a healthy lifestyle, by leasing bicycles to staff on a tax-free basis.
Staff training
In 2011 we started to track two new measures around external staff training and spend. In addition to the externally run training days, our Learning and Development team managed a range of in-house training sessions, ranging from induction programmes, through to coaching and leadership skills. During the year staff within our Phoenix Life and Group divisions received training on our Risk Management Framework, which amounted 850 training days. This helps demonstrate our commitment to continuing education within the workplace and providing our staff with the necessary skills they need in a market which is becoming increasingly regulated and highly competitive. Recent benchmarking indicates that we invest approximately twice the sector average in learning and development. In 2011, the total number of external staff training days amounted 1,961, with total spend on external training as £1,137,123.
Employee metrics
Our human resources team continues to monitor employee metrics related to turnover, sickness and training. This enables analysis of year-on-year people trends and performance against comparable companies. Staff turnover is down compared to last year and we are pleased to report we are now below the industry average of 8.7% for employees leaving voluntarily. We also reported one of the lowest levels of absence through sickness in our sector.
| 2011 | 2010 |
|---|
Annual employee turnover
(Turnover of employees choosing to leave voluntarily) |
7.5% |
9.9% |
Annual new starter turnover
(Number of employees leaving voluntarily within 12 months of starting) |
10.0% |
13% |
Percentage days lost through sickness
(Total days lost as a result of absences in the population) |
1.4% |
1.3% |
| Percentage of employees sponsored on a Professional Qualification |
22.6% |
17.4% |
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