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Arriva now has more than 40,000 employees across Europe, including a proportional share of associate companies.
Training and development
We invest in our people and encourage them to reach their full potential, because it is their contribution and effort that will help the company achieve its vision.
Examples of training and development for employees include technical qualifications, health and safety training, diversity awareness training and people management skills, in addition to on-the-job training. For several years we have given our employees access to an extensive range of learning and development resources via an on-line facility. This has recently been expanded and redeveloped into a new website which now includes on-line language training in more than 30 different languages. A communications skills initiative across our UK businesses is being expanded into mainland Europe.
Our graduate development programme, operating across Europe, includes an 18-month development programme, off-job training, coaching from a mentor and regular performance/development reviews. So far we have recruited into graduate schemes in Denmark, Germany, Italy, Sweden and the UK.
We have devised a strategic leadership profile, identifying the behaviours which are most important in helping Arriva meet its strategic objectives, and expressed in terms which translate across all the countries in which we operate. Our performance management process is designed to support the development of our people, improve business performance and support Arriva’s leadership agenda. We also have a succession planning process in place for senior managers and assess the development needs of those managers who have been identified as having good potential.
Morale and motivation
In 2007 we repeated our biennial employee survey to gauge attitudes and opinions and understand what we can do better to improve employee motivation.
The feedback, presented to the Board, showed an overall response rate of 54 per cent, a healthy improvement on the 35 per cent recorded in 2005, and giving more meaningful representative feedback on employee opinion.
While overall employee satisfaction remains at 49 per cent, a figure we aim to improve, the survey results showed significant improvements in the responses relating to internal communication, which had shown up in the 2005 survey as an area meriting attention. During 2006 and 2007 we designed and produced a group-wide programme to help supervisors and managers to communicate better with their teams. We believe the improvement in scores reflects the success of this initiative.
To enable employees at all levels of the business to have the opportunity to raise ideas and feed back customer comments, each business has developed an action plan to respond to feedback from employees.
We intend to repeat our survey again in 2009 and will continue to use employee feedback as a valuable source of management guidance.
Employee representation
We make extensive use of works councils and endeavour to maintain close working relationships with the trades unions covering our industry. Arriva operates a European Works Council which provides a forum for a formal group-wide update on operations and business performance and best practice sharing, facilitated by visits to operational units in the host country.
Across our UK and mainland Europe businesses, the vast majority of our workforce is covered by collective agreements on working conditions, and we make appropriate arrangements for union officials to receive training and to carry out official union business.
Working time
Arriva policy is to ensure we comply with all local requirements, though the interpretation and specific implementation of EU legislation does vary across European countries.
Annualised employee turnover excludes employees leaving as a consequence of tender loss or sale of operations.
