CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY

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WORKPLACE AND COMMUNITY

We strive to be recognised by existing and potential future employees as a responsible employer that values its people and provides an environment in which they can develop their skills and make a contribution to the success of the business. We also wish to make a contribution to the communities in which we operate, building goodwill and a reputation as a good neighbour and employer.

We believe that our investments in our employees and the communities in which we operate help to build a high-performing workforce with a common set of business values that result in an improved customer experience and positive returns for the Company.

 

INVESTMENT IN OUR PEOPLE

Leadership development and succession planning are critical for consistent and ongoing high performance.

Attracting talented people and retaining the talent we have in the Group is of the utmost importance for continued success. Our commitment to personal development is unwavering. All employees meet with their managers at least every six months to review performance and talk about career aspirations, which are included in an aspiration development plan.

eLife, a Group initiative, was created in order to encourage employees to embrace the web and improve innovation. Through eLife we have introduced an online performance management and objective setting tool that gives employees and managers access to their performance reviews and objectives year round.

Employees are encouraged to take one hour a week for personal development. This time is used in a variety of ways including attending sales training in order to become a more effective seller, job shadowing a role or studying modules in our Online Learning Centre. Capability ladders have also been created for certain functions; these ladders are used by employees in order to understand what they need and how they can target their own personal development for career progression. These ladders have been so popular that they will be expanded for additional functions

One Hour Development at CPC in Preston, UK

We have set ourselves targets to ensure continuous improvement of our delivery on employee development, supporting our business strategy and making a difference to employees globally.

Our KPIs for measuring the performance of our employee development programme are;

	Target	Achieved YTD
The percentage of employees that have a performance review annually	100%	100%
The percentage of key talent employees who have been assigned a workplace mentor	100%	100%
The percentage of key talent employees who have an Aspirational Development Plan	75%	77%
The percentage of managers who are invited to complete a 360 feedback review on the anniversary of their joining the company	100%	100%

We recognise the importance of our employees’ contribution to our community investment programme, and we are transparent around the business benefits around employee development that we believe are accessible to us through engaging with the communities in which we operate.

During 2009, we will be investigating a system to clearly link employees’ personal development targets to volunteering activities in the community. This investigation is expected to deliver plans for a system that will provide a number of benefits to the business, including;

• Improved visibility of the development opportunities in volunteer activity
• The opportunity for employees to identify volunteering opportunities that best fit the skills that they need to develop
• Access to alternative and innovative forms of talent development
• An increase in employee engagement with the community investment programme

COMMUNITY INVESTMENT AND CHARITABLE GIVING

Our Policies

Our Group Community Investment Strategy enables employees to apply to volunteer their time to good causes and our Charitable Giving and Volunteering policies allows this time to be taken within working hours. All our businesses undertake activities in their local communities.

Click here to view our Community Investment Strategy and Charitable Giving Policy
Click here to view our Volunteering Policy guidance

The Charitable Giving policy has encouraged employees to seek the Group’s support in making a difference to their good causes from the Group’s charity budget, and the available funds of £20,000 were again fully utilised during 2008.

Click here to view our Charitable Donations Register 2007 | 2008
Click here to view our Employee Volunteering Register 2007 | 2008
Click here to view our Community Investment Log 2009

Association with Community organisations

The Group joined Business in the Community in 2005, a movement of over 800 UK companies committed to improving their impact on society, and we have now participated in the Business in the Community Corporate Responsibility Index for three years. The results of the 2008 CR Index survey placed the company in the Gold band.

Click here to view our Business in the Community Feedback Reports 2006 | 2007 | 2008

In the US, all of our businesses participate in the United Way, an umbrella organization for a number of charities. Premier Farnell supports United Way through pledge drives and annual fundraising events.

 

Premier Farnell engage with Leeds Ahead, an award-winning social business, who provide links and support to the business to enable it to track, monitor and manage our Leeds community investment programme, with a particular focus around feedback tracking and reporting.

Our Community Partners

Premier Farnell has entered into three long-term partnerships with community organisations in Leeds. Based on service-level agreements which clearly define our commitments to the groups, the partnerships are designed to deliver sustainable and measurable benefits to both the business and the community groups.

Our partners in Leeds are:

• Armley Helping Hands
• Christ Church CoE Primary School, Upper Armley 
• Farnley Park Maths & Computing College

Premier Farnell recognises that these types of activity not only benefit the community groups involved but also deliver business benefits in the training and development of those employees who participate, as well as opportunities for positive public relations. Investment in the local community is a key part of our leadership development programme, as well as the development of our operational employees.

 

Engaging on matters of public policy

Premier Farnell is committed to transparency in its engagements with government bodies on matters of public policy. In accordance with our lobbying policy, we will make a list of all interactions with national governments available on this page annually.

Click here to view our Lobbying Policy
Premier Farnell 2009 lobbying report

 

Our targets for 2009/10

We have expanded the number of targets that we publish for our workplace and community programmes to better reflect our planned activities for 2009/10.

Target 2008	Progress	Target 2009
Achieve a further improvement in our score in the BitC CR index as part of our progress towards achieving our target of Platinum status by 2010.	We have achieved Gold status in the CR index this year.	Achieve Platinum status in the BitC CR Index.
Continue to monitor the rates and causes of employee absenteeism, and take actions to achieve reductions.	The Group monitors the rates and causes of absenteeism across the business units. The average rate of absenteeism in the US businesses has kept parity with US national rates and so reduction targets are not set.In Europe, targets were se for each of the distribution centres and contact centres. The absence rates represent hours lost divided by hours available and targets were achieved with the exception of the Maybrook distribution centre. The rate of absenteeism at Maybrook is affected by a number of cases of long-term sick leave and these are being managed with the expectation of a resolution early in the current financial year. New management processes have been implemented at Liege, improving communication between management and employees, resulting in it achieving its target this year.	Continue to monitor the rates and causes of absenteeism and take actions to achieve reductions.
		Investigate an integrated system to link developmental objectives with volunteering activity, enabling the organisation to track employees’ personal development through volunteering activities more accurately.
		Improve the system for measuring the outcomes and benefits of community investment initiatives.
		Develop a robust volunteering policy guide to assist employees and their line managers in increasing the Group’s community involvement.