Our mission is only achievable as a result of our exceptional, highly engaged colleagues. As a major employer in the areas we operate in, community engagement is important to us, ensuring we contribute an inclusive workplace, with strong values and new opportunities for current and future colleagues.
We are committed to improving engagement across all sites and providing an environment where all employees can fulfil their potential.
Maintaining high levels of communication with all employees is a focus across the Group. When Jos Sclater joined the business, he visited each site within his first six weeks to introduce himself to all employees, set out his vision and invite all questions. Throughout the year our Executive Committee has regularly visited all sites and hosted events to provide an update on performance, strategy and future focus areas.
We greatly value employee feedback and have continued our initiative to celebrate and enhance the culture at Avon Protection. Culture champions have been selected from each level of the organisation with the intention of playing a crucial role in maintaining an open communication culture within the Group. Their roles include speaking to our employees on matters such as leadership, learning and development, and social connection. This year we expanded our network to ensure our remote workers were represented, recognising the unique challenges this Group may face.
74% of employees took part in our annual Employee Opinion Survey which provides them with further opportunity to provide feedback and suggest improvements on aspects such as leadership, communication, employee engagement, team culture and the work environment. Results from these surveys are presented to the Board of Directors, the Executive Committee and wider leadership teams with areas of improvement. Our Culture Champions support the implementation of these changes and give feedback to employees.
We undertook a series of engagement activities during the development of our new STAR strategy recognising that our people and culture are paramount to our success. We invited 40+ employees representing a cross-section of functions and experience levels to be actively involved in the process which included participation in a series of workshops. We also appointed Strategy Champions and provided opportunities for all employees to offer feedback via surveys. We were pleased with the level of engagement this process received and intend to utilise our Strategy Champions to review the strategy process more frequently to ensure it remains relevant and fit for our changing business.
Our goal is zero harm and we actively promote a safety culture. We have mandatory training and policies in place for all production employees on workplace safety and practices.
Demonstrating our commitment to safety, we target an incident rate of zero, this year across all sites, we recorded a total of 15 workplace lost time cases. We have successfully rolled out training to all U.K. employees using an online hub and we piloted and rolled out a cloud-based environmental health and safety and quality management solution at a U.S. site. This automates safety, risk and compliance processes.
The health and wellbeing of our employees is important to us and throughout the year we share resources with them on how to look after their mental and physical wellbeing. We hold a multitude of wellbeing webinars based on key topics throughout the year, such as work-life balance, exercise and seasonal nutrition.
To reinforce the importance we place on providing more support, we partnered with Mental Health at Work to implement a Mental Health Allies network across the business. Mental Health Allies are a network of trained employees who have volunteered to be available to anyone in the organisation who would like a confidential one-to-one conversation and are familiar with policies and procedures and can signpost to further resources within and outside our business if needed. By providing this network of skilled listeners, an informal and trusted network of mental health support is created.
We are committed to the fair treatment and full participation of all people and recognise diversity provides a better culture for all.
Female representation across our Executive Committee and direct reports is 19% and we are committed to improving this in the future. Across all employees, we have achieved a ratio of 44.8% (416 out of 928) female and 55.2% (512 out of 928) male).
We continue to support our pledge to improve the balance of female to male employees across our sites and as part of this we have signed the Women in Defence U.K. charter for the second year. The charter reflects our aspirations to see women represented and empowered across the defence sector and our intention to work with fellow industry leaders to enhance the gender balance.
Our well established Balance@Avon initiative continues to motivate, empower and support all employees, particularly those who may feel that they are in the minority. The Balance@Avon team has also rolled out a mentoring programme which was made available to all employees across our sites. As part of this, mentors and mentees received formalised training from a professional tutor. We also continued to create an environment where all females in the business can thrive by celebrating International Women’s Day, conducting our first Develop x Balance training workshop and becoming committed to being a menopause-friendly workplace.
Our U.S. sites report equal employment opportunities data annually to the U.S. Government and to the State of California under pay equity requirements. Affirmative action plans are also in place which outline goals for women and minorities, veterans and people with disabilities by establishment.
Our average U.K. gender pay gap for FY22 (reported in April 2023) is 36.4%. The pay gap is due to the Company having more women in operations and assembly roles in the lowest quartile (57.1%) compared to more men in the top quartile (80%) and does not stem from paying men and women differently for the same or equivalent work. While the percentage of men in the upper quartile pay has reduced since FY20, our existing focus to address the gender balance at our Company leadership team levels continues through initiatives such as Balance@Avon, which will help to close the overall pay gap with more female representation at this level.
We strive to provide an environment that offers training and development opportunities for all. We have continued with our Professional Development Programme, a year-long talent development programme, with the aim to identify, encourage and support the next generation of internal talent to contribute to the business beyond the scope of their current roles. Participants set personal development targets which are worked on for the year with internal mentor support. Mentors are Executive Committee members who provide a source of advice and support for the participants in addition to their line manager.
Our talent management process, which we call the Global Performance Management Process (GPMP), is a critical tool that enables the Group to ensure all employees are working towards goals aligned with business objectives, and their career aspirations and development needs are being discussed and reviewed. We also continue to focus on early careers, giving those at the beginning of their career journey help and support that they need to establish a successful and fulfilling career through work experience, internships, placement years, apprenticeships and graduate programmes.
We believe our employees thrive the most when they can improve and enhance their skill sets and work on their personal development. We provide our employees with access to tools, such as LinkedIn Learning, to help with their career progression and personal development in whichever way works best for them. With over 1,000 hours of LinkedIn Learning viewed over the past year, it has proven to be an invaluable tool for our employees to complete online courses in any areas of interest to progress their career paths and expand knowledge.
In October 2022 we approved a significant annual pay adjustment which reflected the impact rising costs are having on our employees.
We have continued to seek guidance from an HR consultant to help us define our remuneration philosophy and review pay and benefits in order to retain and attract talented individuals.
We continually work with and for the communities in which we operate, recognising our role as a major local employer. We sponsored two programmes in partnership with Bath Rugby: Attacking Maths and Girls’ Participation Hubs, with the aim of creating a positive social impact in our local region. These sessions promote health and wellbeing and develop numeracy skills.
We have recently expanded our support to the Team Forces Foundation, a charity that provides financial grants to help make sport and adventure more accessible to those who serve in the British Armed Forces. Through this, we sponsored the Forces Wives Challenge on its Ride to Freedom in June 2023. The team of eight military wives completed its horse ride across the testing terrain of the Pyrenees to demonstrate the power that adventure can have on those living with physical disabilities, mental health and chronic illnesses.
In addition to partnering with not-for-profit and charitable organisations, we continue to encourage our employees to use the charitable giving programme through which employees can request donations or match funding for causes close to them. This year our incredible employees across our sites have participated in fire walks, hikes, abseiling and marathons in support of their local communities. Over $124k has been donated to charitable causes during the period.