2006 has been a busy year for the development of holistic Group HR support for staff. WYG has always highly prized its people but over the last year the Group has built sustainability into its treatment of its key assets.
Principal achievements in this regard include:
- the publication of diversity and flexible working policies supported by the appointment of Diversity Champions from all Group Business Units to assist local line managers in interpretation and implementation throughout the Group;
- the completion and analysis of the Group's first All Employee Opinion Survey and the measurement of the effectiveness of responsive actions to improve communications, appraisal procedures, assistance on projects with tight timescales and the profile of corporate client care;
- the publication of a Staff Handbook incorporating all HR policy and procedure to which staff may wish to refer in one place;
- the extension of the Group's staff prizes programme to include a "Most Significant Contribution to the Community" award;
- the establishment of Investors in People certification throughout the continuing offices of WYG and the development of a programme to secure "Corporate Accreditation" in 2007;
- the development of a graduate recruitment and development strategy upon which it is hoped to found a set of structured programmes in the current year;
- the trialling of a competency-based appraisal process for business managers in a select number of Engineering offices. It is planned to extend the scope (to all Staff grades) and spread (to all offices of all Business Units) of this process during the current year; and
- in the field of health and safety:
- - the appointment of full-time Business Unit Integrated Management Systems Coordinators with professional qualifications;
- - the appointment of the Group's Civil and Structural Engineering Professional Director to the role of Construction Health and Safety Champion, providing high level focus and ambassadorial support on a wide range of health and safety issues relevant to our service provision; and
- - attainment of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) Gold Award for the second year running.
The All Staff Opinion Survey will be run again in the current year and benchmarked against last year's results.