Employee forums
Keeping our people informed
Strong internal communications processes ensure that our employees are well informed about the Group’s objectives, including our corporate social responsibility agenda. We want our employees to believe in Alliance Boots and to be willing and able to talk openly and confidently about issues that affect and concern them.
Our aim is to ensure that all our people are informed about and engaged in their part of the business locally, whilst augmenting their understanding about the Group and its future direction.
We communicate through a wide variety of channels, reflecting the diversity and geographical spread of our businesses. Approaches used to fulfil these aims include regular face-to-face team briefings, conference calls, magazines, newsletters and intranet sites. Feedback is sought on the effectiveness of our communications through surveys designed to gauge the opinions of our people and what is important to them.
In the year, Alliance Healthcare France increased its communications to employees to encourage their participation in CSR activities by introducing a news section devoted to CSR in its internal magazine Horizon. In addition, their human resources information sheet includes regular updates regarding CSR. For example, the February 2011 issue informed warehouse directors about the charter for disabled employees.
Effective internal communication is about enabling our employees to do their jobs to the best of their ability and helping people work together towards the same organisational goals. To this end, Alliance Boots produces regular information updates across a range of channels to its teams, including newsletters, internal announcements and a number of intranet sites – at Group, Division and business level.
We believe in open dialogue on how our businesses are performing and in forging meaningful partnerships with our people to achieve this. We communicate closely with works councils and other employee forums around Europe and have two European Works Councils to brief and consult with representatives on pan-European issues.
The two councils, covering the Health & Beauty Division and the Pharmaceutical Wholesale Division, met in November 2010 and June 2010 respectively. Holding these council meetings on an annual basis, which includes lively interactive sessions, helps us to keep employees up to date with developments within the Group and the wider healthcare market.
We encourage the further interest and involvement of our people in the Group’s future through reward schemes that are linked to business and individual performance. There are a number of other recognition schemes within our businesses to recognise and reward excellence, celebrating the particular commitment and achievements of our people.
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