Annual report 2008 - Aker Solutions

Our business
People and development
Preferred employer in achallenging market
It is our people that enable Aker Solutions to offer our customers a
service superior to our competitors. Our reputation in the employment
market is key to attracting the most talented people.
In 2008 we started to see the effect of our
streamlined, recruitment process, with over
40 000 candidate applications from more
than 35 countries. The global recruitment
process, featuring hands-on recruitment
principles and supported by arecruitment
management system, ensures transparency
across our business. Together with a
common interview guide based on our
values, candidates wereexposed to ahigh
quality recruitment experience supporting
our vision of being the preferred employer.
It has been achallenging market, with a
shortage of suitably skilled people entering
the engineering industry generally, and the
energy sector in particular.Despite increasing
competition for qualified resources, we
successfully managed to hire a total of
4108 new employees in 2008. Through
focusing on retention activities we have
increased the stability of our workforce,
reducing turnover to below nine percent.
Attracting new employees
Following a successful national recruitment
campaign in Norway in late 2007,
similar campaigns wereconducted in other
regions in 2008. Aker’s new recruitment
programme for the US market was
launched in May in connection with the
Offshore Technology Conference 2008 in
Houston, Texas. The programme covers
all the Aker companies with activities in the
US and is based on the employees‘ own
attitude and commitment. It also features a
regional web site and even anew word
–Akertude (see www.akertude.com).
Our efforts in attracting employees are
also validated by our People Survey,where
the top development area since the last
survey was “Weattract talented people”. It
showed that avast majority of our people
would strongly recommend Aker Solutions
as an employer in our industry.
Recruitment of employees
Regional distribution
Total workforce
Regional distribution
Norway 32.5%
Americas 23.8%
Africa &Middle
East 0.6%
Asia Pacific 18.2%
Europe (ex. Norway) 24.2%
Norway 49.7%
Americas 20.4%
Africa &Middle
East 0.6%
Asia Pacific
13.7%
Europe (ex. Norway) 15.2%
Co-operation in focus
In Aker Solutions there isalong
tradition of including employees
and their representatives in
decision-making processes. This
ensures abroad basis for making
good decisions, balancing the
interests of the many stakeholder
groups that any company
engages with –especially those
interests related to welfare and
working conditions. These
traditions are well established in
Norway, though this is not yet the
case everywhere the company
operates.
Aker Solutions operates in a
context characterised by increasing
globalisation and fierce competition.
This means we must make
significant efforts to maintain our
competitiveness in all our markets.
Employee representatives and
management must work together on
an ongoing basis to seek solutions
that promote socio-economic
progress in the regions in which we
operate, while ensuring the longterm
performance of our company.
In October 2008, Aker Solutions’
major shareholder, Aker ASA, signed
an international framework agreement
with the Norwegian United
Federation of Trades Unions and
the International Metalworkers
Federation on behalf of all the
companies that arepart of Aker.The
agreement commits all the parties
to work towards the development
of good working relations.
Aker, the Norwegian United Federation of Trades Unions and
the International Metalworkers Federation enter ajoint agreement.
Employees
Regional distribution
Contract staff
Regional distribution
Norway 49.7%
Americas 17.2%
Africa &Middle
East 0.6%
Asia Pacific
14.6%
Europe (ex. Norway) 17.5%
Norway 49.6%
Americas 27.4%
Africa &Middle
East 0.6%
Asia Pacific
11.7%
Europe (ex. Norway) 10.2%
Aker Solutions annual report 2008 49