Corporate Social Responsibility Report - Ahold

Checking the pulseIn 2007, Ahold conducted theLeadership Pulse Survey to gaugeunderstanding of the company’sstrategy, obtain views about its corevalues and measure employeeengagement. A total of 80% oftargeted employees respondedto the survey, providing acomprehensive reflection of thegroup’s opinions and a solid basison which to build plans to addressareas employees identified asbeing important.Career progression is based on an employee’s capabilities,performance and behavior consistent with our core values.We focus on developing our people to ensure we have the rightmanagement potential to meet our future needs. The majority ofour vacancies are filled by internal promotion. When necessary,we recruit externally to bring in additional skills, perspectivesand experience.We work to be a company that reflectsand supports the communities we serve:where people are treated fairly and cangrow and have fulfilling careers.We expect that all key employees receive performanceappraisals to support their professional development. For allemployees our goal is to develop skills and ensure that we havethe best processes, tools and innovative solutions in place to runour business in the simplest and most efficient manner possible.TrainingSince most of our employees have direct contact withcustomers, they need to have the right knowledge and skills tomake a visit to our stores an excellent experience. Training is oneof the tools that support our customer focus and our employees’professional growth. Every position in the company has aspecified training offer.Most formal training activities in our companies are handledlocally and focus on store-level jobs, since these employeesmake up the largest group in our employment base. However,we have a computer-based learning management system inplace that provides training opportunities to both store andcorporate employees, Ahold-wide. This learning tool givesemployees access to web-based training and educationalprograms targeted to their positions. It enables us to quickly andefficiently distribute training programs to a wide audience,ensure consistency, and monitor compliance with mandatorytraining. At Giant-Carlisle, for example, over 15,000 employeescompleted web-based training programs in 2007. In 2008, Stop& Shop and Albert Heijn will implement this learning system forstore-level employees.A great place to workWe work to be a company that reflects and supports thecommunities we serve: where people are treated fairly, can growand have fulfilling careers.Measuring employee satisfactionMeasuring employee satisfaction and encouraging dialogueare increasingly important. We have found that customersatisfaction is strongly linked to employee satisfaction andcommitment. Each of our operating companies has formaland informal methods of gauging employee satisfaction.Ahold CSR Report 2007 51