Annual report 2010 - Imperial Tobacco Group

We have revised our IMS and employee communicationsabout these revisions are ongoing. From April 2010 weintroduced a monthly ‘alleged breaches’ report of our IMSwith information collated centrally through our non-financialreporting system. Since then eight alleged breaches werereported and investigated. Three were dismissed, one wasresolved and investigations into the remaining four allegedbreaches are ongoing.We believe that the decision to enjoy tobacco products isa choice for adults. We do not want children to smoke andhave consistently worked with governments to preventunder-age smoking. During the year we reviewed our youthsmoking prevention activities and benchmarked ourselvesagainst our peers, with better sharing of best practicearound the Group an objective for 2011.Developing our PeopleWe have set up a project team to further understand andresearch the key skills and capabilities required to deliversustainable sales growth. We have conducted researchto assess our current capabilities and benchmarked themagainst other FMCG companies. The results have providedvaluable insight into our current skills and capabilities andare helping to shape a number of initiatives.A broad range of development initiatives is available to ouremployees including our International Career ManagementProgram and we launched a second cycle of the programmein April 2010. The programme targets employees at theearly stage of their career and provides training, coaching,mentoring and international assignments over a two tothree year period.We have made a number of improvements to ourperformance management processes for 2010 to furtherstrengthen our employees’ performance. Our rewardstrategies are linked to Group, market and individualperformance and we encourage employees to build astake in the Company through share-based employeebenefit schemes. Further information is included in ourRemuneration report on page 78.We have chosen not to report employment practice datafor this financial year, as the data reported would have beenunrepresentative of the Group as it would only reflect ouroperations prior to the acquisition of Altadis. We have agreedrevised employment practice measures. These focus on ourfour main areas of general employment practice, fairnessat work, health protection and wellbeing and employeerelations. Case studies on our progress are available on ourwebsite. We will be reporting on our revised employmentpractice measures in 2011.Completing the Integration of AltadisA priority during the year was completing the plannedorganisational changes and integration of Imperial Tobaccoand Altadis. We provided comprehensive outplacementsupport and training to affected employees in the UK, Spain,France, Belgium and Germany in addition to very competitiveseverance payments. Wherever possible we have relocatedaffected employees with a number of internal redeploymentopportunities available. A case study on our approach isavailable on our website www.imperial-tobacco.com/cr.Engagement and ConsultationEmployee consultation and engagement is fundamentalto our success and we actively promote two-way dialogue.A total of 72 employees representing 17 countries attendedour joint European Employee Forum for Altadis and ImperialTobacco employees to enable information and consultationat the European level.We have won a number of awards during the year both asan employer and for our human resources practices andpolicies. In the UK, we were recognised for our commitmentto our UK employees and awarded a “Best Companies”accreditation. In Slovakia, we were the winner of an annualsurvey of companies to find the country’s best employer, andwere commended as having effective HR policies alignedwith both the employees’ interests and the goals of thebusiness. While in Greece, we won the KPMG Best PeopleManagement Initiative Award in the category of employeeperformance, reward management and retention.Performance Highlights: CRWe commenced negotiationsto form a single EuropeanWorks Council to representour employees’ interests.45