annual report 2007 - the Admiral Group plc

36 CORPORATE RESPONSIBILITYCorporate responsibilityThe Admiral Group is committed to dealing fairly and with a high level of integrity with allits stakeholders. The corporate responsibility report sets out our approach and the way wemeasure our success in dealing with each group of stakeholders:CustomersThe Group has always regarded its customers as central to the success of the business. As at 31December 2007 the Group insured 1.5m vehicles, up 16% from 1.3m the year before. We focuson open communication with our customers providing high standards of service at all pointsin the customer cycle from new business, customer service, renewals, claims and complaints.The Group's commitment to quality is demonstrated through its Quality Measures Programme.Everyone in the organisation has a part to play in ensuring a high standard of quality. Everydepartment in the Group has a unique set of quality measures to gauge performance.. Themeasures are updated each year to challenge staff to make continual improvements. Theprogramme is reported every month in the internal Company magazine and awards are presentedeach year for the best departments. The annual measures bonus provides a financial incentivefor staff to drive incremental change throughout the business and was paid out in full for the2007 year.As well as this programme, quality representatives throughout the Group monitor the service theCompany provides through the thousands of comment forms it receives back from customersevery month. By listening to customer comments, Admiral can improve the quality of service itprovides.The Group’s Compliance department is now working on a Treating Customers Fairly managementinformation pack pulling together specific measures that will demonstrate that we areconsistently treating our customers fairly.EmployeesWe believe the happier our staff are, the better they will do their job. This means that weconstantly work to improve our staff’s working environment. We also try to make sure that theworking day for our staff is as fun and rewarding as we can make it.It is important for employees to understand the Company’s goals and objectives. We work tocommunicate this in as many ways as possible. As an example, we encourage staff to attendour Annual Staff General Meeting (SGM). The SGM is arranged to enable staff to hear theviews of the executive directors and some of the non-executive directors on a wide range ofsubjects including the performance of the Group and the market within which we operate; theexperiences of non-executive directors within and outside of the Group; and the Group’s shareplans. We believe that employing well-informed staff will improve motivation and make Admirala better place to work.The best measures of our staff’s assessment of their working environment are the surveysthat they have completed. Following independent measurement by the organisations involvedAdmiral has received the following awards: