Employee engagement. Read more

Employee Engagement

A fully engaged employee will have a belief in the company and its goals, a pride in the way it operates and will be energised enough to go the extra mile. A combination of questions in Experian’s employee survey measured engagement including: Would you recommend Experian as a place to work? Would you work beyond what is required to help the company succeed? and Do you have a belief in Experian’s goals and objectives?

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Quick summary

To be a good employer to all, establishing a set of expected behaviours and values, ensuring that everyone working for us is treated fairly, given the maximum opportunity to fulfil their potential and that all our workplaces are safe and healthy

In a knowledge based business like ours, we rely on excellent people, well trained and motivated for success and we recognise that our people management is a key social responsibility.

In the face of tough market conditions this year we’ve taken firm actions to control our costs which have included making a number of redundancies across some of our geographies. At the same time we have been taking stock of and simplifying our processes, improving efficiency and making savings to ensure we’re better positioned when markets improve.

We have concentrated on making sure we communicate as well as possible, improving communication channels and means of two way communications: as well as face-to-face briefings around changes in the business we have redeveloped our US intranet, introduced a new format employee forum in the UK, launched an online newsletter in our Nordic region and created a strong feedback culture through blogs and forums, which was led in part by our UK and Ireland Managing Director.

We’ve pulled together globally too; our global HR team has developed programmes to help us transfer skills and knowledge across the Group and one to ensure we measure individual performance more consistently in all geographies. Systems are also being looked at on a global basis with a global convergence project bringing together people’s records on an Oracle platform to make it easier for our people and their managers to access information.

Policies have evolved and some have been re-launched and re-communicated, including Whistle-blowing which now has an independent, confidential helpline for employees to use if they have concerns.

And we’re learning from each other. ‘Serasa’, the business we acquired in June 2007, has been consistently ranked in the top ten best places to work in Brazil. Two strong contributing factors include their approach to learning and to employing people with disabilities. We are looking at how we can spread some of this excellence.

Finally, we’re listening. Our first global employee survey showed us what our people value and what they think of working for Experian. One important finding was that corporate citizenship is one of three strong drivers of employee engagement. We are going to run the survey again in 2009 and will continue to listen, learn and improve.