Management, strategy and policies

Experian employs 15,500  people worldwide in a huge range of different roles. We rely heavily on the talents, skills and dedication of our people to succeed in our global markets. 

We have professional Human Resources (HR) teams in all our major countries, managing employee recruitment, benefits and development.  These teams work together in a global structure under our Group HR Director.

There is much work underway to harmonise and simplify our people management and we are introducing a global HR strategy, linked specifically to delivering our business strategy. It is focused on creating global alignment and a culture of people working together and communicating, collaborating and cooperating towards common goals.

In the strategy we recognise that we have concentrated on getting structures and processes right and now need to spend time on developing performance, basing this on results but also values, behaviours and skills. Building employee engagement is one of 12 global strategic initiatives for 2008, addressing three elements:

• How Experian operates with integrity in its internal dealings
  
  
• Ensuring people feel it is safe to speak up within the organisation
  
  
• How Experian is perceived as socially responsible in its communities

Other initiatives focus on building diversity and improving the global mobility of our teams as well as driving our talent development and management programmes deeper into the company.

The policies we use to manage our business are extensive and necessarily vary to some extent dependent on the country where we operate. This year we have launched ‘Policy On-Line’ which brought together policies and governance on line for all our people in UK and Ireland.

 A key policy introduced through this new software was our Code of Conduct enabling us to refresh the policy and improve people’s understanding of it. We also relaunched the diversity and information security policies. In the US a thorough policy review was completed and a communication about the HR policies went to all employees.

In Brazil, Serasa issues six key ethical policies to its employees as they join the company. Collectively known as ‘The Serasa Ethical Collection’ they cover ethical principles, house regulations, information security, shared values, management principles and corporate citizenship. They are updated and republished as necessary and people are expected to keep them at hand and in mind,