Employment policy, involvement and equal opportunities

The Board recognises that employees need to understand and contribute to the broad objectives of the business and seeks to develop good relations with employees through regular communications and consultation. Selection for employment and promotion is based on the objective assessment of ability and experience, giving full and fair consideration to all applications for employment, and the Group is committed to ensuring that its workplaces are free from unlawful discrimination of any sort. The Group strives to ensure that its policies and practices provide equal opportunities in respect of issues such as training, career development and promotion for all existing or potential staff irrespective of gender, race, ethnic origin, colour, religion, physical disability, marital status, sexual orientation or age. Every effort is made to retrain and support employees who become disabled while working within the Group.

The Group is committed to employee training and development at all levels of the organisation and endeavours to contribute to the industry’s future skills base through graduate and apprentice training programmes.

This year the Group’s human resources team, who provide our divisional management teams with advice on how to deliver best practice in terms of employment procedure and Group human resources policies, also helped to deliver strategic programmes such as our Performance Development Review and Management Development programmes. The strategic programmes are used to encourage employee involvement in the Group’s performance.

The Group works closely with the Construction Industry Training Board (‘CITB’) and the National House-Building Council (‘NHBC’) in training provision and a training plan is prepared annually linked to identified business priorities and objectives. Having regard to the nature of our business, particular focus is given in the training programme to construction management, trade skills, health and safety and customer care. We have also committed to the Construction Skills Certification Scheme (‘CSCS’) for our employees and subcontractors as part of the Major House Builders Group Qualified Workforce Initiative.