Our ambitions
To continue to develop an engaging and inclusive workforce where our employees feel valued and can fulfil their potential.
Build relationships with the local community, provide support where needed, and leave a lasting legacy.
Employee engagement
Our employee engagement activities during the pandemic were significantly limited. However, no sooner were the travel restrictions lifted, than the Executive Team was out on the road visiting local sites and meeting with shop floor and office staff. We listened to stories of loss, reunions and service and what stood out was the resilience and commitment of our employees. The meaningful insights we gained through these informal conversations will shape our employee engagement agenda in the year ahead.
Across the globe, our team in Germany organised an adventure day when employees and their families and members of the local community participated in fun and learning activities about sustainability. Our team in Sweden hosted a Company-wide cross-functional team activity to immerse themselves in our strategy and our products.
Our Employee Engagement Forum, attended by Non-Executive Board member Claire Tiney and representatives from all countries, continues to receive positive feedback. This is a great opportunity for our employees to showcase successes and learnings as well as gain a deeper understanding of our strategic imperatives.
Executive team engaging with employees at ERI Corporation, North Macedonia
Diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and wellbeing
Our employees represent different nationalities, cultures, backgrounds and sexual orientations. We are determined to foster a culture of equity and mutual respect where all our employees feel valued and their contributions recognised. We have recently kicked off engagement sessions with our employees to shape our DEI agenda for FY23. Furthermore, we are also setting up a DEI Committee to steer us towards achieving greater gender and ethnic diversity in our leadership teams and an inclusive work culture and further enhance our employee wellbeing offering.
Kick-off event of the Women@Volution employee resource group
Learning and development
We are committed to building a learning culture at Volution and will continue to make significant investments in our learning platforms to ensure easy access and relevant content is available to our employees. In 2022, we focused on strengthening training in the areas of compliance, health and safety and information security. Our goal in FY23 is to roll out critical functional and leadership skills training to enable our employees to continue to grow their careers and build skills for the future. We have made good progress in providing development opportunities for our employees and in FY22, 22% of vacancies were filled through internal moves.
Our communities
Our employees’ commitment to support the communities we serve is unwavering and despite the Covid-19 constraints our employees continued to champion their selected charities.
22%
of roles filled internally Target for FY23 >25%
187
Number of safety walks Target for FY23 >250
11,167
Number of hours in formal training Target for FY23 > 12,500
Some of the activities our teams engaged in to support their charities
Health and safety
Health and safety is of major importance to us when considering the day-to-day health, safety and welfare of our customers, employees and contractors. We are focused on our zero harm ambition and having the highest standards in the effective management of our health and safety obligations. In FY22 there were 187 safety walks carried out by senior managers across all our operations which is testament to the commitment and the duty of care our leaders have towards our employees.
In February 2022, our ventilation operations in the UK implemented a business wide management system in order to structure all quality, environmental compliance and health and safety recording. A notable achievement is the recent ISO 45001 certification gained across all our ventilation brands and their operations within the UK, demonstrating our robust health and safety management system. At a Group level we have seen a decrease in the reportable accident rate as compared to last year (excluding recent acquisitions) and are fully committed to further strengthening our health and safety culture across the entire organisation.
ISO 45001
Certification gained across ventilation operations in the UK
Supply chain
Across our operations, we see opportunities to lead suppliers to better ethical, social and environmental performance. We are increasing the level of transparency in our supplier selection and scheduled audit processes. We believe in the principles of respect, safety, inclusiveness and a shared ambition for continuous improvement for the conditions in which our people work and live. We believe that the same principles should be applied throughout the supply chains that work with us in fulfilling our purpose of delivering healthy air, sustainably. These are some of the additional actions that we have taken in the past year to ensure that people working within our supply chains are treated in line with our principles and values:
- We have widened the scope of our physical Modern Slavery and Child Labour audits to include four new countries in line with the Global Slavery Index.
- We have offboarded a key supplier which would not co-operate with Modern Slavery and Child Labour audit requirements.
- Suppliers are now also required to disclose what policies they have in place that safeguard the rights and conditions of their employees. We expect them to develop these when they are not in place.
We will continue to increase transparency in how people are treated in our supply chains, and to strengthen checks and balances that will ensure compliance. We expect all our supply chain partners to reflect our commitment to treating people in accordance with the principles and values as stated in our supplier Code of Conduct.
In the second half of this year we are also proud to have become signatories to the CEO Water Mandate and the UN Global Compact. We are committed to accelerating sustainability efforts and scaling up our impact and have started workstreams to embed their principles in our operations and supply chains.
