Centrica plc: 2009 AARP International Innovative Employer Awards

By: AARP.org | Source: AARP.org | September 2009

Winning Years: 2009, 2008
Industry: Service Sector
Location: Windsor, United Kingdom
URL: www.centrica.com

Highlights of 2009 Winning Strategies
 
Centrica’s efforts to create an age-diverse workforce include an Age Action Group, which convenes managers from different business units to create a detailed action plan addressing the company’s aging workforce. Centrica also has an Age Awareness e-learning package for managers and employees to raise awareness about age-diversity issues. The company supports work-life balance through comprehensive, flexible work policies and a caregivers’ network.

Additional Policies and Practices
 
Lifelong Learning and Training: Centrica’s employee-development programs are built on the principles of inclusiveness, easy access, and equal opportunity for all. Centrica offers a suite of training and development programs which offer online and on-the-job learning to meet individual and team learning styles and preferences.

Centrica’s Group-Wide General Management Programme aims to build the company’s senior management capability and to develop successors for key roles. Subjects include change leadership, project management, finance awareness, performance management, coaching, strategic thinking, and innovation. All employees can enroll in the program. Individual employees nominate themselves to workshops after having a development-planning conversation with their manager. The company also offers support for continuing professional development and further education.

The company offers a Diversity and Age Awareness class to its new employees and includes the topics among its refresher-course offerings for existing employees. The company’s  structure for career progression and development ensures that employees have opportunities for lifelong learning. Promotion, training, and turnover statistics show no significant differences as a result of age.

Centrica has also removed the upper-age limits for entrance to its British Gas apprenticeship schemes. One recent alumni of the program is 57 years old.

Flexible Work Arrangements: Centrica aims to support employees’ individual needs through a variety of working arrangements. These include policies supporting flexible schedules and career sabbaticals and for caregiving, maternity, family leave (including parental and dependents’ leave), and retirement.
 
Centrica considers a range of flexible working patterns, including changes to the hours or times employees work, flexible start and finish times, shift work, job-sharing, staggered hours, part-time, and compressed hours. At Centrica, 60 percent of employees have some form of flexible-working arrangement.
 
More than 60 percent of the company’s employees are now benefiting from greater flexibility through the Work:Wise program. The initiative was introduced to help employees balance their commitments inside and outside of the workplace and to make better use of office space.
 
A Cranfield University research report commissioned by Centrica found that flexible workers scored significantly higher than non-flexible workers on organizational commitment, empowerment, job fulfillment, and job satisfaction. Of flexible workers, 70 percent reported being either “satisfied” or “very satisfied” with their jobs, and there were no statistically significant differences related to the respondents’ age groups.
 
Health Promotion and Protection: Centrica’s occupational-health program and policies aim to prevent ill health arising from work activities and to promote wellness among employees. The program includes ensuring a good fit between the person and the job and recommending suitable adjustments. Centrica’s approach is to take action through practical support and training, by raising awareness of work-related health issues, and by encouraging personal responsibility for all aspects of health—both at work and more widely.

The company’s Building Confidence program seeks to increase management capability to deal with health issues in the workplace. This program includes training sessions on a range of subjects, such as musculoskeletal disorders, confidentiality, and the Disability Discrimination Act.

The Wellness Induction program offers information and interventions to empower and educate employees about their well-being, including discounted gym memberships, the use of fleet vans to get to the gym, and information on knee and back wellness. Wellness Induction is now also part of the apprentice program.

Centrica partners with Nuffield Health and Occupational Health to offer engineers a program that addresses overall lifestyle elements that can result in injury and illness. The program is particularly aimed at younger and older engineers. It also includes a two-hour personal-coaching session at the gym.

The Carers’ Network, which employees who are also caregivers set up in 2004 to provide mutual support and advice about combining caring and working, has more than 100 members. Employees with caregiving responsibilities are encouraged to join the network, to share experiences, and to help shape the company’s practices on caregiving.
 
Diversity Promotion: Centrica has rolled out diversity-awareness training across the group. Policies include an expectation of diversity and inclusion, the avoidance of harassment and bullying in the workplace, a guide to equality and diversity, and a guide to the Disability Discrimination Act.

The British Gas Services (BGS) Academy has a dedicated diversity-and-inclusion team in charge of recruiting older and younger workers and improving the representation of female engineering recruits and those from ethnic minorities.

A core member of the Employers Forum on Age, Centrica recognizes the importance of employing an age-diverse workforce. Age has been a core element of the company’s diversity strategy and policies for a number of years. The Centrica Age Action Group continues to review company policies and practices to ensure they are age friendly and beyond mere compliance. The company is reaching its goal of addressing age diversity by introducing a new retirement process, amending redundancy (or layoff) schemes, removing the upper-age limits for entrance to Centrica’s British Gas apprenticeship schemes, introducing a healthy aging program, making innovations in flexible working, and developing an Age-Awareness e-learning package for managers and employees.

Centrica’s “age aware” communications, training programs, and policies continue to demonstrate that Centrica employs workers of all ages.

Recruitment: Centrica has many established policies and practices that focus on age neutrality to attract and recruit new talent. Removing age as a factor from the selection process and from the way it thinks about hiring, the company has invested heavily in educating its recruiting population. In its job descriptions, Centrica does not look for “years of experience” but for the skills, attitudes, and behaviors that are known to be required in order to do a great job in the organization. At the same time, in order to ensure that Centrica’s workforce reflects its diverse customer base, the company employs recruitment campaigns to attract older workers and people of diverse ethnicities.