Staff

Names not numbers

We employ around 2,800 people at Willmott Dixon. But we believe everyone can make a difference. That’s because our businesses are small enough for managers to know individual team members and what they are capable of. At the same time, we try to be clear about the goals and standards we expect our people to meet.

Teams hold regular meetings in which discussion is encouraged and employees’ opinions are sought. Managers update them regularly on the Company’s position and future plans. And each year, we carry out a staff survey which, in 2010, demonstrated 74% staff satisfaction over a range of more than 40 metrics. Staff contentment shows up elsewhere, too: last year, each person took less an average of only 4.5 days off a year due to sickness. We have won a number of awards for the quality of our workplace environment.

Supportive employer

Willmott Dixon aims to have employees who are challenged by, but content in their work. We try to give everyone the opportunity to reach their career potential, growing talent and promoting from within wherever possible.

Professional qualifications are a requirement for all management-level employees and over 850 people have achieved them. For our direct-labour workforce we expect everyone to hold a qualification showing they are qualified to do their job. For some of our tradespeople this has been extended into multiskill training allowing us to be more efficient and complete more jobs first time.

Our reputation and quality of our work relates directly to the abilities of our people so their ongoing training is essential. 2011 saw £2.2m invested in their development, equivalent to £792 or over three days training for every employee. Our staff turnover was 9%, lower than our benchmark level of 10%, but slightly up on 2010. Courses can be taught in our dedicated training centre in Basingstoke or on individual company sites, fall into the following categories:

• IT Training
• Technical Training
• Health and Safety Training
• Commercial Training
• Management Development Training
• Personal Development Training
• Sustainability Training

You can view our full training list here.

To make sure all this is paying off, staff have regular performance and career development reviews and the managing director from each company gives a yearly presentation to the board on every member of staff's development, performance, and potential. We continually review our development and training programmes to make sure they make the grade. We also invest seriously in the future, and have 95 trainees in our management trainee scheme.

Healthy and safe

We have a target of zero accidents onsite and have developed a number of policies, training programmes and communication strategies to get our message across. These include campaigns to encourage safer sites, mandatory minimum qualifications for site workers in our supply chain and catchy advertising. We regularly review all policies to make sure they are working.

Treating people fairly

We recognise the value of a workforce in which people from differing backgrounds are encouraged to offer fresh ideas experiences and perceptions. Last year, 19.4% of our employees were female against an 14% industry average. Meanwhile, 8.6% our employees were from a minority ethnic background versus 4% for the industry as a whole. (Equality and Diversity Statistics 2011). Our equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) charter which details how our people are expected to treat each other: fairly and with dignity.

By 2014, we are aiming for: a workforce profile 50% higher than the industry average on key diversity measures (such as gender and ethnicity) and to achieve a better than 85% staff satisfaction rating on our EDI policies. We are also looking at external auditing.

Rewards and Benefits

In addition to competitive salaries, company car /car allowances and generous non-contractual bonus schemes, we offer lots of other benefits. These include corporately negotiated discounts, pension and life assurance schemes and health benefits. We also offer a range of other perks such as the bike4work cycle purchase scheme, health screening, gym membership and childcare vouchers. We believe this helps contribute to our low turnover rates.

We have embedded sustainable development into its bonus scheme for employees. In 2011 employee’s bonus payments can be increased by up to 20% as a result of performance against a set of ten project sustainability indicators.

The annual incentive scheme for managing directors is directly linked to employee bonuses and engagement. The overall bonus awarded to employees and level of satisfaction derived from an annual employee survey weight the level of payments achieved. The staff survey includes questions related to sustainable development.