About Us

Employees

Our policy is to:

• Comply with all legislation relating to employee relations in the countries in which we operate.
• Maintain an equal opportunities policy in line with, and going beyond, regulations.
• Comply with, and where possible exceed, health and safety regulations.
• Maintain a learning and development programme for employees, constantly improving business performance through talent management and organisation succession planning – including graduate and apprentice schemes.
• Facilitate and encourage two-way communications at e2v, including a secure whistle-blowing process and regular employee survey.
• Maintain and benchmark a policy ensuring e2v offers competitive work packages.
• Create a great working environment where people want to work.
• Encourage all employees to live the Group’s key values.
• Maximise employee engagement through listening to all of our employees and proactively improving how we work together. 

This year we established a cross functional global team to review our core values, defining the behaviours and relationships we have with and can expect of each other and exhibit in our dealings with customers and stakeholders. Benchmarking against peers and holding workshops, which over 1,000 employees attended, our existing values were refreshed and updated to meet the needs and demands of our business for the coming years.  These new values are:

• Integrity
• Excellence throughout
• Customers first

The Group completed an employee pulse survey during the period, which showed improvements across all areas compared to the previous year’s employee action survey. Key priorities are being taken forward into specific action plans.

This year has seen the embedding of our new Customer First award, introduced as part of our customer centric focus and alongside the existing Smart Thinking Award & Recognition Scheme (STARS). The schemes recognise employees who act in a customer first way or make valuable suggestions and perform above and beyond their normal responsibilities.

STARS awards are made both instantly and as part of a quarterly process, whilst Customer First awards are made quarterly only.  Over the last year, a total of 204 of our people have received STARS awards, sharing a total of £13,190, and 16 Customer First Awards were made with a total of £3,250, where ideas have included a quote tracking system to improve the flow and control of quotes to ensure they are provided in a timely manner and wording changes to published instructions for the processing of returns to make them simpler to understand.

We are also committed to developing all our people and have a comprehensive, innovative and high quality learning and development programme in place that supports our organisational capability requirements and future goals.

September 2011 saw the relaunch of our two year graduate recruitment scheme, with 17 graduates joining e2v. 19 New apprentices joined the ongoing apprenticeship scheme, 15 in Chelmsford and 4 in Grenoble.

A management modular development programme now supports our management cadre and a forthcoming new talent development programme will grow our existing talent and future leaders in their roles.

All of these initiatives are underpinned by our commitment to creating a discrimination-free environment for our people, with a positive whistle-blowing culture and where our policies meet, and often exceed, legal requirements, leading to best practice standards.

In the UK we also work to encourage young people’s interest in business, science and technology, working with national programmes such as Young Enterprise and STEM TEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Network), sponsored by the Department of Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform. e2v has around 30 ambassadors, including 8 of the 16 UK based graduates taken on as part of the 2011 Graduate Programme, who go out into schools and colleges to work with young people, answering their questions and raising interest and awareness of careers in business, science and technology, thus developing a pipeline of motivated and capable people into the manufacturing sector.

A further tranche (the eighth) of the Company’s share save scheme was issued in the period.

Health, Safety and Environment

Our overall commitment to minimising adverse impact on the environment is considered as part of an integrated Health, Safety & Environment (HS&E) approach, itself shaped by the desire to avoid harm to people and the environment. e2v also recognises that good HS&E management and performance is linked to good business performance.  Our goal is to be recognised for excellence in our HS&E performance.

HS&E Culture

e2v applies a risk based management system supported by a strong HS&E culture.  A key element of our strategy is to continue to develop a strong HS&E culture throughout the Group which in turn will demonstrate consistent, visible leadership and commitment from managers at all levels, with effective engagement of our employees.

We continue to develop and deliver robust processes in order to deliver against key HS&E objectives set in December 2009 and covering a three year period to December 2012.

In summary, our 2009 – 2012 objectives are to:

(1)  Figures had not been normalised by turnover for 2012 at the time of this report.

It should be noted that our core three year objectives have been largely achieved at the end of the second year. We will use this coming nine month period as an opportunity to consolidate the reductions achieved, secure further reductions with the objective of achieving a Platinum award in the BiTC CR Index and review challenging targets for the coming 3 year period.

To ensure we continue with our progress and to demonstrate continuous improvement e2v has made significant investment in training for all of our employees and have developed targeted training plans across the Group. This is an ongoing process and has contributed significantly to improvements in our key objectives.

Every e2v site holds third party certified ISO14001 and OHSAS18001 Standards accreditation and our comprehensive Corporate HS&E audit programme assesses the implementation of our HS&E management systems across all business units. This is a rolling programme and to date has demonstrated continuous improvement across the Group.

e2v’s commitment and contribution to developing best HS&E practice throughout our supply chain and with our customers has demonstrated significant benefits and forged stronger relationships.

Occupational Safety

Improvements in employee training and awareness have been directly responsible for the significant reduction seen in our lost time injuries, demonstrating a 66% reduction since the end of 2009. e2v benchmarks its injury rates against the Standard Industrial Classification and currently has a score of only 303 per 100,000 employees compared to a national average of 996 for similar industries.  All of our reportable injuries have been minor with little potential of a serious outcome.

We acknowledge the importance to track injury rates and types in addition to focusing on key hazards in our workplaces and locations in which we operate.

Occupational Health

In line with our objective of zero ill health associated with the workplace, e2v have no occupational ill health cases reported.

e2v employs occupational health staff at our larger sites and focus is given primarily to the screening and surveillance of our employees for noise induced hearing loss, work related upper limb disorders, hand arm vibration syndrome, skin disease and asthma and associated respiratory illness.