Go-Ahead

Our Corporate Responsibility

As an employer

Our responsibility is to provide a positive work environment conducive to the recruitment and retention of staff.
 

We employ over 27,100 people across the UK, and in many of the cities where we operate we are one of the largest employers. We have a responsibility to all our people to provide a positive, supportive working environment, which in turn leads to improved customer service amongst our passengers and customers.

Training and development

Training helps our service staff to respond to customer needs, and our drivers to drive safely and efficiently. Training is an investment in our people, helping them to feel valued and move forward in their careers.

This year we have significantly increased the amount we spent on training and in bus introduced a Certificate of Professional Competence, a new mandatory qualification requirement for bus drivers.

Health, safety and well-being

Each of our operating companies has a comprehensive health and safety management system, and our Group expectations demand that they continue to push the boundaries of their health and safety performance. Health and safety performance is reviewed weekly throughout our operating companies and we encourage every member of staff to take responsibility for any health and safety issues that they can control. We use an external specialist consultancy to monitor and audit our performance, and training on health and safety matters is provided to all staff.

Equality and diversity

We employ people on the basis of their individual skills and potential. Our passengers and customers are drawn from every segment of the population, and we would like our employees to reflect this diversity. We are particularly focused on attracting more women to the bus industry.

Employee engagement

An engaged workforce means better attendance rates, lower employee turnover, and a better service for our passengers. We encourage our employees to share their views and opinions. A number of our companies have Stakeholder Boards, which bring together employees, individual passengers and representative bodies to share their views. The insight provided by these boards plays a key role in driving improvements.

Our companies maintain relationships with recognised trade unions and have a network of local employee representatives who are consulted on key business decisions.

Staff turnover

Keeping staff turnover and absence rates low is a priority for the Group. This has been an extremely difficult year for many people and the economic climate remains uncertain. Sadly, a number of our companies did find it necessary to make redundancies this year. We sought to keep these to a minimum by taking alternative steps such as internal transfers where possible.

  • £10.4m

  • Training spend

  • 2007/08 £6.1m*

  • 102,931

  • Training days Group-wide

  • 2007/08 53,495

RIDDOR accidents per 100 employees†
Number of employees** (%)
Staff turnover

Bus Division

Rail Division

Aviation Services Division
Absence rate (%)
Women employed (%)

*restated data.

†The Reporting of Injuries,Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations (RIDDOR) is a statutory requirement for all companies and relates to a work place incident which results in loss of work for over 3 days or a legally reportable incident to the Health & Safety Executive.

**Employee numbers include part time workers and are based on year end figures. These are different to the employee numbers reported in the Annual Report, which are based on averages for the year.Go-Ahead only employs 53 people at head office out of a total of 27,100.

††Data includes the effects of widespread employee restructuring at London Midland during their first year of operation (2007/08).


 

©2006 The Go-Ahead Group plc.
Registered address: 3rd Floor, 41-51 Grey Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 6EE
Telephone 0191 232 3123, Fax 0191 221 0315
Registered company number: 2100855. Registered in England & Wales