Investment in people
We continue to place considerable emphasis on developing the skills and capabilities of our people. Whilst training spend was down on previous years, there has been an annual training investment of £16.7m during the year and through careful prioritisation we have been able to maintain investment in those areas of greatest importance.
Our suite of client relationship skills and project management courses has been modernised and improved. Importantly, as part of these improvements, the knowledge and skills associated with engaging with clients on carbon critical design have been added and embedded into the content of the courses.
During the year a new Group-wide career development framework was successfully launched. This framework brings greater clarity on how to navigate a career path in Atkins, and reinforces the fact that the Company can provide interesting and rewarding careers to individuals whether their contribution has a technical, project management or business management bias.
There has been a focus on engaging more with talent and talent management at all levels: management development centres, development dialogue and the senior management development programme are proving to be vital tools through which we identify, engage and develop talent at middle and senior levels (250 individuals participated in 2009/10). We also continue to invest in people management skills with 1,300 managers attending our portfolio of courses dedicated to this.
Improvements have been made to the systems, processes and resources dedicated to supporting learning and development. The combination of improvements to our learning management system and the establishment of a central learning and development centre of expertise will enable better visibility and access to our training courses, more robust reporting, tighter management of training costs and closer alignment of training activity with business needs.
The priority for graduate development this year has been to improve communication with the graduate community. This was achieved through various means, including a redesign of our graduate intranet site, regular intranet articles congratulating those who have achieved chartered status or professional qualifications, and an increase in email updates and stakeholder presentations about the graduate development programme.
In 2009 Atkins achieved accreditation for its employer-managed further learning programme from the Joint Board of Moderators. The programme enables bachelor-level graduates to gain the necessary training to achieve chartership, and represents a valuable offering to our graduate recruits. This programme is being formally launched during 2010.
Technical excellence is a strategic imperative for Atkins and we continue to invest in the technical networks established 18 months ago to join up skills embedded in our market-facing businesses. The networks perform an important governance function for our technical work and provide a focus for improving our skills, design methodologies and tools. Through the networks, we have effectively trained staff to design using the new Eurocodes which were introduced from April 2010. The success of the first tranche of networks has encouraged us to launch recently a further three networks.
Strategic relationships with universities continue to enable us to access emerging thinking and technologies of relevance to our markets. We continue to deliver modules on undergraduate and postgraduate teaching programmes and to mentor research projects, which enable us to build strong relationships with students and raise Atkins’ profile as a desirable company to work for.