Valuing our people

Our people are our greatest asset, they are the professionals who our customers engage and work with every day to meet mutual objectives. They are the faces of our business and brains behind our operations. Our success is truly founded on the quality and professionalism of our people.

Targeting and keeping talent

Over the last five years, the Balfour Beatty Group has recruited over 550 graduates and employs some 8,000 professionally qualified staff overall. Its expenditure on training in 2006 exceeded £15m and approximately 60% of the Group’s UK staff are employed in companies accredited under Investors in People.

In 2009 Balfour Beatty Rail spent £2.5 million on training, an average of six days training per person per year. We have well over 100 graduates and trainees in their first three years of experience plus undergraduate placement programmes.

In addition, we have many Professional Development schemes that our employees undertake, including ICE, IMechE, IET, ICES, RICS.

We have mentoring schemes with a suite of leadership programmes for managers and over 100 of our staff are on sponsored further/higher education courses.

Our in-house training and development department is constantly looking at new ways to increase our people’s skills and expertise to ensure that our customers receive the best service possible.

How we work - what we value

Our reputation is fundamental to our long-term success. It gives our stakeholders, the confidence to trust us and do business with us. A good reputation is hard won, but easily lost. One decision, by one person taken without thinking, can have a far-reaching impact across the Group.

Quite rightly, the scrutiny to which companies are subjected is increasing and the standards expected of us are rising. Balfour Beatty has four Group-wide values of Integrity, Teamwork, Excellence and Respect that are essential in helping to guide our employees in the way that they behave and underpin our principles as a business.

Rooted in our Group values, Balfour Beatty’s Code of Conduct provides all our employees with a clear framework within which to make the right decisions. Our code of conduct explains the behaviour we expect from all our employees across the Group. However, we accept that rules can only take us so far, so our code also requires employees to think about how to apply these principles and our values and ask, “Is this the right thing to do? Is this what we stand for?”

Diversity and Equal Opportunity

In the UK, 80% of Balfour Beatty’s people are men and 20% women. 12% of our UK employees are of ethnic minority origin. These figures show a significantly higher proportion of women and ethnic minority employees than when measured first in 1999 when proportions were 13% and 4% respectively.

In a growing number of our major projects, diversity of employment has become a key objective when mobilising and resourcing project teams.

Recognition for Balfour Beatty

We strive to ensure we create great environments in which to work and to develop careers. As a result, we often win awards and achieve recognition from customers, peers and industry bodies for their services, projects and the way in which they operate.

• Balfour Beatty was named as one of Britain’s Most Admired Companies by a Management Today poll, achieving the number one ranking in our sector for the fifth year running and 21st overall out of 230 companies.
• Balfour Beatty was recently named as one of the Top 100 Graduate Employers in the UK by The Times newspaper. This is the first time we have made it into the Top 100, coming in at 69th position.
• Balfour Beatty was number 111 in The Guardian’s 300 Most Popular UK Graduate Recruiters.