OUR PEOPLE

RECRUITMENT AND RETENTION

Recruitment

Our practice is to recruit externally only when suitably qualified and experienced talent is not available internally. This balances internal knowledge and skills with fresh ideas and expertise.

For our store and Distribution Centre operations, we recruited more than 70,000 people from communities in Australia and New Zealand in the 2007–08 financial year.

We also externally recruit for specialist roles, looking for candidates with considerable experience (usually more than five years and degree qualified) in their given areas of expertise. Most of these are recruited for senior roles in our support office in Sydney, however a small number are recruited for senior retail operations roles in regional areas.

We use a range of methods to recruit externally including online job boards, industry magazines, recruitment agencies, referrals and word of mouth, career expos and press advertising. In the past, these sourcing activities have focused on the local market (Australia and New Zealand). However, with the recent expansion of our business into the global market through our offices in India and Asia, we have taken up the opportunity to bring global diversity, thinking and capability into our business. Through a targeted international recruitment program, 34 staff (1) have been recruited to work in the Professional Services, IT, Buying and Marketing and Store Operations areas.

Percentage of New Executives recruited locally in FY07–08 (2)
	%
BIG W	59
Woolworths Supermarkets	92
Logistics	100
Freestanding Liquor	N/A
Petrol	N/A
IT	59
Dick Smith Electronics	100
Corporate	100

Retention

Building internal capability is fundamental to our continued growth and success. To retain our talented people, we offer numerous personal and professional benefits such as flexible work arrangements and wellbeing programs. It is a core component of our Human Resources strategy to provide employees with opportunities for progression and development within the Company.

Promoting from within
We are well known for our practice of promoting from within, with many employees spending the majority of their working lives within the Woolworths family. Cross-divisional experience is highly valued and is a characteristic shared by the majority of our Senior Management Group. Our people are given priority when new opportunities arise, giving them unique access to professional growth and strengthening our Company’s internal knowledge and skill base.

The nature of the retail sector means a high proportion of our people are casual employees, many of whom are teenagers entering the workplace for the first time. We recognise that these team members are our workforce of the future. By offering career options through a range of programs, such as school-based and certificate traineeships, apprenticeships and our internal graduate program, we encourage them to explore their future with us.

A significant proportion of our management team has been with Woolworths for many years and membership of our prestigious 25 Year Club now exceeds 4,000 across Australia and New Zealand. Just recently our CEO Michael Luscombe, who has celebrated his 30th anniversary with the Company, commented that one of the great things about Woolworths was the opportunity to have “many careers at one company.”

Our executive team demonstrates this trend, with many remaining with the Company from a young age and/or for ten years or more:

• 32% of our executive commenced with the Company at 25 years of age or younger.
• 46% of our executives have 10 years plus of service with Woolworths.
• 21% of our executives have 20 years plus of service with Woolworths.

This also reflects our practice of creating opportunities for existing store staff to work their way up into management roles via programs such as the Store Management Trainee program.

Understanding our employees
With the diversity of our workforce, we are continually looking for new and improved ways to keep in touch with our team’s changing needs. To gather general data on our employees’ views and experiences, we conduct regular focus groups in different areas of the business. We also conduct exit interviews with all salaried employees to better understand their reason for leaving and to identify how our retention initiatives might be improved. Results from focus groups and exit interviews are analysed to identify trends and help us develop new initiatives such as:

• Career breaks.
• Job sharing.
• Parental leave options.
• Wellbeing programs.
  

We recently introduced engagement surveys to the suite of tools used to better understand what drives engagement and retention. In partnership with the Corporate Leadership Council, we are using engagement surveys as a starting point to identify key drivers for change. Once the surveys are completed, focus groups are used to drill down and identify specific issues and potential initiatives. In the 2007–08 financial year, 39,545 employees were surveyed.

Flexible work options
We recognise the importance of assisting our employees in balancing their commitments, at work and outside of work. To do this, we offer a number of flexible work arrangements such as career breaks, job share roles and various types of leave. In 2007–08, we launched a new Parental Leave policy including paid maternity leave.

Parental leave
In July 2008, Woolworths introduced paid maternity leave benefits of up to 8 weeks leave at full pay, becoming Australia’s largest private employer to make the move. With 95,000 female employees in our Australian divisions (excluding ALH), paid maternity leave is about looking after our most valuable asset – our staff.

We appreciate every situation is different and have put in place parental leave policies and guidelines to make it easier for all new parents to take time off and return to work. This includes maternity, paternity and adoption leave.

Our policies go above and beyond regulatory requirements and provide a range of benefits to new parents including:

• 8 weeks paid maternity leave including a 2 week return to work bonus.
• Up to 104 weeks of parental leave.
• Access to reduced workloads (e.g. part time roles).
• Access to flexible work hours to accommodate availability of child care and other commitments.
• Access to job share arrangements at all levels of the organisation.
• The Employee Assistance Program which offers free counselling to employees and their immediate family.
• Stay in Touch Program during parental leave.
• The provision of information on organisations that support new parents.

Health and wellbeing
Our employees have access to a number of structured and professionally facilitated wellbeing programs that can assist them both in the workplace and at home. These include counselling, smoking cessation,executive health checks, flu immunisation and weight management. We also recently piloted a parenting skills course in our Sydney support office.

According to the World Economic Forum (Working Towards Wellness, 2007), 388 million people die each year from chronic disease and 36 million of those deaths are preventable, highlighting the importance of health education campaigns. Three major causes of chronic disease are tobacco use, poor diet and lack of physical activity.

To help address these and support employees in maintaining their health and wellbeing, Woolworths has implemented three programs: QUIT, Weight Watchers and 10,000 Steps.

Both Quit and Weight Watchers are being implemented in partnership with external suppliers, with a focus on prevention and accessibility for staff. The 10,000 Steps program is designed by Queensland Health.

These programs have been launched to our Supermarkets division and will be managed by the Supermarkets management team.

Programs like these give us tools to help support employees as their needs change throughout their working lives.

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