Workplace - responsible colleague
Every colleague across the company collectively forms British Airways and therefore must work together to achieve our CR goals and vision.
The CR department is working with teams across our global network to identify ways to improve the way we do business that are meaningful and specific to every colleague.
The key areas we are working across include:
Click the topics below for more information.
Diversity and inclusion
Our Diversity team in the last year launched a new Diversity and Inclusion Strategy. This has two simple aims. Firstly, to ensure that everyone understands why and how diversity is important to us and, secondly, to ensure that diversity is integrated into every part of the business.
In the first phase we focused on finding out and discussing what harassment and bullying means, and how awareness about this could be raised. Further work is being undertaken on how bullying cases are resolved and on the role mediation might play in tackling harassment.
We focused on religion and belief throughout the last year and became a steering group member of a new organisation called 'Employers Forum on Belief' and we have established a new interfaith network group which meets to discuss all aspects of religion in the workplace such as prayer rooms, catering and uniforms.
We consult with our disabled employee group to identify disability issues and they help us to ensure that we are making all our products, services and training fully inclusive and accessible. All front line employees are trained in disability awareness to increase their knowledge about disabled customers and colleagues.
We are also constantly looking at how we can improve our journey experience for disabled travellers. We have put into place a disability strategy for the next four years, called 'Building Ability towards 2012'.
We have recently shown our commitment to making British Airways an inclusive and accessible employer and airline by becoming Gold members of the Employers' Forum on Disability (EFD) and Willie Walsh has joined EFD's President's Group. We intend to do our best to ensure and enable disability confidence throughout British Airways.
Employers' Forum on Disability is the world's leading employers' organisation focused on disability as it affects business. EFD aims to make it easier to employ and do business with disabled people.
If you would like to know more, you can look at its website: www.efd.org.uk.
Colleague involvement
Involving our colleagues continues to be a key focus. Every year we ask our colleagues for their views on a wide range of topics via the Speak Up! opinion survey, administered by Ipsos MORI.
Results from the last survey showed significant improvements in the perception of line managers' effectiveness. However, despite these positive trends, the overall response rate to the survey - at just 35% - was low. Colleagues expressed concerns about our ability to provide excellent customer service.
The latest survey was carried out in October 2008 and for the first time we questioned our colleagues about corporate responsibility. We are currently awaiting the responses, which will help inform our approach to involve colleagues right across the airline.
CR engagement
One of the first actions we undertook was to engage our colleagues in One Destination.
We began an internal engagement plan in December 2008 that focused on informing our colleagues about our vision, strategy, plan and goals for One Destination.
This was supported by the role out of a series of high profile initiatives that demonstrate our commitment to CR. This included;
- Recruitment of CR champions from across the airline
- Enhanced recycling facilities across our head office and cargo
- Paper reduction policy across Heathrow
- Introduction of an 'Ideas Exchange' tool to encourage our colleagues to come forward with their own ideas and suggestions on how the company can undertake CR.