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The Plan A journey continued
Company Name : Marks & Spencer
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Country : USA
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Plan A up to 2015
Launched in March 2010, our expanded Plan A sets out 80 new commitments and adds more ambitious targets to existing ones. Along with our five pillars – Climate change, Waste, Natural resources, Fair partner and Health and wellbeing – it also features two new categories: Involving customers and Making Plan A ‘How We Do Business’
Involving customers We aim to use Plan A to help our customers live more sustainably by ensuring that half of our products have at least one Plan A quality by 2015 and all of them do by 2020. We also want to make it easy for customers to have their own personal Plan A ecoprogrammes. To support both these aims we intend to run marketing and communication programmes centred on Plan A over the next five years.
Making Plan A ‘How We Do Business’ To accelerate the transition of Plan A from ‘Plan’ to ‘How We Do Business’ we’ve launched a £50m innovation fund, sustainability programmes for our Food and General Merchandise suppliers and a Sustainable Agriculture Programme for our farmers and growers. To engage our employees with Plan A, we’re offering them free home insulation, a free home energy monitor and one day’s paid leave every year to do volunteer work.
Building on our progress We’ve made excellent progress so far and have now sketched out our future ambitions. We’ve extended our targets across all areas of Plan A. These include going beyond our commitment to be carbon neutral by also improving energy efficiency by 35% and helping our suppliers and customers to cut their carbon emissions. We are also creating more partnerships that help our customers recycle and reducing the amount of waste we generate. We’re extending our programmes of sustainable raw material sourcing to help protect rainforests and working with suppliers to pay higher wages at clothing factories in developing countries.
And finally we’ll extend health benefits across more of our products. After three years of good progress it’s now time to move Plan A forward by setting even bolder targets. You can follow our progress against our new commitments, (shown on pages 44 to 47), in future Reports.
Training and development We want to provide relevant, engaging training for all our employees – including those with the potential to become our future leaders. This year, over 100 of our senior managers completed our flagship Lead to Succeed programme which aims to identify and develop people for succession. Every employee working in our UK and Republic or Ireland stores undertakes Your M&S Career Path training and learning programmes, while section and store managers complete tailored workshops and new Customer Assistants have a 26 week induction.
In 2009/10 92% of our Customer Assistants were assessed as performing at the required level.
We also offer a range of technical training opportunities, including Buying and Food Academy programmes for relevant head office employees and specialist training for our international management teams. Last year, working with the Consumer Financial Education Body (CFEB) and WEALTH at Work, we launched a range of seminars to help employees plan their personal finance and better understand their pay and benefits. These seminars also explained what’s available through the M&S share and retirement plan schemes and provided financial planning tailored to whether the employee had just joined us, is mid-career or nearing retirement. In total, over 1,700 employees attended and feedback has been extremely positive
2009/10 Workforce diversity Our UK store teams and workforces generally reflect national diversity averages, but nevertheless, we regularly review our policies to ensure legal compliance and to maintain and promote an environment where diversity is valued.
As of March 2010 the diversity of our people was broadly the same as in 2009 although there was an increase in employees aged 50 and over in our stores.
Health and safety**
The total number of reported health and safety incidents for employees, customers, contractors and visitors in 2009/10 was 28,381 (level with 28,108 last year). Measured per million square foot we recorded 1,818 incidents, a decrease of 2% (last year 1,860).
Our total RIDDOR (Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations) incidents were down by 15% at 836 (last year 983). This equates to 54 RIDDOR incidents per million square feet, a 17% drop (last year 65).
There were no work related fatalities this year and we received no health and safety fines. In January 2010 we launched two new health and safety targets as part of our revised Plan A commitments (see page 44).
M&S Code of Ethics We’re committed to doing the right thing for our customers, colleagues, shareholders, suppliers and local communities – as well as for the environment. Our Code of Ethics outlines the standards and behaviours that we expect of every M&S employee, no matter where in the world we conduct business.
We updated the Code in April 2010, providing additional guidance under three categories: Our Responsibilities; Our Behaviours; and Our Workplace and Business Policies. We require our senior managers to formally confirm acceptance of our Code of Ethics every year.
What we've committed to do by 2015? We want to attract and retain the best people in retail by involving them more in Plan A. We’ll provide a paid day to do volunteering with a charity of their choice, free home insulation and energy monitors.
We also want to maintain high levels of communication across the Company and improve health and wellbeing.
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