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Employees and responsibility
Corporate social responsibility
Our vision for corporate social responsibility (CSR) is to act responsibly for the long term in how we do business, to help meet our ambition of being the world’s most trusted savings, investment and insurance provider.
Progress is reported fully in our CSR report, published each April. However, we can report some notable developments in the first half of 2007.
Environmental management
While we have been concentrating on managing and reducing, where possible, our CO2 output, we have agreed to be carbon neutral for our 2007 emissions. We have identified five projects, located in countries in which we operate and sub-sahara Africa to deliver the required carbon credits to offset our remaining emissions. The projects range from investing in wind farms and biogas projects to providing more efficient wood-burning stoves. The projects provide both social and environmental benefits.
Diversity and human rights
Aviva launched its innovative Respect Diversity toolkit, which comprises a variety of learning tools including case studies, interactive games, presentations, research, benchmarking information and an award-winning DVD, Embracing Diversity. The toolkit is designed to help HR managers to embed the key principles of diversity and respect around the Aviva world.
We were awarded a global diversity and innovation award at the World Diversity Leaders Summit, hosted by the United Nations Global Compact.
Embedding CSR in the business
Our businesses continually seek ways to embed CSR in their core business activities. This year, for example, Delta Lloyd in the Netherlands launched a new motor product whereby trees are planted for each policy sold to help offset the carbon footprint of the policy. In addition, the premiums from the policies are invested on a sustainable basis. In France, a new home insurance product has been launched which offers discounts to energy-efficient households with carbon neutral household equipment.
Continued focus in 2007 and ongoing
In the remainder of 2007 and looking further ahead our focus will be on:
- Building a higher level of awareness of CSR – through communications and employee engagement tools, such as the annual global employee survey.
- Managing our environmental impacts – with a commitment to set energy reduction targets across the Aviva group.
- Developing the external agenda – continuing to participate in external forums to contribute to developing the external agenda on important CSR issues, such as climate change.
- Further embedding diversity and human rights – through use of the Respect Diversity toolkit.
- Embedding CSR in our business – focusing on CSR education and development of CSR tools for business units.
For further details of Aviva’s CSR programme, please visit our latest CSR report at www.aviva.com/csr07.
Aviva is taking the title sponsorship of Breakthrough’s new 44-kilometre (27-mile) fundraising event in September. This follows the success of the 2006 Aviva Weekend to Breakthrough Breast Cancer, which raised £5.4 million for breast cancer research and education projects.
The Aviva Walk London to Breakthrough Breast Cancer will be the largest fund-raising event staged by the leading breast cancer charity.
For more information on Aviva Weekend to Breakthrough Breast Cancer visit www.breakthroughwalklondon.org.uk.
Employees
Our people are central to our success as a business. We want everyone who works for Aviva to be inspired to deliver great service to our customers, to feel valued for doing so, and to make a difference to Aviva through their feedback. These themes inform our people strategy and the policies and practices that underpin it.
Great employer
We want people, both internally and externally, to recognise Aviva as a great place to work. Key to this is our approach to talent management and leadership skills.
Talent management
The newly designed “Talking Talent” process, that combines an assessment of performance with predictive indicators of potential, has been launched in Australia, India, Aviva Global Services, Ireland and Spain as well as several units within the UK. Our intention is to have launched the process in all our business units by the end of the year. This new process is based upon the belief that everyone we employ has talent. Our aim is to use this talent for the benefit of Aviva, its customers and of course the individuals themselves. This process will also help drive forward our strategy to becoming a global organisation by encouraging the movement of talent between our business units.
Leadership
We aim to create an environment where everyone feels well led at work. Great customer service requires skilled and motivated leaders who lead engaged and effective teams. Therefore, creating a “leaderful” organisation is a priority. We are working with our leaders, through strategic leadership and Leadership Insights Programmes, to help them understand better the impact of their leadership on the people they lead and the things that make a difference to people in the work place.
One Aviva
Driven by the business environment in which we now operate, we have adopted a new business model at the heart of which is the creation of four strong regions – Europe, Asia Pacific, North America and UK – and a small, lean group centre.
This structure means that we shall be better placed to take advantage of market opportunities, improve speed of response, eliminate duplication of effort, deploy talent and encourage the sharing of best practice in the interests of our customers and shareholders. The new structure will help to create the right blend of centrally shared service with local expertise.
At the beginning of the year we welcomed into the group as Aviva Global Services 1,600 people from the Indian business that supports Norwich Union and Aviva Canada customers. On 1 July 2006, we will bring a further 350 people from these operations into our employment.
The focus on our structure has resulted in a reduction of the number of roles in the UK. We will be seeking to minimise the number of compulsory redundancies through voluntary turnover and redeployment. Further details can be found in our Corporate Social Responsibility reports at www.aviva.com/csr.
Service Academy, our customer experience development programme, is going from strength to strength. There are now over 700 employees working through the foundation and advanced levels.
The academy gives customer-facing employees the opportunity to develop their financial services, product and customer knowledge in a way that is tailored for their specific needs.
Norwich Union’s (NU’s) academy offers a flexible learning programme that leads to a professional qualification designed by NU and endorsed by the Chartered Insurance Institute. About 80% of the tutorial sessions are delivered online via the employee’s workstation, with the remainder through face-to-face workshops.
Results from the academy have been very strong with those participating in the training programme demonstrating an understanding of the financial services industry that is 41% higher than colleagues who have yet to start the programme. The academy aims to chalk up a total of 2,000 enrolments by the end of the year.
For more information on Norwich Union visit www.norwichunion.com.