2012 action
Bakkavor Meals (Sutton Bridge) - winner of H&S Culture Award in 2012.
Our Lincolnshire ready meals site won this award after achieving a significant improvement in accident performance, with a 60% decrease in reportable accidents year on year. The team at Bakkavor Meals set a clear goal to improve safety performance and attitudes to safety in the workplace and introduced a range of initiatives including near-miss reporting and a shift performance league table.

2013 focus
Our objective going forward is the continued development of our proactive accident prevention culture within the Group. We continue to focus on our five identified H&S priority areas, drawing on external expertise, where appropriate, to help us address the root causes of accidents and implement leading-edge solutions to prevent them from recurring.

2012 action
Throughout the course of 2012 the Group's UK operations have made further progress in waste management. Our UK businesses now send less than 2% of all waste to landfill and are continuing to focus on further segregation of waste to reduce our carbon impact on the environment.

Group Environment Award
Bakkavor Pizza (Harrow) won the Group's Environment Award due to its development of a clear action plan to manage its environmental impact and its focus on continuous improvement. Compared to the previous year, the business reduced waste going to landfill by 79% (supported by a 29% increase in recycling), water usage by 18% and electricity by 5%.

Tilmanstone water stewardship
Our Tilmanstone Salads facility in Kent has worked with an external partner to install a state-of-the-art recycled water treatment plant on site. The plant receives waste water from washing salads and vegetables and treats it to produce water that is suitable for re-use in the facility. Upon completion of the commissioning in November 2012, mains water usage reduced by over 70% overnight.

2013 focus
We aim to work closely with our waste management partners to improve further the amount of waste we divert from landfill.

FOLLOWING OUR LAST EMPLOYEE SURVEY IN 2010, EMPLOYEE COMMUNICATION WAS IDENTIFIED AS A KEY IMPROVEMENT AREA.

As a direct result of this, in 2012 we established a Group Communications Policy which sets out standards for Group and site communication.

2012 action
In September 2012 our Bakkavor Asia team launched the Kath Hartley Management Development Programme, named in memory of Kath, a long-serving Bakkavor employee, who died in 2011. This programme enables our Asian businesses to create, develop and improve existing work practices and standards through secondments to other sites within the Group. The first programme started in October 2012 with two employees from our Creative Foods business visiting the UK to take back learnings to the Chinese operation.

2013 focus
High employee retention and 'growing our own' continue to be of strategic importance to the business and we will keep current targets in place for 2013. We are committed to enabling our employees to develop their careers by moving more easily across the Group.

We aim to assess and reward our employees more rigorously through the appraisal system and use this information effectively to shape our DAS planning. We are re-invigorating our overall approach in this area through bespoke personal development plans and leadership skills programmes for our current employees.

2012 action
In May 2012 we launched the Bakkavor Apprenticeship Scheme (BAS) offering Advanced Apprenticeships in Food Development, Manufacturing, Food Technology and Administration across various locations in the UK and working with the University of Lincoln as our learning provider. Successful applicants are paid more than the recommended weekly wage during their two-year apprenticeship and work towards an IPQ Level 3 Diploma in Food Industry Skills. In September 2012 we took on our first 10 apprentices.

2013 focus
Attracting good people into the business remains a priority. We aim to offer 30 BAS places in 2013 and have allocated dedicated resource in-house to co-ordinate applicants and programmes.

2012 action
Our 'Better Together' self-audit tool was designed in 2011 and launched at the beginning of 2012. During the year 16 sites completed the self-audit and put in place action plans to improve workforce cohesion.

2013 focus
Following the first self-audits we have started to implement three action plans to ensure that our approach to diversity remains high on the agenda.

• Diversity maps: our aim is to develop a diversity map for each business to assess and understand better our diversity profiles.
• Diversity training: our aim initially is to train all managers in Dignity at Work (our internal diversity programme) and to ensure this training is refreshed every two years.
• Embedding our values: this initiative, already underway, has been identified as a key activity to support a more cohesive workforce.

2012 action
At our 2012 GEF we relaunched our values using a new 'winning team' theme to bring them to life and to embed them across the Group. The new look values have now been rolled out across the Group.

Following our last Employee Survey in 2010, employee communication was identified as a key improvement area. As a direct result of this, in 2012 we established a Group Communications Policy which sets out standards for Group and site communication. As part of this policy we now publish a quarterly Group newsletter which updates all employees on activities across the Group and our General Managers brief their sites every quarter on the Group's performance.

Another initiative which came about as a direct result of the 2010 employee survey was a need to improve the effectiveness of the SEF. Our first action was to benchmark our SEF against other companies. Although we were pleased to note that our SEF ranked highly against those of our peer group, we identified a need to improve the understanding of the role of the SEF amongst our middle managers and those responsible for chairing each local SEF.

2013 focus
We have developed customised training programmes for middle managers and SEF Chair people to improve the effectiveness of the SEF and we aim to measure their impact in the next employee survey due in 2013.

2012 action
In September 2012 we took part in a nationwide UK industry initiative to help tackle the issue of long-term youth unemployment through Skills for Work workshops. A number of our sites held half-day training sessions on CV writing and interview techniques.

2013 focus
We have pledged to continue our proactive involvement in this initiative and have agreed to take part in the 2013 Skills for Work week.