Employment Survey Results

G4S has announced the results of its 2011 employee survey – one of the biggest global surveys of its kind in the private sector

The enormous task of approaching all 625,000 G4S employees worldwide for the biennial survey, was undertaken in conjunction with leading HR consultancy ETS. The results showed a significant increase in employee engagement where elsewhere other companies have recently recorded a downward trend.

G4S particularly excelled in the area of job enablement with 95% of employees saying they understand the procedures to do their job and 89% believing they have been well trained to do their role – an increase of one percent and six percent respectively since 2009.

A number of other key measures of employee engagement have increased since the first global employee survey in 2009, including willingness to recommend G4S as an employer and job satisfaction.

G4S is one of the world’s largest employers and faces unique challenges in engaging a diverse and disparate workforce. Many front line employees (who represent 96% of the workforce) are remotely based at customer premises such as airports, prisons or sporting events or in hostile environments such as Iraq and Afghanistan, which means they are often very hard to reach.

Sue Pym, Employee Engagement and Brand Manager at G4S, comments: “We’re delighted with the results of this year’s survey because having so many remotely-based employees with little or no access to technology is challenging but we’re committed to developing a collaborative working culture".

“We have introduced a number of initiatives to maximise employee engagement since 2009 including a new strategy to provide increased training to develop the skills, knowledge and capability of our front line managers. While this is a global strategy the training is based at a regional and local level to ensure that it is tailored to local needs.”

Hannah Stratford, Head of Business Psychology at ETS, adds: “Companies have faced a really tough task in engaging employees over the last few years but G4S has made this a top business priority and has successfully bucked the trend seen elsewhere of decreased engagement. G4S is a great example for other large organisations to follow of what can be achieved by prioritising employee engagement as a business objective.”

Contact details

• Sue Pym (Employee Engagement and Brand Manager )

About G4S

Key facts about the global survey:
• The survey was run and managed predominantly in-house in conjunction with the bespoke software tool from ETS, ensuring real return on investment against budget
• 245,000 responses; 203,000 of these paper based (an increase of 75,000 responses from 2009)
• 92% of employees are from operational roles
• Over 150 (tbc) countries/businesses took part
• 81% of employees would recommend G4S to a friend

About G4S plc:
G4S is the world's leading security solutions group, which specialises in outsourcing of business processes in sectors where security and safety risks are considered a strategic threat. G4S is the largest employer quoted on the London Stock Exchange and has an additional stock exchange listing in Copenhagen. G4S has operations in more than 125 countries and more than 625,000 employees. For more information on G4S, visit www.g4s.com.

 
About ETS plc:
ETS plc is the only major provider of bespoke HR technology and consultancy. ETS plc provides blue-chip companies with employee surveys, performance management and talent management services. ETS clients get exactly what they need by working with us to create brand-new processes and technology or by automating and improving what's already working. Client case studies are available on the website: www.etsplc.com.

ETS plc has no links with ETS Europe, the national curriculum test marker, and the similarity of names is a coincidence.