Our People

As a service company, our employees play a crucial role in creating value for SGS and our stakeholders.

Their collective talent and professionalism form the basis upon which SGS is recognised as the global benchmark for quality and integrity.

We are proud of our diverse, multi-talented and multicultural workforce, with over 64 000 employees around the world working in our laboratories, offices and operating in the field. SGS’ success to date has relied upon our ability to attract, develop and retain the most competent, committed and engaged people we can. This approach will be even more critical as we embark on our strategic growth plan for 2014. Not only must we attract thousands of new employees into our Company across multiple business lines and industry sectors, we must also strengthen our efforts to retain existing talent and proactively manage natural staff turnover.

During 2010 we focused our efforts on further developing our employment practices to ensure that we continue to attract the best talent and maintain the competencies and knowledge necessary for successful achievement of The Plan. In this section we describe the global HR programmes we have developed to support our strategic priorities and promote a cohesive approach to managing and developing people across our network. Complementing them is an abundance of locally inspired ‘bottom-up’ initiatives, examples of which appear alongside the global programmes in the following pages. We recognise that there are thousands of employees who are using their outstanding talents every day to deliver exemplary services to our customers and have illustrated this with a sample of individual profiles.

Core programmes

Attracting employees

It is vital for SGS Group that we continue to assess and identify the skills we need to develop in our business to be able to respond to changing market and societal needs. During 2010 SGS began the process of forging strategic alliances with universities in different  geographical regions to help us attract new talent into our business, particularly in emerging scientific and technical disciplines. We will be able to report on this in detail next year.

Alongside technical competencies, we look for a range of ‘soft skills’ - key attributes which play a crucial role in enhancing relationships with our customers and delivering service excellence. In particular, we believe that sustainability will play an increasingly important part in our recruitment approach. We want to be able to attract people for whom working for an organisation with a strategic commitment to sustainability is an important part of their employment decision-making. We also want to bring in people who are passionate about sustainability and are wiling to apply their skills to developing innovative solutions for our customers.

Retaining and developing talent

While recruitment is a strategic focus for us, it is important to pay equal attention to existing employees within SGS in order to retain talent. In 2010 our employee turnover was 11.1% compared with 10.3% in 2009. This is within the range of what we consider to be ‘healthy’ in order to bring in challenging new ideas and encourage innovation in the Company.

At SGS we regard career development as a three-way process. Employees are personally encouraged to drive their own development and regard it as a key part of their career plan. Managers have an important role to play in setting objectives and providing the necessary tools, coaching, feedback and recognition to their direct reports. The HR function facilitates employee development by supporting managers and employees throughout the process.

SGS’ Retaining and Developing Talent strategy has three components, each one designed to support employees along their career path at SGS. These comprise SGS Engage, Manager Passport and Leadership Development Programme (LDP).

Diversity

As a global company, spanning multiple business sectors and interfacing with many industries, SGS relies on our ability to attract a diverse, multi-talented and multi-cultural workforce. In fact it is intrinsic to our business success. We focus on finding the right person for the right job and are committed to providing opportunities to develop social capital in the locations where we operate.

With operations all over the world, almost all nationalities are represented in the SGS Group. Our Operations Council alone represents 11 different nationalities. During 2010 SGS appointed two women onto the Operations Council from within the business and in early 2011 a further two women were appointed. We believe that this is a positive step in demonstrating our commitment to diversity and in particular, senior leadership opportunities for women. More and more women are assuming management responsibilities within the Group, both in operations and administration.

Human rights in business

SGS, with its global network and operations, has made a crucial decision to embrace a universal approach to our employment practices and relevant human rights principles. Human rights of employees are well stipulated and protected by the SGS Code of Integrity and Professional Conduct as well as our Employment Policy.

During 2011, SGS plans to evaluate our alignment to the ten principles of the UN Global Compact, including an assessment of human rights impacts and responsibilities across our international operations.

Health and safety

SGS has long placed great importance on providing a safe workplace for our employees and protecting the communities in which we work from the harm that may be potentially caused by our activities. It is our strong belief that every employee, regardless of business or geographical location, has an equal right to a safe and healthy work environment. Our goal is to eliminate fatalities and injuries within our Company and to improve the control of major Health, Safety and Environment (HSE) risks by 2014. In order to achieve our goal, we are moving from a regulatory compliance driven framework to the proactive execution of uniform health, safety and environmental protection standards across our operations.

During 2010, SGS focused on further developing our HSE management systems. These efforts will continue into 2011 with improvements on our standardised HSE manuals, policies, procedures and guidelines; introducing a new global electronic HSE reporting system; and customised training initiatives targeted at line managers, supervisors and professional HSE staff.

As part of our focus on achieving incident-free operations, SGS will be changing the way we report statistics relating to HSE to fully align with international and industry consensus standards. We also strengthened our reportable incident requirements in late 2010 and this transition to more stringent criteria will likely result in higher reported health and safety figures in 2011.

Whilst 2010 saw some key improvements in our year-on-year safety performance, we are deeply saddened by the fact that four people lost their lives. Although the accidents were not directly attributable to operations, we are taking significant steps to ensure the implementation of additional training and awareness programmes with our staff to continue to negate the possibility of these incidents in the future.

Key performance indicators

*Restated in line with more stringent Total Recordable Incident definitions.

Looking ahead
During 2011 we will:

• Continue to report on progress of the global roll-out of HR programmes to support The Plan.
• Continue to develop employees’ understanding of sustainability through our e-learning modules.
• Carry out a benchmark study to map our impacts and responsibilities in relation to human rights.
• Report, over the next four years, on the restructuring of our HSE programme and initiatives, and their impact on the safety performance across our Group.