Brambles recognises that people are its most important asset and is committed to providing a safe, rewarding and challenging environment for its employees and assisting them in reaching their potential.

Brambles is an equal opportunity employer. Its recruitment and selection processes are based on merit and skill competency. Brambles advertises vacancies internally via its intranet careers site. All suitable employees are encouraged to apply for appropriate roles. The only exception to this approach is targeted succession planning for specific roles.  

Employee matters, including development and training, are the responsibility of the Senior Vice President – Human Resources, who reports directly to the Chief Executive Officer.

Brambles supports and upholds the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as referenced in its Code of Conduct.

Through its employment polices, Brambles is committed to:

• providing a safe working environment with an objective of achieving Zero Harm through industry best practice in health and safety management;
• being an equal opportunities employer, committed to developing a diverse workforce where everyone is treated fairly irrespective of gender, sexual orientation, age, disability, race or religion;
• creating an environment where everyone is encouraged to give their best and realise their full potential, by providing learning and development opportunities for individuals and groups; and
• ensuring employees can discuss any problem connected with their work confident that they will receive a fair, impartial and confidential review of the issue.

CHEP and Recall pride themselves on promoting diversity within their teams. One example is Recall’s European leadership team, which comprises seven different nationalities amongst its nine members. Recall believes that promoting diversity leads to a better understanding of local issues and cultures.

Under the Brambles Speaking Up Policy, everyone is encouraged to notify the company of any suspicions about actual or planned breaches of the law, company policies or the Code of Conduct. Details of whom to approach, how to do so and the subsequent process are clearly outlined. Brambles will not tolerate the victimisation of any employee who speaks up in such circumstances.

Brambles continues to ensure that employees are informed of significant company news and strategic developments. Methods of employee communication include announcements and newsletters distributed by email, in-house publications, information posted on the intranet and face to face meetings with senior managers.

Brambles complies with all legislative requirements regarding superannuation and defined benefit plan obligations in the countries in which it operates. For example, in Australia, Brambles contributes at least 9% of employees’ base salary to a designated superannuation fund, as required by Australian Federal legislation.

One of Brambles’ core values is a commitment to diversity, people and teamwork. It is fundamental that each employee is treated with integrity and respect.

All employment policies and practices are designed with this in mind.

Employee engagement is monitored through the Brambles Engagement Survey (BES). This is extended to all employees and is confidential. It surveys employees’ perceptions of their workplace and the data is used to track progress from previous surveys, measure Brambles against internal and external best practice and identify key actions for improvement.

The most recent BES was conducted in April 2008. The response rate of 86% was an improvement of 13 percentage points on the previous survey. The results of the survey were communicated to employees in each business and were used to identify and understand concerns at a local level and to drive action to address any concerns. The next BES will be conducted in November 2009.

Brambles believes that the interests of employees and shareholders should be aligned. This is achieved by ensuring that the Board of Directors and Executive Leadership Team members maintain a minimum shareholding in Brambles Limited. Employee share ownership across the group is encouraged through participation in Brambles’ global employee share plan MyShare, which was approved by shareholders at Brambles 2008 AGM.

Brambles respects the individual’s right to freedom of association and relates to its people through both collective and individual agreements, according to local law, custom and practice.

Following its formation in 2004, the Brambles European Works Council meets formally on an annual basis. Its purpose is to bring together management and elected workers’ representatives from all the EU Member States in which Brambles operates. Representatives are consulted, receive information and give their views on a range of issues such as health and safety, business performance, sales activity, business developments and employment trends. At the last meeting held in Manchester in July 2009 the Group President CHEP EMEA, the Senior Vice President – Human Resources and other senior management attended and took part in wide-ranging discussions with the Works Council members concerning Brambles, CHEP and Recall.

Brambles is committed to achieving Zero Harm. This means zero injuries to employees, contractors, customers and local communities. Brambles' Zero Harm Charter is available on the website.

The Board is responsible for setting health and safety policies. The Group Presidents of CHEP and the Group President and Chief Operating Officer of Recall are responsible for policy implementation and safety performance, within the monitoring and reporting framework governed by the Group Risk Committee. More information is provided in the Corporate Governance Statement in the 2009 Annual Report.

Brambles believes everyone has the right to be safe at work and to return home to their family and friends as healthy as when they started the day.

Brambles’ Zero Harm Charter, which sets out the vision, values and behaviours and commitment required to work safely, is provided to all employees and is available on the Brambles website.

Brambles’ Zero Harm commitment is based on the belief that all accidents, injuries and harm can and should be prevented. To that end, every manager is accountable for achieving Zero Harm and required to demonstrate leadership in creating a culture which actively promotes Zero Harm. Everyone is responsible for committing and contributing to Zero Harm.

Brambles thinks first of Zero Harm, considering health, safety and the environment in all decisions concerning the development of projects, the selection of commercial partners and suppliers and the launch of new products or services. Economic considerations do not overrule health and safety or environmental concerns.

Brambles ensures that occupational health, safety and environment (OHS&E) management systems and training reflect its Zero Harm commitment.

Each business has its own OHS&E management systems, including business-specific policies, procedures, risk assessment, monitoring and compliance mechanisms. These systems include hazard management, near misses and system failure reporting, recording and corrective action procedures. OHS&E management systems are designed to ensure that each employee receives the appropriate safety training.

Safety is the responsibility of each individual employee, while accountability for safety is clearly integrated into manager and supervisor job descriptions.

Health and safety performance indicators measure compliance with corporate objectives and milestones, allow assessment of progress and comparison with industry benchmarks and provide incentive for improvement. These are shown below.

Note: The data posted in the 2008 Annual Report under Lost Time Injury Frequency Rate (LTIFR) varies from that shown in this report. This variance is due to an error in the attributation of a Lost Time Injury (LTI) in the Recall business during this period, when the accident in question was counted in two categories. This was inaccurate and current year data addresses and corrects this error.

Overall, Brambles’ health and safety performance has plateaued during the last fiscal year, although to some extent the end of year result does reverse the trend experienced in the previous year of increasing rates of injury across the Group.

At a business level, CHEP continues to drive a reduction in both injuries and their severity across the majority of operations. In contrast, Recall has had a problematic year, with an increase in numbers of incidents generally and some increase in severity, as measured in days lost.

During the year there were, sadly, two work-related fatalities in Recall. In October 2008, a Recall vehicle in Canada struck and killed a pedestrian and in November 2008, Mr Suresh Kumar, an employee of Recall in India, was fatally injured from the collapse of low height file shelving.

Both events have been the subject of major investigations seeking to fully understand their occurrence. These investigations have resulted in a range of actions being undertaken to prevent similar events from taking place both within Recall and across the Brambles Group.

Brambles is unhappy with this level of performance and particularly with the very serious and tragic events of the year in review. These results and events are inconsistent with the goal of Zero Harm. Brambles is working on new strategies to both address the issues identified and create step change in Group-wide health and safety performance. Some of these are reflected in the following case studies.

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Brambles is committed to ensuring that all its people are fully trained and equipped to do their job.

A large number of training courses are available to employees through a proprietary web based system, which enables Brambles to monitor the number of training days and their effectiveness.

Brambles operates a competency framework which allows employees to understand the skills and competencies required to do their job, and which ones need to be developed for higher level working.

This framework is at the core of Brambles’ performance appraisal systems. Every employee has an annual appraisal with their manager.

Career progression is an important part of Brambles' employment offering and executive development activities that span the organisation. Brambles recruits from many of the best business schools for high potential executives, and provides intensive development opportunities to fast track these individuals.

Vacancies are advertised on the Brambles internal career website, which is available to all employees.

Brambles also holds a number of development centres each year to identify junior and middle managers who have the potential to move to higher levels of the organisation. In the last financial year, 56 executives went through these centres and 17 were subsequently promoted.