5-Year Strategies for our Employees
What are our 5-Year Objectives? View them here.
Origin had 4,3921 employees at the end of FY 2010, up by 194 from the previous year. Increases in Exploration and Production were partially offset by reductions in the Retail business due to general productivity improvements. We employed 3,978 contractors at the end of FY 2010, down 4.5 per cent on the prior year. Voluntary turnover, excluding our call centre, was 10.7 per cent, up from 9.6 per cent in FY 2009, and 30 per cent in the call centre, down from 31.3 per cent. Approximately 90 per cent of our workforce is employed full time.
In 2007, we set ourselves two employee-related objectives for the ensuing five years:
- To provide and maintain a satisfying and rewarding work environment for all employees; and
- To eliminate or manage hazards and practices in our business that could cause accident, injury or illness to people, damage to property or unacceptable impacts on the environment.
To deliver on these objectives, we laid out a series of 5-year strategies, which we report against in this section.
1 Excluding Contact Energy
1. Achieve a Total Recordable Incident Frequency Rate of 4.0 by 2012.
We achieved a significant improvement in safety performance over the year. Our Total Recordable Incident Frequency Rate (TRIFR)* was 5.6 as at June 2010, an improvement of 38 per cent over June 2009. We achieved this with renewed efforts across all areas of safety, in particular transport, contractor safety, process safety, permit-to-work systems and safety leadership. A case study is described here.
Despite this progress, we recognise we have much more to do. During the year several employees and contractors were injured and we were deeply saddened by the death of one of our Queensland-based contractors as a result of a motor accident at the entrance to an Origin-operated Australia Pacific LNG site. While we are now on track to meet the TRIFR target of 4.0 that we set for ourselves in 2007, these facts are a sobering reminder of the risks we face and of the importance of continuous improvement in safety. Our long-term aspiration is for zero harm to our employees and contractors.
We have set ourselves a goal for the next twelve months to achieve a TRIFR of 4.9 or better. We aim to achieve this through a focus on continuous improvement in safety culture, by maintaining a thorough understanding of risks and exposures in undertaking our day to day activities and by further developing our support systems to manage risks.
Origin identified gender as a specific priority for the company within the area of diversity in FY 2009. In FY 2010 we improved our statistical understanding of the issue as it applies to Origin and developed a gender diversity plan. We decided to set targets for improvement in specific areas, potentially including the percentage of women in management roles, in under-represented roles and who return from parental leave for more than one year. We identified four focus areas for action. Progress against targets and in the focus areas will be monitored by the Origin Board.*
At the end of FY 2010, women accounted for 40 per cent of our workforce and 25 per cent of management positions, neither changed from last year. The turnover rate, inclusive of the customer call centre, was 16.2 per cent for women, higher than the 12.3 per cent for men, though this trend has been improving over the past four years. Across each pay grade gender variations that occur are negligible in magnitude, and are monitored in order to prevent and eliminate any persistent gaps or potential systemic bias.
In other areas, we continued to pursue the Indigenous engagement strategy detailed in last year’s report, including a small number of Indigenous traineeships and the employment on a casual basis of over 100 cultural heritage officers. In the coming year we are looking to increase the number of pre-approved and selected contractors for our CSG operations that are owned or run by Indigenous people.
Another focus for FY 2010 was to increase the number of Origin employees working on our major projects who are drawn from the local community, for example at Uranquinty, Mt Stuart and Darling Downs power stations, the Cullerin Range Wind Farm and our projects at Mortlake, Yass and Australia Pacific LNG.
Origin first sought to measure employee engagement on a company-wide basis in late 2008. A second survey conducted in the reporting period, in November 2009, showed a small improvement in the overall result.
After the 2009 survey, follow-up group sessions were held within all business units and between the Managing Director and selected supervisor-level representatives from across the Company to more fully understand the feedback.
We identified four focus areas for action which have informed our engagement strategy, and made progress on increasing and formalising internal communication in each business. We are also developing a more structured induction program, which will be introduced during FY 2011.
Our intention is to conduct a third engagement survey late in the 2011 calendar year.
Our employees continue to pursue both external initiatives and smaller-scale internal initiatives that make a positive difference to everyday life at Origin. Examples of both can be found in the case studies.
A total of 4,963 hours of volunteering on external initiatives in the community was recorded in FY 2010. This represented a 2 per cent increase from the previous year but fell short of the 5,736 hours we anticipated in last year’s report.
With the establishment in FY 2010 of the Origin Foundation a particular focus for the coming year will be increased opportunities for skilled volunteering, for example through a new relationship with Engineers Without Borders. We will also be encouraging employee involvement with organisations that we help to fund by way of donation from the Foundation, to deepen our relationships with those organisations and to promote employee engagement in the Foundation’s activities.
