People development

Wood is a people organisation. In delivering our solutions, we rely upon an engaged, passionate and adaptable workforce with the appropriate skills and behaviours aligned to our culture. To reach our strategic goals, we need the right people, in the right place, at the right time and at the right cost.

We recognise future skills as one of four primary trends shaping our markets and business strategy. Developing a culture that nurtures talent and the leaders of tomorrow, investing in our people is fundamental to achieving our strategic objective to be a premium, differentiated business delivering exceptional returns for our clients, our team, our investors and the communities in which we work. Our ability to adapt keeps us relevant and offers great opportunities for our people and those looking to work at Wood. Keeping our focus on people development ensures we continue to contribute to society through providing work and opportunities in delivering solutions to our clients.

In Wood’s analysis of principal risks, we consider failure to attract, engage and retain critical staff could lead to insufficient capability and leadership to meet our strategic objectives, and not being seen as an employer of choice.

Read more on Wood’s principal risks in our latest Annual Report and Accounts.

Wood’s global People Development Policy states our belief that everyone has the opportunity to grow their own career. We believe development is facilitated through regular conversations with our employees to ensure their aspirations are aligned with business needs and opportunities; quality conversations connect and align employees and their line managers, enabling our healthy workplace culture and provides benefits to both employee and the business in retaining talent.

Our Code of Conduct and key policies that govern how we treat our people and interact as Team Wood help to create an inclusive culture that enables a more diverse and equitable workplace.  Supporting our People Development Policy, several additional global policies help to support and enhance the career journey and agility of our business to adapt to an evolving business environment, these include:

• Reward Policy
• Global Mobility Policy
• Global Flexible Working Policy
• Equal Opportunities Policy

In 2021, Wood announced two sustainability goals focused on developing an inclusive and diverse workforce; to educate and inspire 100% of Wood employees to be inclusive every day by 2021, and to improve gender balance with 40% female representation in senior leadership roles by 2030.

Read more about our goals and performance to date on our Sustainability goals page.

We continue to build a culture at Wood that centres around our people. Our people strategy is focused around four key themes; Attract, Develop, Engage, Retain and Sustain.  Each element ensures we continue to build the future skills needed to deliver our solutions and decent work and opportunity for all.

Attract 

Wood is committed to providing an engaging candidate and employee experience which promotes an internal culture of enhanced employee performance and retention, leadership development, and long-term partnership with our clients and communities. We achieve this through our focus on:

• Internal redeployment to provide consistent and predictable skills for our projects and our people.
• Hiring locally wherever possible to ensure we promote local sustainable development and nationalisation in the communities we serve

• Creating an environment that is free from all forms of unlawful or unfair discrimination, to ensure we are known as an inclusive and equal opportunities employer
• Providing fair, competitive and transparent reward

Our reward policy and philosophy is to have fair and externally competitive reward frameworks which align to business strategy at group and local levels. We ensure our values are maintained, and a balance is achieved between short and long-term reward and recognition.

Read more on our reward principles in our Reward Policy, including information on our approach to fixed reward, variable reward, benefits and retirement. In addition, visit our remuneration page for more information on reward and our Directors' Remuneration Policy.

Develop

Developing our people to be able to do their job today, and in the future, is critical to our success.  Everyone joining Team Wood goes through the same global onboarding process, to ensure we deliver the same consistent messaging and approach to all employees in the first three weeks of working at Wood.

Our approach to learning supports the development of individuals to reach their full potential. Individuals are encouraged to take a blended approach to learning, where much of their development takes place on-the-job. Development requires commitment and effort from individuals, managers and Wood. The company provides tools and resources to assist employees in understanding potential roles at Wood and what can be done to achieve job progression and upskilling.  We demonstrate our commitment through a variety of accessible learning choices:

• Evolving eLearning platforms, accessible in multiple languages
• Personal development webinars focused on a variety of learning topics
• Our Mentor Connect app designed to support learning and growth by connecting employees with suggested mentors or mentees.
• Our Early Careers Hub, supporting those taking their first steps on their career journey with links to the Company induction, mentoring programmes, learning tools, our developing professional’s network, career support and a wealth of stories from colleagues at all levels of the business

In addition, we offer three tiers of leadership development:

• Stepping into Leadership, a programme focused on leadership skills and is aimed at those employees who have recently moved or are about to move into their first leadership role.
• Leadership Excellence, a programme supporting those at the next tier in our leadership structure, identified as high potential, and includes strategic thinking, change agility, digital leadership, and how to become an inspirational leader.
• Leading Beyond, supporting senior leaders to inspire others, be inclusive and engaging, unlock growth enablers, transform culture, and accelerate operational excellence in everything we do.

For more information, visit our careers website and early careers.

Engage

Employee engagement gives an insight into the culture of our organisation, the experiences of our people and the activities that shape our progress.  As a strategic priority of Wood’s board and leadership, we engage across a variety of communication channels ranging from our global networks, Team Wood Yammer, Employee Surveys and our “Life at Wood” initiatives, all of which seek to embed our culture and enable our people to connect with the business and each other.

Visit our Life at Wood page, designed to give insight to our culture and the people that make Wood an incredible place to work.

Responding to our employee engagement survey, our engagement framework is designed to ensure our employees have a consistent experience in their connections with Wood leaders. This minimum engagement standard ensures we are continuously connecting with our people and listening to the heart of our business. The engagement framework is designed to be adjusted by our business units to suit specific requirements and is complimented by a similar reward framework.

Our employee networks continue to strengthen and grow, providing a platform for our employees to connect, learn, share views, tell us what we’re doing well and recommend improvements to make Wood an even better place to work. Each network is open and inclusive to everyone. They have clear terms of reference, are sponsored by a senior leader, and have an action plan for the year, which is aligned to our culture and inclusion ambitions. Our Listening Group Network (LGN) continues to enable our people to request leadership updates on topics of their choice and have their voices heard by members of the Board and Executive Leadership Team (ELT), with subsequent actions identified and implemented from the feedback.

For more information, visit our diversity, equity and inclusion page

Retain and Sustain

Being part of the Wood family means our people are part of a team that cares about their wellbeing, cares that they have someone who listens, cares that they have all the support they need to succeed and cares about them and those closest to them.

Employee Assistance Programme (EAP)

Our Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) continues to play a significant role in our commitment to the wellbeing of our people. The services are provided through two vendors, one for the UK and one for the rest of the world. The EAP underpins many of our wellbeing activities and provides our employees, and their families with 24/7 support, 365 days of the year, and access to practical information and counselling on a variety of topics including improving relationships, managing stress, career success, parenting, managing workplace pressure, improving esteem and confidence, and maintaining physical health.

In addition, our internal wellbeing SharePoint site, Living Well at Wood is supported by a wellbeing community of practice and wellbeing champions distributed across all locations in Wood. Supporting key initiatives such as the roll out of Wood’s mental health strategy, our internal focus on wellbeing ensures we respond to employee needs and support them throughout their time at Wood.

Supporting our people through the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, our Flexible Working Policy has further enhanced our ability to offer our people the opportunity to adopt a hybrid-working pattern, enabling a better work life balance. This has been widely welcomed and strengthens our ability to attract and retain the best talent.

Celebrating our people 

Celebrating our success and our people helps to create a sense of belonging, where everyone feels valued and recognised for their contribution to our organisation. Taking the time to recognise those that go above and beyond to embody our values and behaviours helps us not just to say thank you to those individuals, but instils a sense of pride in working at Wood, and the positive impacts we make every day, across our global employee community.

Complementing a variety of smaller recognition schemes around the business, our global Inspire Awards serve as Wood’s annual platform to formally recognise and celebrate our people, their passion and inspiring actions that support not just Wood, but our colleagues, communities and sustainability journey.

For more information, visit our Inspire Awards page.

In addition, our Global The Shield awards recognise those who go above and beyond for Health, Safety, Security, Environment & Sustainability (HSSES), with quarterly winners in 3 categories; Prepare, Engage, and Intervene.

Learn more about raising the shield on our The Shield page.

Advancing fair reward and Equality

We are committed to equal opportunities for all and to create an inclusive workplace, that celebrates diversity and treats our people with dignity and respect.

Wood is committed to transparent, internally fair and externally competitive reward.  Our reward roadmap sets out the steps towards greater transparency and includes global pay equity reporting to ensures we remained with standards and expectations on reward. Pay equity reporting measures individual base pay against the salary band for jobs of equivalent size, in the same job family, in the same country; highlighting any variation from our frameworks and enabling us to take steps to address any inequity identified in how we pay our people.

Wood complies with the reporting requirements covered under The UK Equality Act 2010 (Gender Pay Gap Information) Regulations 2017. Since 2019, we have significantly reduced our number of employing entities as a result of entity rationalisation and divestment; in our latest gender pay gap report 2020, we continue to expand our reporting to include both mandatory and voluntary disclosure and remain confident that our gender pay gap does not reflect an equal pay issue nor is it related to paying males and females differently. It is a result of gender distribution across occupations and job levels, consistent across all our UK entities and our industry peers.

In the UK, Wood is also a Real Living Wage employer accredited by the Living Wage Foundation.

Read our latest gender pay gap report.