Training and development

We want to foster people’s abilities through training and development within a high-performance culture.

We aim to create an environment where everyone can learn and grow.

In a highly competitive market, we need a well-trained and knowledgeable workforce. Our training and development programmes support the achievement of our business objectives and aim to raise the capability of our leaders and managers.

Our performance management systems focus on performance appraisal and development of capability, allowing us to track performance and development needs. The system tries to ensure that all employees go through the process; however, we noted some exceptions to this procedure in the Czech Republic.  

Our Executive Development Programme (EDP) helped ensure we had well-trained leaders in place across Telefónica O2 Europe. In 2006, 85 leaders attended the programme.  In 2007, senior leaders attended the Leading for Total Engagement Programme to date, and from autumn 2007 senior and high potential managers will be invited to attend the new executive development programmes at the Telefonica University of Barcelona.

We recognise that development opportunities help to engage and motivate employees. Everyone has the opportunity to develop a personal plan with their line manager to ensure continuous learning and improved business performance.

Training and development opportunities across the Group include:

• Induction training for new employees.
• Role-specific training such as for customer service, engineering, sales, marketing and human resources.
• Leadership and management development training.
• Mandatory training on issues such as health and safety, the environment and business ethics.

We also create new programmes in response to changing conditions and market challenges. We are developing training for our retail employees on the issues of child protection and content standards and run selective training schemes across the business to help support what we offer customers:

• O2 UK arranges special ‘Protect our Children’ sessions, inviting employees to become experts in offering advice to parents on mobile safety.
• In Germany, since September 2006 all new employees joining our marketing and sales functions have to attend a Customer Day for two days, organised by the Sales and Marketing Academy.
• In Ireland, we launched age verification and access controls for customers and brought in training on these processes for our customer care staff.
  

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