People

We prioritise the health, safety and wellbeing of employees and contractors. We take a holistic approach to employee wellness, protecting their physical and mental health, their social wellbeing, and respecting their human rights. This extends to ensuring a positive workplace culture that attracts and retains a highly skilled workforce. In 2021, we set a target to achieve an annual LTA (lost-time accident) frequency rate of below 0.1, with an overarching commitment to stop all preventable accidents within our workforce and contractors, by promoting safe behaviour and enhancing our focus on identification and awareness of hazards. 

We expect each site to perform regular risk assessments and use a variety of health and safety KPIs specific to the exact nature of the operations. To provide visibility and oversight for the Board, information is collated quarterly on three key performance indicators: Major Accident Frequency, Lost Time Accident Frequency, and Accident Severity Rate. 

To meet the highest health and safety standards at workplace, we always seek to implement operational best practices, and maintain a rigorous culture of health and safety awareness, training and performance, ensuring comprehensive audits and focus on continuous improvement. At 31 December 2022, 76% of our office, production and testing sites were certified to the ISO 45001 international standard, with additional relevant sites progressing towards accreditation.

To achieve our business objectives, it is important to nurture an engaged, capable and enthusiastic workforce. We want to ensure our people enjoy the work they do, with no risks to their safety or wellbeing. We value diversity in its broadest sense, and aim to create working environments that nurture employees and encourage them to grow and act with integrity. Our policies relating to recruitment, talent development and succession planning are supported by training programmes, helping us ensure our employees have appropriate opportunities for career development and growth.

We recognise the importance of engaging with our employees in a meaningful way, both to support their development and to help us achieve better business performance. We regularly consult employees and respond to any concerns we receive through our employee engagement surveys. We always provide the feedback to executive teams, plant directors, HR teams and other people leaders and consider these insights when developing plans for improvement. We also established a Group Workforce Advisory Panel (WAP) to enable key views of the workforce to be discussed at Board meetings. We ensure relevant opportunities are in place for employees to discuss career development with their managers, and we encourage internal applications for open positions. 

To ensure our employees understand sustainability, we have a network of over 30 employees with roles in sustainability workstreams and global sustainability initiatives, and over 50 sustainability champions who promote initiatives locally. They facilitate the flow of information through posters, narrowcasting, lunch meetings and local intranet sites. Workstreams provide employees the opportunity to work on specific sustainability themes like Energy, Waste & Emissions or Product Life Cycle Performance, which can take up to two hours of their time each week. Examples of outcomes from these workstreams include a sustainability best-practices platform, guidelines for LCA work, an aircraft emission calculator and a sustainability guidebook for commercial managers. Local sustainability champions largely operate within their site and develop local initiatives, for example on energy efficiency, local charity and awareness programmes. The entire network comes together quarterly at the virtual Sustainability Network Event.

Behaviour-based programmes and continuous training and awareness campaigns remain central to our approach in improving safety performance. All employees receiving regular training on a basis, while the induction for all new joiners includes awareness of health and safety issues and the Group’s policy on health and safety. All employees have access to the online thinkSAFE! training portal and must complete at least one module a quarter. Training modules vary in content and are complemented by training related to specific operations. 

We recognise the importance of protecting employees’ physical health. All employees have access to employee assistance programmes designed to help them and their families deal with difficult life issues, ranging from counselling support, mental health and wellbeing advice and guidance on legal and financial queries. The service is free and provided on a confidential basis, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The gender pay gap indicates the percentage difference in the mean and median base and bonus pay between all employees in the workforce. All UK organisations with 250 or more employees must report annually on the pay gap between their male and female employees.

We recognise the importance of diversity in building a high-calibre workforce and champion diversity in the broadest sense, whether along geographical, cultural or personal lines, and including gender, race, ethnicity, country of origin, nationality, colour, social and cultural background, religion, family responsibilities, sexual orientation, age and disability.

We are looking for ways to increase diversity across the Group, and the aerospace sector at large. We ensure entry and progression within the Group is based on aptitude and the ability to meet fair criteria outlined in job descriptions. For any employees with a disability, we take steps to ensure we make reasonable adjustments where needed. Melrose is a member of the Business Disability Forum, which works with businesses to understand the changes required in the workplace for disabled persons to be treated fairly.

The Melrose Code of Ethics highlights the importance of diversity and inclusion and is supported by our Board of Directors’ Diversity policy and our Melrose Diversity, Equity and Inclusion policy. 

We ensure extensive training opportunities are available and promoted to all employees at all stages of their careers, and that we cultivate and maintain a high standard of skills. Training programmes start with new hires, to accelerate knowledge and exposure to the business culture, strategy and objectives. We provide a wide range of learning opportunities throughout people's careers, extending beyond functional skills development to personal development and leadership opportunities.

We encourage sites to develop a diverse pipeline of successors for key roles and leadership positions. Annual talent reviews help identify individuals who have the ability and aspiration to grow into more demanding roles, and we tailor leadership programmes to reflect the local environments and nature of operations. These programmes are becoming increasingly popular and receiving positive feedback. Our global development programme for new leaders, Set4Success, was launched in 2021 with over 300 participants and has since continued to receive positive feedback. We also continue to operate our Future Leaders and Leaders of Leaders development programmes, which help to identify and assess potential employees who have the ability and aspiration to grow into larger roles.

We encourage employees to contribute to local charitable and community initiatives, and lead by example through the sponsorship of such projects. In 2022, GKN Aerospace participated in a wide range of community development initiatives, providing significant investment in both volunteering time and material resources. As part of environmental programmes focused on local community development, initiatives include planting trees supplying to schools and reducing waste. 

In 2023, Melrose met the commitment it made on the acquisition of GKN to invest £10 million over five years through the Melrose Skills Fund, to focused on developing technical aerospace skills at GKN Aerospace in the UK, as part of its wider commitment to invest £10 million across the GKN businesses. The guiding principle of the Skills Fund has been to develop technical skills that support current and future business needs using digital delivery methods and accredited learning-management systems.