Employees
Employees are crucial to our performance and to our success in business
Our statement
“Our employees are crucial to our performance and to our success in business. We rely on their skills, passion and commitment to innovation. It is their drive to deliver top quality service to our customers that ensures the smooth running of our global network operations. We are, therefore, committed to providing our employees with a positive and stimulating work environment. Our approach is designed to create development opportunities to help us to attract and retain a talented and diverse group of people.”
Amy Blair, Senior Vice President, Global Human Resources, Liberty Global – Champion for Employees
Why it matters
Liberty Global has 22,000 employees working in 13 countries across two continents. Our employees operate our customer care centers; develop cutting edge technologies, products and services; and market them to millions of customers. Our workforce counts numerous exceptionally well trained professionals that are managed by a top team in a complex global business.
We want to make sure we meet our employees’ needs and make them feel valued and supported. That’s why we have strong global and local HR teams delivering a wide range of activities and programs.
Our Global Human Resources (HR) team oversees our efforts to attract, motivate, and retain the best people. The global team leads on numerous activities and programs such as development of policies, executive compensation, training, and best practice procedures. We have developed a new Code of Business Conduct to reflect the values of respect, honesty, and integrity that we expect our employees to uphold wherever they may work and whatever their role within the company.
The HR teams within our affiliates are responsible for implementing global policies and developing their own policies and initiatives to reflect best practice as well as particular local circumstances.
What we are doing?
Our ability to attract and retain great employees is based on our commitment to career development, equal opportunities, and health and wellbeing.
Fundamental to the way we work is listening to what our employees have to say. Many affiliates such as in The Netherlands, Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Romania solicit employee feedback through employee satisfaction surveys that are conducted on a regular basis. In 2010, VTR in Chile was placed 6th in the Top 100 Great Places to Work in all of Latin America by the Great Places to Work Institute. In addition to conducting regular satisfaction surveys, our Compliance Line, available 24 hours a day, allows employees to anonymously report workplace and business ethics issue.
We are responsible for providing our employees with the skills, opportunities, and encouragement they need to help them reach their full potential. Management development programs are offered at several of our local and corporate locations to ensure that employees are supported in their career progression within the workplace. In addition, many affiliates offer financial assistance packages to help employees continue their formal education outside the work environment.
Employee performance is measured and monitored, and the HR teams track performance against objectives and goals that are agreed at the beginning of each year between an employee and his or her manager. This process also enables us to identify appropriate learning opportunities and to offer, where possible, the appropriate training to help our employees develop new skills and improve their performance, as well as encouraging employees to remain in close contact with their manager to assess their progress against their objectives.
Liberty Global aims to provide compensation and benefits packages designed to motivate our employees and to reward performance that meets or exceeds set objectives, as well as to attract new employees. The benefits we offer differ depending on market conditions, but typically include sponsored healthcare, insurance, pension savings programs and discounted rates on our products and services.
We believe that diversity in the workplace is important as it creates a more dynamic and robust culture, enables us to attract all-round talent, and serve our customers more effectively. We are committed to creating equal opportunities, and this commitment extends from the first time we meet a potential recruit to an employee’s last day at work. We strongly believe that all decisions should be made based on individual merit or the needs of the business, rather than someone’s age, gender, sexuality, background, or religion. As a global company, we are proud to have people from different cultures and backgrounds all working to make our business a success.
We recognize that our employees will be more motivated and more productive if they are healthy and happy. Thus, employee health and wellbeing, both within and outside the workplace, are important to the success of our business. Across the group, our affiliates provide health and wellness initiatives and programs such as free health check-ups to help ensure early identification and management of any health risks. At our corporate offices in Amsterdam, a yearlong health and wellness program offers a range of activities including free fruit and personal consultations on diet and nutrition with a qualified nutritionist. Telenet in Belgium provides weekly health and exercise tips, and a number of UPC affiliates have been offering seminars, workshops, and activities to promote healthy living.
Many of our employees give considerable time and effort to the communities where they live and work. We inspire our employees to do so as we believe this promotes employee work-life balance, as well as benefiting the causes they support. We want to encourage our employees to contribute to the communities where they live and work through our In Heroes and In Givers programs.