Home  Responsibility Our people Employee relations
|
|
The legal frameworks governing employee relations vary from country to country, as does custom and practice. One of our main challenges in this area is to ensure a level of global consistency whilst allowing enough flexibility to support the local markets in building good relations with their workforces that take account of local laws and circumstances. To that end, relations with trade unions are nationally determined and managed locally in line with the applicable legal framework and standards of good practice. Managers throughout the Company are trained in consultation requirements as well as relevant labour law. Training is done at a local level and we have a range of HR and line manager networks for sharing experience and good practice, and promoting alignment across the organisation. At a global level, we have a Head of Employee Relations who supports national management in ensuring that their local activities are consistent with our high level principles.
The well-developed arrangements for interactions with trade unions and workers councils in the UK and Sweden provided the forum for productive discussion and collaboration in 2007 with regard to the planned workforce reductions. Elsewhere, our processes followed the nationally determined arrangements.
As we continue to develop our global platform for managing HR going forward, we are working to ensure that the strength of our local management approaches is not undermined.
Before it became a legal requirement under European law in 1995, both our heritage companies, Astra and Zeneca, had European Consultation Committees (ECCs) in place. Our single AstraZeneca ECC comprises trade union representatives and locally elected employees, and is chaired by a member of the Senior Executive Team. The committee meets once a year, and a sub-committee meets quarterly, to discuss, among other things, business developments and any potential impact these may have on the workforce.
The content of this page was externally assured by Bureau Veritas, February 2008
|
|
|
|