Our staff

Most of our offices have full calendars of sporting, cultural and social events that encourage our staff to get to know one another. Here members of our Singapore team enjoy a meal out togetherWe owe our success to our people. Their creativity, energy and commitment have cemented our reputation as a provider of leading edge solutions and are crucial to the long term strength and success of our business.

We are investing heavily in staff welfare and professional development with the aim of sustaining Mott MacDonald as the most attractive employer in its field.

Ownership and governance

Mott MacDonald is wholly owned by its employees, meaning we take a long-term view rather than reacting to impulsive market pressures. Everything we earn is returned to the people who work for us and our ownership model is consistent across the globe. Staff enjoy the same benefits of employee ownership wherever their location. We also reward all of our staff for their efforts through our profit share scheme.

Our future direction is decided collectively by our management, with our shareholders’ committee holding the Group board to account on behalf of the employee owners. This ensures rigorous checks and balances, maintaining us on a steady course.

We’re as good as the people we employ

We believe our people are of the highest calibre and want to retain them. To achieve this we are working on several fronts, including:

• Expanding training and professional development
• Finding new and better ways to embed our values
• Promoting equality, diversity and inclusivity
• Providing flexible pay and benefits
• Supporting staff engaged in charitable work
• Raising health and safety awareness
• Improving our environmental performance in line with the expectations of our staff, for many of whom sustainability is of personal and professional importance

Flexible employer

We are unusual in today’s employment market in saying we want to be an employer for life. Our aim is that most of our staff can have a fulfilling and diverse career with us for their entire working lives. We aim to be flexible. If someone working for the Group wants to change direction, we try help them achieve that within the company. A benefit of being large, diverse and global is that there is the real possibility of finding a perfect career match internally.

Clear and open communications

Mott MacDonald has a culture of openness promoted through a commitment to two-way communication. We reach out to our staff, stakeholders, customers and the communities with which we work through publications, our intranet and websites, videos, forums, meetings, formal staff councils and informal discussions.

Our communication strategy is constantly reviewed, with particular emphasis on the challenges of communicating effectively across a global, multicultural, multilingual workforce. Our intranet is a powerful knowledge and information exchange tool complemented by our country, market and service websites. Mott MacDonald continually invests in tele- and video-conferencing and webcasting facilities to aid internal communication.

Equality and diversity

Some capable young people choose not to take degrees. We are piloting a UK-wide apprenticeship programme, supporting bright school leavers to attain Advanced Apprenticeships. We hope many will progress to degrees and full professional qualifications.

Wherever in the world we work, we appoint and promote individuals on merit and support employees in their efforts to develop to their full potential. Most of our senior managers around the world are nationals of that country.

Thirty two percent of our UK staff are of other than white British ethnicity. Across the world, our staff reflect the ethnic and cultural make-up of the locations we work in. We are proud of our success in recruiting female employees at well above industry average levels. Women make up a third of our UK graduate engineers, even though only 25% of engineering graduates are female.

A diversity development steering group under the leadership of a Group Board director helps to shape and reinforce the Group’s commitment to equal opportunities for all. Every member of staff is challenged by our equality and diversity policy to live by our PRIDE values – our core value of Respect has been developed as a behavioural standard.

Senior management are expected to lead by example. Employee groups help us to gauge the impact of working patterns and practices, test strategies and obtain feedback on our policies and initiatives. This helps guard against inadvertent discrimination. To help us better record the diversity of our staff, we introduced a global recruitment monitoring system at the start of 2009.

We take account of our suppliers’ ethical standards when selecting who we do business with.

We are working with clients, professional institutions, trade bodies, the recruitment agencies we use and with fellow consultants to agree and promote standards for diversity reporting.

Personal and professional development

We have developed and continue to evolve programmes to help our staff all the way through their careers with Mott MacDonald:

• Graduate development programme – guidance and support for graduates from the moment they enter the world of work, helping them towards the goal of professional qualification.
• Horizons and Navigator – New personal development programmes initiated in the UK with Cranfield School of Management. Horizons focuses on career development for newly qualified professionals. Navigator is a people management programme for mid-career managers.
• Ashridge Leadership Programme – for senior managers marked to become future leaders of our business.
• Apprenticeships – Some capable young people choose not to take degrees. We are piloting a UK-wide apprenticeship programme, supporting bright school leavers to attain Advanced Apprenticeships. We hope many will progress to degrees and full professional qualifications.
• E-learning – hundreds of different courses are offered through our online portal Learning Point.