It’s our goal that TUI Travel is a great place to work and a company our colleagues connect with. Key to this goal is the development of TUI Spirit, our company values (view Embedding page). We look to measure how we are doing in creating such an environment and to ensure continuous improvement by comparing ourselves to other successful global organisations.

In August 2008, we launched Leadership Voice, a survey of our senior leaders, which aims to measure engagement among this important group of people, and how well they understand our vision and values. We then compare this with the norms of other global and national senior management. The survey confirmed 94% of our leaders are proud to work for TUI Travel, an excellent result just one year into our merger.

There are two questions relating to sustainable development in the Leadership Voice survey. The first survey, carried out in August 2008, confirmed that:

• 73% of leaders agreed that 'my business acts responsibly on environmental matters'
• 66% of leaders agreed that 'my business acts responsibly in the local communities in which we operate'

In 2009, we will amend the questions to allow comparison with senior management norms, and monitor over time the opinions of our senior leaders on sustainable development at TUI Travel.

Leadership development
At Group level, we aim to ensure that our learning & development programmes help their participants understand how sustainable development affects their role. Our Groupwide leadership programme was launched in July 2008 and, by February 2009, 50 senior managers had attended.

The programme currently works with a community running an eco-lodge in Heliconias, Costa Rica and aims to boost the commercial performance of the local business by upgrading and extending facilities at the site and providing access to business expertise and advice from TUI Travel.

Sustainable development was a key topic at the inaugural Group Management Conference, held in Paris in February 2008. The conference incorporated workshops where senior leaders brainstormed what TUI Travel could do to establish and fulfil our company values (view Embedding page), including sustainable development issues.

Sector-level engagement
Many TUI Travel businesses conduct internal surveys on topics that matter to our people. Where possible, key questions – including those on sustainable development – are aligned Groupwide so we can measure our colleagues’ opinions in their entirety. In 2007/08, the following business areas carried out internal surveys that included questions on sustainable development: TUI UK & Ireland, TUI Nordic, TUI Canada, Activity and Specialist & Emerging Markets. See the Sector pages for details of the results.

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Workstream 8: Our People