We encourage all our employees to take an active part in shaping our business by regularly seeking their views and giving them the chance to share their ideas. We are committed to communicating with our employees and, where appropriate, we consult with recognised representative bodies on behalf of our employees.

Powergen Portal intranet

During 2003, we undertook a review of our intranet, the Powergen Portal. The portal was originally designed as a way to communicate with staff, but it was also designed to store and share information. Individual businesses and functions have their own areas within the portal that can be customised. We realised that staff were not making the best use of this resource, so we decided to find out why. We set up a series of focus groups, where we asked employees from our business what they thought about the portal. Based on the findings from these groups, the portal was restructured, making it easier to find information. Support and guidance were also provided so employees could make full use of the portal. The relaunch also gave us a chance to rebrand the portal, stressing our values of energy, openness and simplicity.  

Egen

Our daily electronic newsletter, egen, was launched in December 2001. egen is a popular source of news and information for employees and is meant to be informal and easily accessible. However, towards the end of 2003, a shift of focus saw egen being used in a more important way to give employees business updates.  

Employee forums

Powergen UK's Framework for Business-Based Collective Bargaining set up a single-table, business-based approach to collective bargaining. Each of our business units has its own employee forum, consisting of management representatives, trade union officers and, in some cases, directly elected employee representatives.   At the end of 2002, we were invited to elect two UK representatives to join E.ON's European Works Council (EWC). Two representatives and two substitutes were elected from Powergen to attend the first meeting of the EWC, which consults with subsidiary representatives on a range of cross-border issues with a potential impact on E.ON Group employees.   As a result of a number of major organisational changes within the E.ON Group, the first meeting of the EWC did not happen in 2003 as planned. However, our representatives were able to attend an event in Germany where they were briefed on the background of works councils and met EWC representatives from other E.ON subsidiaries.