Co-worker Development FY 2008/09

What are we trying to achieve?

Amcor’s get fit program, ‘The Way Forward’, was announced in August 2005.
The key elements of this program were:

• Ensuring the Businesses have strong market positions
• Developing a customer and market focus
• Continuous improvement in lowering costs
• Being more disciplined in the use of capital.

It was recognised that to achieve and retain the benefits from ‘The Way Forward’ agenda, high-quality people are required. An extensive program was implemented across the Company to develop skills and improve capabilities that will ensure Amcor has the calibre of people needed to deliver ongoing success.
We are also aiming to achieve a globally consistent approach to the fundamental way we do business – with all Amcor co-workers understanding why we exist, what we are aiming to achieve and how we should go about achieving it.

How are we going about it?

Cultural change was a fundamental component of ‘The Way Forward’ agenda. For the past four years our cultural change focus has been on talent management. This has involved the introduction of robust processes across Amcor and has resulted in a consistent approach to talent and performance management across the Group.

Last year, we introduced a global online talent management system to help us manage talent and performance in an efficient manner. The system enhances our ability to set and manage performance and career goals and for Amcor to ensure better alignment, reporting and governance.

In FY 2008/09, we built on this further, introducing an internal branding program – Being Amcor. This aimed to have all co-workers embrace a common belief statement, set of values and business competencies.

The Amcor Core Values are the foundation of who Amcor is and how we behave. The values enable us to build upon our five pillars for success, our business competencies we call ‘The Amcor Way’. This is about how we run our business, the strengths we have developed, which we intend to build upon. Together, they support our greater purpose and reason for being, our Belief Statement.

What have we achieved?

We have rolled out the new online talent management system across the Group to the top 3,700 co-workers. The first round of performance reviews and goal setting using this system was completed in FY 2008/09. We are now using a consistent approach globally for managing and reviewing the performance of these co-workers, ensuring that we keep and develop our best people.

An extensive communications campaign was rolled out globally to introduce all co-workers to ‘Being Amcor’. With this introduction now complete, adoption of the Core Values and ‘The Amcor Way’ business competencies is being reinforced in our Performance Evaluation system, and further training is planned.

Our 24-month Commercial Leadership Development Program, aimed at improving the sales and marketing capabilities of the Company is now in its third intake, with existing program participants now firmly entrenched in the Businesses. The decision to continue to hire these talented people was made despite the difficult global financial situation that has seen many companies retrench staff or at least implement hiring freezes.

As part of the Value Plus program, aimed at developing sales and marketing excellence across the organisation, a second round of sales training is planned. This Sales Force Excellence (SFE2) training is being rolled out across Amcor’s Australasia, PET and Flexibles Food Businesses. It sees the sales teams within those Businesses being trained in consultative selling techniques.