Vodafone 2024 Annual Report

Our people strategy Our people strategy 15 Vodafone Group Plc Annual Report 2024 Strategic report

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Our people strategy is to create an inclusive environment for growth where everyone has the opportunity to thrive and belong. Our engaged and experienced teams are a key strength and will support us through the transformation of Vodafone. The ‘Spirit of Vodafone’ Our culture – the ‘Spirit of Vodafone’ – outlines the beliefs we stand for and the behaviours that enable our strategy and purpose. We foster our culture by developing behaviours that reinforce our Spirit, investing in leadership development to role-model our beliefs, and ensuring systems, processes and milestone activities are aligned with the ‘Spirit of Vodafone’. We measure our progress and identify where to take action via a bi-annual employee survey called ‘Spirit Beat’. In our latest Spirit Beat survey in April 2024, we had an 88% response rate and strong scores in engagement, connection to purpose, and Spirit. Spirit Beat surveys Measurement April 2024 May 2023 Engagement 75 75 Purpose 88 88 Team Spirit Index 1 85 84 Response rates 88 88 Note: 1. The Team Spirit Index represents an overall view of how people are doing on the ‘Spirit of Vodafone’ and takes into account each of our Spirit Behaviours. It allows us to understand how successful we have been in embedding these behaviours when working with each other, our customers, and the communities in which we operate. The ‘Spirit Beat’ survey measures our progress on culture change with a focus on supporting employees to deliver our priorities of Customers, Simplicity and Growth through Spirit. The ‘Spirit Beat’ results show that teams are becoming more engaged, connected to our strategy, and have clarity on their goals. Managers who act on Spirit outperform those who do not take action by 20 points on Team Spirit Index and 26 points on Engagement. We support our managers to lead with Spirit and continue to take action on survey results through development programmes, training and resources. In November 2023, over 900 managers attended training on taking action on Spirit. We continue to evolve our employee listening strategy and deepen the connection between employee and customer experiences. As Vodafone transforms, we use pulse surveys to measure the understanding of our strategy; between June and September 2023, 84% of teams understood and 80% were connected to our strategy. Onboarding feedback shows new hires are connected to our strategy and 87% reflect Spirit behaviours, while 84% positively rated their onboarding experience. Feedback shows that 69% of leavers would recommend Vodafone as a great place to work. To improve customer experience, we have deepened our understanding of our frontline colleague experience. Spirit Beat results from April 2024 showed the Engagement score was 75% and Team Spirit Index 85%. Outsourced contractors who serve our customers also had an opportunity to participate in ‘Spirit Beat’: 65% responded, an increase of nine percentage points from May 2023. Insights obtained have been used to inform our overall customer action plan, designed to improve the frontline and customer experience. ‘Spirit of Vodafone Day’ takes place once a quarter with dedicated time to focus on connecting with our customers. During those days, learning hours increase on average by two times compared to other days in the year. Employees use the ‘Spirit of Vodafone Day’ to connect with the customer experience through customer-focused learning and local activities.

Diverse talent and skills The Vodafone Learning Organisation (‘VLO’) operates across all our operations to deliver high-quality learning that supports diverse talent to develop the skills required to transform Vodafone. This is reflected in the four strategic pillars summarised below. 1. Enable a high-impact performance and learning culture We continue to support the professional growth of people through online learning. This year our learning and career development platform ‘Grow with Vodafone’ was recognised in the Learning Technologies Awards, winning gold for ‘Best Learning Technologies Project – Commercial Sector’, and silver for ‘Best Advance in Learning Management Technology’ at the Brandon Hall Excellence awards. During the year, our employees spent 2.7 million hours on learning, with an average of 225,000 hours per month. The annual average number of hours per employee has increased by 74% since FY23, with each employee now spending 32 hours on average per annum on their learning. We invested an average of €386 in both mandatory and non-mandatory training for each employee to build future capabilities. In April 2023, we launched a new performance management framework called ‘Grow my Impact’ to align employee goals to strategic priorities and assess performance based on individual impact. Grow my Impact introduced a mid-year check-in to encourage managers to have growth and career conversations with their direct reports and provide feedback on how they are tracking against their goals. We also refreshed our talent rating framework to support consistent decision-making. The new framework allows us to recognise a larger population of individuals with potential for bigger, more complex roles and to better differentiate between types of potential to provide tailored and value-adding development support to distinct groups. This also includes identifying those of our employees with critical skills. To emphasise that leaders are accountable for strengthening talent across Vodafone, all leaders must now have a ‘Grow Others’ goal. To recognise varying levels of impact and talent, year-end ratings drive reward outcomes for bonus and share awards for eligible employees. Eligibility to receive a bonus is underpinned by minimum performance standards that include the completion of our compliance training called ‘Doing What’s Right’. 2. Build the skills for the future This year we launched and delivered our ‘Skill Accelerators Labs’ across the organisation to develop critical skills such as agile project management, software engineering, automation, and cyber security. 8,000 employees have already completed these programmes. In May 2023 we also introduced a global software engineering reskilling programme to equip employees to move into a new role within Vodafone. Our technical career path (‘TCP’) supports the attraction, retention and development of our technical experts and sits alongside a leadership career path. The TCP is designed to provide more formal ways to recognise and reward technical experts, giving choice in career direction. Following our FY23 review of our leaders’ commercial capabilities, current and future leaders were assessed against the skills we need for the future and targeted development and learning plans were subsequently created to close any gaps. To enable the development of broader skills, we continue to launch and refresh content with licensing partners, accessed by 28,000 employees this year. Click to read our technology employee articles: careers.vodafone.com/life-at-vodafone/projects-stories 3. Drive an efficient engine with the scale and expertise to deliver our growth ambitions We continue to simplify VLO operations by scaling training partnerships with vendors and consolidating duplicate work into our expanded _VOIS shared services team. We also conduct global demand planning to ensure our learning investments reinforce our strategic objectives.

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