Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI)

ICI has achieved an 88% reduction in employee work related injury and illness rates since 1990. The Challenge 2005 improvement milestone was to achieve a 50% reduction in the Total Reportable Case Rate between 2000 and 2005. Only a 35% improvement was achieved overall, due primarily to manual handling issues, for example in company warehouses. As a result of a major training effort in 2005, performance in this area has started to improve and ICI has set further challenging safety and health objectives for 2010 to ensure continued progress. Overall group performance remains amongst the industry leaders, and there are some ICI sites in all regions which have reached or exceeded the milestone of 10 years without a lost-time injury.

During 2005 ICI has been paying particular attention to the people capability requirements to meet its strategic objectives. To complement existing graduate recruitment processes, ICI has set up a China Academy to recruit Chinese nationals from universities in USA, UK and China and provide a programme of training and experience in China and the UK over two to three years. 15 graduates joined the scheme in 2005. The technology group has recruited six post-doctoral research employees from Chinese universities to join the research facility at Wilton, UK.

ICI continues to monitor the gender, ethnicity and nationality diversity of its management population. The data indicates that the 2005 management group of about 1,750 included 15% women. Of the 820 located in North America there was a 10% ethnic minority; and of the 930 located outside North America there was a 51% minority nationality (defined as those born outside UK, USA or the Netherlands where our businesses are headquartered). Since 2002, the minority nationality has improved from 46%; the gender and ethnic diversity measures have remained fairly constant.

ICI’s Responsible Care Management System standards require each site to engage with its local community. At a minimum, this involves regular communication with community leaders to ensure that any concerns about sites’ impact on their neighbourhoods are addressed. Employees at many sites also volunteer time and funds, and sites provide facilities and funds, for community initiatives. Since 2003, ICI has quantified the extent of the Group’s community involvement each year. Cash donations to community/humanitarian causes, both local and international, such as the Asian tsunami, the hurricanes in the Americas, and the Pakistan earthquake totalled £3.07m (2004 £2.08m) of which £2.44m (2004 £1.83m) was from the Company and the balance from employees’ fundraising activities. Donations in kind, mainly product, totalled £0.14m (2004 £0.55m) . Employee volunteer time on Company supported projects totalled about 27,800 hours (2004 29,500 hours) of which more than 15,300 were on Company time. The total equivalent value of donations and time was £3.52m (2004 £3.07m), more than 275,500 equivalent hours – or about 1.1 working days per employee.