Our employees are fundamental to our business success and we strive to offer opportunities that will attract, motivate and retain talented employees, enabling them to give their best. When we are recruiting, we make sure that all qualified applicants are considered for opportunities without regard to race, colour, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, or disability. Once they are in the organisation, we continually invest in our people to develop the capabilities we will need to succeed over the longer term.

Our people vision is that all employees are proud to work for a company that is recognised as the leaders in what we do and understand the positive difference we make in the world. In support of this, we are dedicated to creating an inclusive environment and culture, where difference is valued and people are recognised for what they deliver and bring to the team.

For the second year running we were ahead of the benchmark comparison data for feelings of pride about working for the company and employee motivation levels. Our employees also reported that they feel listened to and have a clearer understanding of how they can contribute to the Horizon strategy.

Over the year we rolled out a global career development framework for our sales teams, implemented a new internal jobs board for all open vacancies and supported our managers to have effective development conversations with their teams.

Developing capability

We regularly undertake capability reviews to ensure we have the skills we need to deliver long-term sustainable growth. We have been working hard to address capability gaps across the Group by bringing in the capabilities we need for the future, and by investing in the talented people we have. We continue to make a significant investment in our teams and the business systems that can provide the data needed to make evidence-based decisions. Recently we have implemented a learning and development portal, giving all employees access to online courses and tutorials, with bespoke training packages developed for different job families and levels in the organisation.

• Our flagship Management Development Programme covers many of the skills needed to be a successful manager in Oxford Instruments
• Our Project Leadership Programme ensures our technical managers are equipped with the hard and soft skills they need to successfully deliver substantial and meaningful projects. 
• Our Aspire Programme is for high potential employees representing all our job families and regions.
• Our Apprentice Scheme support future business requirements for talent with hard and soft skills that can be hard to find externally. Our apprentices develop skills that are useful in production but also enable potential future career development in other technical and engineering roles.
• We have a Technical Development Programme and have structured career development opportunities for technical staff. Our technical competency framework and technical careers ladder offers those in technical roles a clear future career path that can take them in the direction that suits them best.
• We have undertaken work to establish career development frameworks for our commercial staff. We have introduced a Product Management Development programme to equip our product management, service, applications and marketing teams with all they need to develop and deliver a market-driven portfolio of products and services. 

Our workplaces

As an international organisation, our employees are located across the world, frequently based in smaller satellite offices that are remote from our main business sites. In this context, it is important that we work hard to create a sense of belonging for our employees, and so we continue to run a series of global and local initiatives to ensure people feel part of the wider Oxford Instruments team.

We publish regular updates on our intranet pages to recognise the contributions of all of our different sites and nearly 150 of our colleagues around the world are members of a Strava group, helping them to keep connected socially and share their sporting achievements with each other. We also make sure that people feel connected to our purpose and strategy by publishing regular written and filmed updates from members of the Management Board.