Engagement
Highly engaged employees are crucial to our company's success. Engaged employees enjoy going to work. They radiate optimism, achieve or exceed their objectives, have lower absenteeism and suffer fewer injuries than others. Our Chairman, President and CEO, Murray Martin, has made the building of an engaged workforce one of the company's top priorities.

We seek to engage employees through challenging work assignments, career development opportunities, and programs that promote personal and professional growth. We encourage dialogue, solicit feedback and measure engagement through a range of mechanisms, including online. We also recognize managers and teams that demonstrate high engagement by showcasing their practices in our internal magazine, at group meetings, and by asking them to lead engagement and communication training.

One key online channel for promoting engagement in the U.S. is PB Voice, an intranet site that allows employees to submit questions and review answers on a variety of topics. In addition, our PB Voice Partners host local forums and short surveys for small groups of employees.

We leverage online forums to connect and engage our global base of employees:

  • Yammer is a social networking platform that facilitates collaboration and enables employees to share experiences on virtually any kind of assignment. Since its launch in 2009, more than 4600 employees have contributed more than 25,000 Yammer posts.
  • IdeaNet was also launched in 2009 as part of a comprehensive program to foster a culture of innovation through company-wide engagement. IdeaNet Challenges stimulate new ideas and result in actions designed to create organic growth. In 2010 IdeaNet posed 20 challenges, resulting in more than 1400 ideas from employees in 27 countries. In its two years of operation, IdeaNet has generated more than 700 ideas that have subsequently been adopted by the company either as product or process improvements or as part of new offerings under development.

We also solicit employee feedback through regular surveys. For years we have conducted a global employee survey available in 18 languages. The survey explores overall engagement, action planning and manager effectiveness and focuses on additional engagement drivers such as development, recognition, future vision and communication. In addition to multiple-choice questions, the survey gives employees an opportunity for more detailed feedback via confidential written comments. The response rate is typically between 80 and 85 percent.

In 2010 we replaced the global survey with a series of shorter Pulse Surveys to provide a snapshot on engagement and keep in touch with employees throughout the company during a time of transformation. We conducted three Pulse Surveys during the year and developed action plans in response to the feedback and views shared by employees. The actions focused on reward and recognition, and proactive communications in sharing the benefits and impact of our transformation activities. The larger global survey will resume in 2011.

Still another engagement tool is our Agile Work program, designed to take advantage of mobile technologies, make it easier for employees to work effectively in multiple locations (including collaborative spaces, client sites, airports and their homes), and reduce global real estate costs.

The 2008 renovation of our Connecticut headquarters replaced traditional cubicle layouts with more collaborative spaces. As a result, Fairfield County, CT, was chosen for a 2009 pilot program. The response from the 140 employees who participated in the pilot program was positive. More than 80 percent of participants felt that the program made them more productive, while managers saw no adverse impact on productivity. The program also reduced participants' carbon footprint by eliminating an average of 77 miles of commuting per employee per week.

Development
We focus on hiring talented people, nurturing their growth, and providing opportunities for them to make a real impact for themselves and for Pitney Bowes. We see employee development as a partnership between an employee and his/her manager, aided by strong support from our Human Resources organization.

Our company values are at the heart of our learning and development philosophy. We have identified fundamental behaviors for our employees based on our values.

From their first day on the job through their entire career, Pitney Bowes employees are encouraged to own their career development and take advantage of learning and development programs. Each year, employees work with their managers to set performance goals and objectives, identify strengths and development needs, and build a developmental plan to broaden current skill sets and acquire new ones. Employee development takes many forms, including on-the-job training and rotational assignments, coaching and employee mentoring, internal learning programs, online resources and community service opportunities. We also offer tuition reimbursement for job-related higher education.

Leadership development is a continuing focus. We strive to identify leaders early on and give them the knowledge and experience they need to excel. We provide a wide array of leadership, communication, and performance management learning solutions—from foundational programs to help new managers transition successfully, to advanced courses for seasoned leaders and executive education programs. We also provide targeted development for specific individuals or groups, such as early-in-career high performers and diversity talent.