Applus+ personnel are a key factor in our current success and will play a critical role in the success of our future operations. We have more than 18,700 people working for us across the world in many disciplines, including highly skilled engineers and technicians. A global TIC operator, Applus+ is made up of high-level professionals from a wide range of cultures.
As a Group, we incorporate the professionals who are required in each of our businesses and regions, recruiting and retaining talent by providing a fair and competitive environment with professional development opportunities and training for all our staff. Moreover, we foster internal promotion to support our recruitment processes and fill internal vacancies, in addition to having a fair reward system.
Our cutting-edge expertise and know-how give us a competitive advantage over our peers. We invest in our employees, helping them to hone their skills and expertise, offering in-house training and capacity-building tools to improve and build on their capabilities in addition to certification and accreditation courses delivered by third parties.
In 2015, we organised approximately 360,000 hours of training (with an average investment of 19 training hours per employee), ranging from technical skills to issues related to health, safety, quality and the environment or language learning.
Employee health and safety is one of the core principles of our business. We have implemented health and safety management systems in accordance with the international OSHAS 18001 standard and approved a HSQE policy that is deployed across all Group divisions.
On an annual basis, we organise our global ‘Safety day’ event in all our divisions and regions to increase staff awareness and knowledge of health and safety issues and to help us define our safety programme commitment.
Last year, we developed the Applus+ ‘Golden Safety Rules’. These are a set of guidelines designed to mitigate or eliminate those risks associated with the eleven activities that have historically given rise to a higher number of incidents or more serious injuries.
For further information, see the full Applus+ CSR Report or the Executive CSR summary.