A great place to work
Abbott strives continuously to be an employer of choice in the UK – one that can attract and retain people with the highest skill levels, commitment, personal standards and values. We offer excellent career opportunities as well as exceptional compensation and benefits.

Staff retention is a strong indicator that individuals are content in their roles, career path and working environment, and the statistics for Abbott UK are impressive: 26 per cent of employees in the UK have been with Abbott longer than 20 years, 35 per cent of employees have stayed longer than 10 years and 40 per cent longer than five years.

Abbott’s strategic drivers lie in organisational excellence, customer focus and success through its people. Our goal is to increase UK sales by 70 per cent by 2011 and, as the business grows, the opportunities for Abbott’s employees grow too.

Career development
Abbott invests in its people through carefully constructed career development. We have a comprehensive performance excellence process which was introduced to help all employees perform to their highest level and to ensure that their efforts align with and contribute to the achievement of company goals.

Through this programme, employees are able to identify personal strengths and areas for development in their personal growth plan. Training and development solutions are then discussed and appropriate actions planned.

In addition to monitoring how an employee is operating in their current role, considerable time is spent in succession planning and development. We encourage staff to transfer to other Abbott divisions during their career – and even to other countries.

In 2006 we hosted the equivalent of more than 7,000 days of employee training in the UK, ranging from technical skills to leadership training courses, as well as funding a range of external qualifications. It was a record-breaking year in terms of funds and time invested in staff development.

Work-life balance
We appreciate that work is only one aspect of our employees’ lives. To help staff fulfil all of their commitments in and out of the office, we have introduced several company initiatives such as flexible hours, an employee assistance programme and home working. We are also carrying out detailed research to discover which employee benefits our staff value most and plan to introduce a measure of choice to address the findings.