
	Working at ArjoWiggins means above all discovering the passion for paper shared by men and women working each day to produce, embellish, sell, develop and bring life to this essential product In this Group, with its broad range of human, professional and geographic diversity, human resources management aims to create a bond around common values and encourage progress in performance through cross-functional exchanges.


	Shared values of transparency, communication, empowerment and recognition Given that the wealth of the Group lies in its diversity, ArjoWiggins has provided itself with the means to build a strong corporate culture through a unified human resources policy. This policy is based on a series of clearly identified values and is embodied by Grop-wide processes designed to ensure equitable management. Development and training policies, built around a common group of competencies, aim to promote dialogue between managers and their teams with clear ground rules, a shared philosophy and regular discussions on each person’s objectives and results. This approach is also designed to identify every individual's potential and support internal mobility and development initiatives.





	The attractiveness of a Group strengthened by its projects The regular recruitment of young graduates from leading universities demonstrates the strong attractiveness of an international group operating on a human scale, whose development strategies provide a great diversity of future possibilities. The compensation policy is designed to match this ambition, by leveraging the historical advantage of the paper industry. With consistency and fairness throughout the Group, it facilitates internal mobility. This system, however, does not eliminate individual approaches, nor does it deny local realities. Managers are given the necessary leeway to recognise individual performances. For non-managers, the Group’s policy is one of decentralising decision-making to the local level, with the sites ensuring that they observe the general guidelines defined by central management




	A richly diverse company With products involved in all sectors of the economy, ArjoWiggins’ activity opens onto a wide range of human and technical worlds. ArjoWiggins is also a Group with a particularly wide geographic spread, where every day people exchange knowledge and work together. ArjoWiggins endeavours to use this variety of cultures as an asset to learn from each other by sharing our ways of working, seeing, setting objectives and progressing. The diversity within the Group also stems from the great variety of its activities. From machine operation to financial control, through environmental management and marketing, every skill is used, with the demands and motivation of high-quality production.

Encouraging responsibility in labor relations management

The Group’s objective is to encourage dialogue at the local level while guaranteeing fair and just decisions, respect for the individual and compliance with national legislation. The economic context of our businesses makes it all the more necessary to have social dialogue incorporating a strategic approach tothe management of employment levels, skills and organisation.

However, these efforts do not always enable us to avoid industrial restructuring, as was the case in three of our sites in 2003 (Crèvecoeur, Chartham and Ivybridge).

To take into account the trans-national aspects of our business, and to inform our employees at the most appropriate level, ArjoWiggins in 2003 renegotiated and signed, under the aegis of the European Trades Union Confederation (ETUC), a new agreement for the setting up of a works council.




	Encouraging advancement within the company To support the company’s strategy, the human resources department has designed a full range of corporate management training programmes. In 2003, 20% of managers went on one of these courses. They contribute to spreading the Group’s common vision and provide an opportunity to better understand the functions and processes at work in the organisation as a whole. These are also an opportunity to develop cross-functional networks, international experience and intercultural awareness. To increase career development possibilities and enable the spread of best practices, priority is given to in-house candidates for available positions. Two thirds of these positions are filled in this way. Training and mobility commitments respond to ArjoWiggins’ challenge of strengthening its internal bonds and the development of an international vision. Intranet, which has today reached an advanced stage of development, is continuing to play an essential role in this policy, providing a full range of tools to everyone for information, self-assessment and exchange.


	Safety improvements There can be no compromosie or self-satisfaction in the area of safety, and mills remain dangerous places, where it is difficult to achieve strict application of safety instructions. However, one year after the implementation of our Safety Charter and with the daily involvement of our teams, the information and prevention policy is beginning to bear fruit, confirming that the challenge is more behavioural than technical. Performance is progressing at a steady pace, in terms of accident frequency and severity. This in itself justifies the Group's focus on comparing performance between businesses, sites and countries, as well as the exchange of best practices, and this approach has been a significant factor in contributing to these results. Once again this year, the UK mills have set the standard in this field