Our people are key to building and enhancing our reputation. Hammerson invests in its people with the goal of enabling them to maximise their potential and their contribution to the business.

Our training programmes are designed to ensure that staff have the right level of knowledge to be able to carry out their jobs effectively, to comply with legislation and, to enable them to develop their skills and progress through the organisation.

Health and Safety training was a primary focus during the year, aimed at ensuring that the implications of the Corporate Manslaughter Act (March 2009) were fully understood. We have always maintained high standards of Health and Safety training for employees with direct property responsibility. However, beginning in 2008, we increased the scope of our awareness training for head office staff, including our development team, asset managers, senior management and executive directors. With an increase in both the volume and complexity of environmental legislation, we are introducing environmental awareness training for a similar group of employees, having run successful programmes for shopping centre staff in 2009, 92 of our French staff, including those based in shopping centres, underwent environmental training in 2009, and it is intended that the remainder will complete it in 2010.

We also updated our training matrix for all UK operational employees and have started to audit its implementation. This matrix covers around 95 people, including employees based at shopping centres, and our operational staff based in Reading. Training is managed by two internal trainers who deliver some training themselves and outsource more specialist needs.

In 2009 we revised how individuals contribute to, and are supported by the organisation. We targeted specific areas including job descriptions; team responsibilities; the appraisal process; and career development. The initiatives which came out of this, and which are informed by our annual staff survey, will be implemented over the medium-term.

Our aim is for employees to clearly understand how they fit into the organisation; how their work contributes to wider Company aims; how they are performing and what opportunities they have to develop and progress.

In the UK we are drafting role profiles for all UK employees which clearly define areas of accountability and the behaviours and skill sets required to achieve objectives. We will use these to create a career framework which will help employees identify development and career progression opportunities.

We are making improvements to the appraisal systems we use across all areas of the Company. Through these changes we will assess not only what people do, but also how they do it, ensuring adherence to corporate values and effective deployment of skills and knowledge. As part of this review of appraisals, we are incorporating sustainability objectives into each employee’s role profile.

We already train line managers in how to lead effective performance development review discussions and in 2010 we will introduce leadership development programmes in the UK and France, to ensure key people managers are given the opportunity to develop all the skills they need to lead a team effectively.

In 2009, 34 people, or 10% of staff across the Group, moved into new roles. Of these, 15 represented promotions and the remainder were to similar-level positions to broaden their experience and skills either in a different department or geographical location.

Further details of Hammerson’s HR policies and progress can be found in our Annual Report and on the corporate website: www.hammerson.com