47153 AG Barr Annual Report 2025 AW4 SQ WEB - Flipbook - Page 78
A.G. BARR p.l.c. Annual Report and Accounts 2025
CO R P O R ATE
G OVE R N A N C E R E P O R T
CO N TI N U ED
Corporate culture and reputation
The Board and the Executive Committee play a
critical role in creating and embedding the right
corporate culture for the business. The Board
aims to maintain the Company’s reputation for
the highest standards of business conduct and to
create a culture that is responsible, diverse and
inclusive. The Company’s workforce is critical
to its future success. The Company’s focus on
employee engagement will continue in order
to create a culture that enables and supports
a highly motivated and diverse workforce, to
ensure that its workforce do the right thing for its
stakeholders and deliver long-term sustainable
success for the business.
The Board regularly assesses and monitors
the Company’s culture and, where appropriate,
seeks assurance from management that it has
taken appropriate action to ensure that policy,
practices and behaviour throughout the business
are aligned with the Company’s purpose, values
and strategy. The Board achieves this primarily
through reviewing employee feedback derived
from the annual workforce engagement survey
“Everyone Barr None” and frequent pulse
surveys, and ensuring that appropriate actions
are taken to address any areas of concern or to
make improvements. The results of the workforce
engagement survey undertaken during the year
showed a high employee response rate and
overall employee engagement score. The Board
were supportive of the local action planning
activities that took place in response to the results
of the survey. The Board also receives regular
updates on workforce engagement from the
Board’s designated non-executive director,
which helps the Board to assess and monitor the
Company’s culture. The Board regularly reviews
certain health and safety KPIs, including the
number of lost time accidents during the year
and performance against the Group’s lost time
accident incident rate target. During the year,
the Board reviewed the overall health and safety
performance of the Group, which showed
year-on-year improvements in health and safety
performance across the business. The Board also
noted the positive results from the workforce
engagement survey “Everyone Barr None”
during the year in relation to the health and
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safety culture. The Board regularly reviews
employee turnover and absence data, and were
supportive of action plans put in place to engage
employees and reduce turnover. The Board also
assesses and monitors the Company’s culture
through its annual review of the Group’s
Speaking Up policy, procedures and any
concerns raised; during the year the Board were
satisfied that the procedures in place were
working effectively and reapproved the Group’s
Speaking Up policy. Further information on the
Company’s culture and workforce engagement
is included in the table above and in the
Directors’ Report on pages 123 to 128 and
in the Strategic Report on pages 1 to 63.
Community and environment
Information regarding the impact of the
Company’s operations on the community and
the environment is included in the Responsibility
Report on pages 26 to 49.
Acting fairly as between members
of the Company
The Board recognises its legal and regulatory
duties to act fairly as between members of the
Company and has put appropriate structures
and processes in place to ensure it complies
with all relevant legal requirements, for example
in relation to the disclosure of inside information
to shareholders.
Conflicts of interest
The Company’s Articles of Association allow the
Board to authorise potential conflicts of interest
that may arise from time to time, subject to
certain conditions. The Company has established
appropriate conflicts authorisation procedures,
whereby actual or potential conflicts are
regularly reviewed and authorisations sought as
appropriate. During the year, no such conflicts
arose and no such authorisations were sought.
Induction, training and development
On appointment to the Board, directors are
provided with a full, formal and tailored
programme of induction, to familiarise them with
the Group’s businesses, the risks and strategic
challenges the Group faces, and the economic,
competitive, legal and regulatory environment
in which the Group operates. The induction
includes, amongst other activities, meetings with
Board members, the Company Secretary, senior
management and other employees, site visits,
market visits and the provision of information
relating to the Group, including briefings on key
business activities. The Company Secretary
provides information to new directors regarding
Board policies and procedures, and corporate
governance matters.
This year the Board undertook a comprehensive
skills matrix assessment to evaluate its collective
skillset and competencies with a view to
identifying any gaps or areas for further
development. This evaluation was led by the
Chair and carried out through a detailed,
written survey questionnaire completed by all
Board members and the Company Secretary.
The questionnaire was agreed upon in advance
with the Company Secretary and the Chair. The
results of the evaluation were shared with the
Board and were highly positive, with only a small
number of improvement opportunities identified.
The outcome of this process contributes to the
Board’s ongoing programme of strategic and
other reviews, ensuring that directors continually
refresh their skills, knowledge, and familiarity
with the Group’s businesses, and their awareness
of sectoral, risk, regulatory, legal, financial and
other developments. This enables the directors
to effectively fulfil their roles on the Board and
its committees.
Board performance evaluation
Professional advice
All directors have access to the advice of the
Company Secretary, who is responsible for
advising the Board on all governance matters.
The non-executive directors have access to
senior management of the business.
Every year the performance and effectiveness
of the Board, its committees and individual
directors are evaluated. In line with the Code,
this year the evaluation was internally facilitated,
having last been externally facilitated during the
year to January 2023. The evaluation was led by
the Chair and conducted by the completion of
