People
At Big Yellow we aim to provide a lively, fun and enjoyable working environment, without losing our commitment to delivering the very best standards of customer service.
We encourage a culture of partnership within the business and believe in staff participating in corporate performance through bonus schemes and share incentives. Many employees benefit from an HMRC approved Sharesave Scheme, which provides an opportunity to invest in the future success of Big Yellow at a discount to the prevailing share price at the date of each invitation. Our stakeholder pension scheme has been taken up by over two thirds of employees eligible to join and a voucher awards scheme is used extensively across the business to recognise and reward our staff’s efforts and achievements.
We aim to promote employee wellbeing through a range of flexible working options which include flexitime, staggered hours, home working and sabbaticals. We provide a comprehensive range of medical support and advice though our occupational health providers and have arranged corporate gym membership on a national basis, as well as a Cycle to Work Scheme.
We continue to recognise the importance of communication and consultation with an annual spring conference, regular formal and informal meetings, quarterly newsletters and weekly operational updates. In addition, the Directors and senior management spend a significant amount of time in the stores and are accessible to employees at all levels. A bi-annual Employee Attitude Survey provides management with key feedback and guidance as to where to focus their attention to improve further the working environment.
In March 2012 we were delighted to have been recognised as one of The Sunday Times 100 Best Companies to Work For and also to have achieved “Two Star Status” for the Best Companies Accreditation.
We had 319 full-time, part-time and casual employees in the business at the year end (2012: 310 employees) and recruiting and retaining the right calibre people remains critical to the continued success of the Company.
We promote the individual development of staff through training and regular performance appraisals and delivered just over 920 days of training to employees in the last year, equating to an average of just under 3.0 days of training per employee. In the stores, over half of the managerial posts have been filled by internal promotions.
Property and development
We believe the continuing difficulties in the banking and capital markets make access to capital required to fund growth more difficult and will slow down the growth in self storage store openings in the market generally. We believe that we are in a relatively strong position with our freehold property assets and with the proven ability to access funding when the opportunity presents itself.
We now have a portfolio of 70 stores and sites of which 66 are currently open, one under construction and a further two have planning consents, with planning negotiations ongoing at our site in central Manchester.
Development pipeline
There are three freehold sites with planning consent for Big Yellow stores to be developed. We also own a 4.5 acre development site in central Manchester where we are in planning discussions for a mixed use scheme incorporating a new Big Yellow store. The status of the development pipeline is summarised in the table below:
| Site | Location | Status | Anticipated capacity |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gypsy Corner, West London |
Highly visible site on A40 in Acton, West London |
Under construction, planned opening April 2014 | 70,000 sq ft |
| Enfield, North London |
Prominent site on the A10 Great Cambridge Road, London | Consent granted | 60,000 sq ft |
| Guildford Central |
Prime location in centre of Guildford on Woodbridge Meadows | Consent granted | 56,000 sq ft |
| Manchester Central |
Prime location on Water Street in central Manchester |
Planning under negotiation | 50,000 sq ft to 70,000 sq ft |
Our landmark wholly owned store at Chiswick, with strong visibility from the M4 flyover, opened in April 2012. We have commenced the construction of our Gypsy Corner store, which we anticipate will open in April 2014.
The Group manages the construction and fit-out of its stores in-house, as we believe it provides both better control and quality, and we have an excellent record of building stores on time and within budget.
Corporate Social Responsibility
The Company has now employed a Corporate Social Responsibility (“CSR”) Manager for over 5 years. The CSR Manager reports to the Board through the Operations Director.
Our key CSR achievements in the year were:
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- Our continued reduction in Scope 2 electricity use and carbon emissions for a “same store” portfolio. Scope 2 emissions are from National Grid electricity use and constitute some 94% of our annual energy consumption. These reductions have been achieved by the continued investment in our energy efficiency programmes such as motion sensor lighting, energy efficient lamps, power-saver adaptors and zoned motion sensor lighting in both new and existing stores.
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- The income generated from our solar PV installations has increased by 126% in 2013 from the average achieved in 2011 and 2012, mainly due to the contribution from our three new larger capacity installations at New Cross, Chiswick and Barking. These PV installations contribute about 20% of each store’s annual electricity needs.
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- Measurement of our Scope 1 and Scope 3 emissions. Scope 1 emissions are our ‘Direct’ or ‘On Site’ emissions and make up just 5% of our total carbon footprint. They are mainly from the natural gas heating in eight of our twelve flexi-office stores and also from coolant replacement in air conditioned areas. Our Scope 3 emissions are emissions from our waste and water supply chains.
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- The Queen’s Award for “Innovation and Sustainable Development” was presented to Big Yellow in April 2012. The Award is only presented to a limited number of the companies who apply each year. We were very proud to have our CSR initiatives recognised by The Queen’s Award in 2012.
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- Achieving a “Green Star” rating by the Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark (“GRESB”) report. We were recognised as a pan European “sector leader in sustainable development” by GRESB, with a global ranking of 9 out of 455 participating companies.
Our detailed CSR Report and many of our CSR initiatives are set out in our new ECO page on our website at bigyellow.co.uk/green.