Our People
Progress 2007 cont...
Rewards and benefits
We offer a highly competitive package of pay and benefits to all our staff. This includes staff discount, share schemes and an award-winning defined benefit pension scheme in the UK.
In the US all store employees work a minimum of 20 hours a week, which ensures everyone is eligible for medical, prescription drug, dental and vision coverage after 90 days of employment. Fresh & Easy pays at least 75% of the cost. Employees are offered a 401(k) (defined contribution) retirement plan with company-matched payments (see box in Our people - Training and development).
In the UK, our competitive benefits package is worth an additional 17% for our customer assistants in stores, ensuring we now lead on pay against our food retailer competitors. Our Privilege card scheme gives all employees with over 12 months' service a 10% discount on shopping at Tesco. In 2007, we reduced the minimum qualifying spend to £1.
All employees can benefit from the wealth they help to create through three share schemes. In the UK we have around 175,000 employees who are also shareholders. Nearly 52,000 employees take part in our Save As You Earn scheme. Two such schemes matured in February 2008, with participating employees receiving shares worth £175 million. Nearly 43,000 employees receive tax benefits by buying Tesco shares from their gross salary through our Buy As You Earn scheme.
Taxation differs internationally, which can make some of these benefits less attractive. In some countries, we therefore focus on providing competitive basic pay and employee discounts.
UK
UK employees are automatically enrolled into our defined benefit pension scheme after one year's service. The scheme, which is based on career average to ensure that store workers are rewarded for the amount of time they work as well as their final salary, includes life cover, cover for partners and children and ill-health retirement cover. In 2007, the pension scheme received the 'Pension of the Year' Award from the pensions industry weekly Professional Pensions and three further awards: Best Trustee Training and Development; Best Use of Specialist Investment Managers; and Best Pension Communication.
US
In the US, entry level positions start at $10 an hour in California with similarly competitive salaries in other states, and include a quarterly bonus of up to 10%. As well as strong benefits, all employees receive life skills training which supports not only their performance at work but also their personal success at home and in the community. These benefits attracted over 1,000 interviewees for just 170 jobs in our first six stores.
