Sky's success has relied on the quality of its people, and we have one of the most talented and diverse teams in the industry. Our people have won awards for their contribution to the business and outstanding performances within their fields.
As Sky continues to diversify and grow as a Company, its change and evolution make it an increasingly challenging and rewarding place to work.
We need a team of people who can think quickly and come up with new ideas; people who can continuously improve our products and services and yet, at the same time, maintain an uncompromising commitment to the needs of our customers, now and in the future. We're continuing to invest in our people to ensure they stay motivated, flexible and resilient.
To do this, we've stepped up our employee development activities across the whole Company. We recognise how important it is for all our people to be at the top of their game, and hence our extensive investment in employee health and well-being programmes. We've also developed clear goals and priorities and shared these throughout our organisation - to make maximum use of our energy and resources.
Building buy-in like this is one reason why we've been able to evolve so successfully from a straightforward pay-TV operation to a far more complex integrated media business. It's also helped us to roll out new products like HD, Sky Broadband and Sky Mobile TV, and integrate Easynet and its people into the existing Sky organisation quickly and efficiently.
At the same time, we reviewed 20 key Sky departments to make sure they have the right structure, technology and expertise to deliver our new strategy. Despite all these changes, our level of recruitment remained steady at just over 3,000 new people last year, but this will rise as we staff up our customer services operation even further.
The 2006 employee survey shows that our people remain both committed and motivated about working at Sky, with year on year increases in the scores for employee engagement and advocacy for Sky as a place to work. In the Financial Times Great Place to Work survey 73% of our people rated Sky as a 'great place to work', compared to 66% last year. Another important measure of employee engagement is their willingness to be active advocates for the company and its services. In the latest Sky employee survey, 84% of our people said they would recommend Sky's products to their friends.
We organised almost 70,000 training days last year, ranging from HD training to performance management. We also expanded the online learning zone, which allowed 4,000 employees to download or borrow more than 11,000 resources on subjects ranging from customer service, to strategy and leadership. The latter was backed up by management development workshops attended by more than 900 managers.
With customer focus so important for the future, we launched a customer closeness programme for executives and key managers, and a new sales development centre, which develops and trials new approaches to selling and interacting with customers, especially for around 8,000 people who speak with customers on the phone or meet them in their homes. We ran over 22,000 training days for our sales advisors last year, and over 17,000 for our field engineers. Alongside this, the 'Kaizen' approach we're now using in customer service means that our people are encouraged to use what they learn from customers and from their own experience to spot glitches in technology, products or services and work out fast, practical improvements.
Another key factor for us is our ability to keep innovating, and this has been recognised in the Financial Times Best European Business Award for Innovation. Inside the business the technology and products group works across the whole senior management team, to ensure that Sky continues to roll out more new products faster and better. And we draw talent from across the whole company to brainstorm new ideas.
We've used a number of different media to communicate Sky's strategy to employees over the last year: there have been workshops, iPod and text messages, special pieces on the intranet, and face-to-face presentations. And at the same time we've shared great stories with our people to celebrate our success, and look to the future.
It's always been exciting to work at Sky - we want to build on that and make Sky a place that attracts the best people, and gives them the chance to develop both as people and professionals.