We employ over 27,000 people. Communication is a key theme both at a corporate and business level. Multiple communication channels are used throughout National Grid, including the use of various business specific intranets, which we continue to develop to ensure the timely passing of information to employees.

Employee engagement continues to be a key focus for National Grid. 2010 saw an unprecedented employee survey response rate of 97%. This response rate generated an extremely large amount of data and feedback to review.

As always, we have worked to engage teams throughout the business in creating action plans to address survey feedback. We also regularly seek feedback about the survey process, and teams have consistently expressed a desire to have more time to ensure their actions translate into meaningful results. Therefore, we have decided to postpone the 2011 survey to enable us to work more deeply on action planning and other key engagement activities.We are working at an Executive level to ensure we create visible links between performance and engagement, as we feel the two are interconnected and vital to our success.

Throughout 2011, we will be working on reinforcing the link between performance and engagement, and supporting our survey champions as we prepare to launch the 2012 employee survey.