Some of you will have already seen this message from Derek O’Donnell, European HR Director, but just in case you haven’t here it is……

“It’s fair to say that that our part of the CEMEX family has “been through the mill” for a while now.  We have worked to reposition Europe as the most efficient structure in CEMEX, to enable us to be safer and better serve our customers. The first third of 2019 show that all our efforts are paying off. As a team we have improved:

Health and Safety:

For several years we have underperformed in this vital area.  In straight language this means we are hurting people and it is unacceptable to allow this to continue.

So far in 2019 we are meeting out target of a 50% reduction in employee LTIs.  This is a major improvement and we must stay diligent to make CEMEX a totally safe place to work.

In April we won 22 of the 89 annual CEMEX Health & Safety with a particularly strong performance in the Sector Awards which recognises our deep operational heritage. By maintaining our Zero4Life performance which has improved already this year we can properly reflect CEMEX Europe as a leader in H&S in the CEMEX family.

We received 9 awards for our good practices initiatives around Contractor management and fit 4 life meaning we are holding our own and I encourage you to put develop other new initiatives to help spread best practices to keep everyone safe.

How our customers feel about us:

A major driver for the reorganisation in Europe was to get closer to our customers.  We have created a flatter structure with more resource facing outwards towards our customers.  We use the Net Promoter Score (NPS) to measure how our customers feel about us.  Basically, this takes the number of customers who feel good about CEMEX as a supplier and deducts the number who don’t feel good.  The meaning of “good” is we ask customers would they recommend us to others or not.

I am pleased to say that in most of the market Segments we serve we are showing improvements in in our NPS which is massively encouraging.  All of us can relate to feeling good about a service we receive in our daily lives, and we should strive to generate the same feelings in how our customers feel about CEMEX.  This loyalty is a major differentiator for our products in the market.

Our efficiency – show me the money:

CEMEX Europe is outperforming budget so far this year.  More importantly our Margin (the price we get minus what it costs us to make and sell the product) has improved meaning we are more efficient.   In April we recorded a positive CVA for CEMEX Europe for the first time ever.  One of the reasons for this improvement is we are now in better shape to serve our customers with less cost and more focus on the needs of the people who pay our wages.

There is a way to go to meet our targets this year but so far, we are on track.

… and what about the vision for CEMEX Europe?

We are changing our business into a safe, highly customer focused, innovative and profitable place to work that we can be very proud of.  All of us in Europe have the opportunity to nurture this vision with our colleagues and customers. It really is exciting to be part of New CEMEX Europe and thank you to all colleagues for your support.”