Our strategy

We work hard to attract and retain the most talented, diverse workforce we can in all parts of Pearson. Our people are the source of many of our best ideas and we're getting better at enabling the crossfertilisation of ideas across our business groups and departments via social media and other means.

Our People departments have focused particularly on the professional development, health and wellbeing of Pearson people this year, with several businesses highlighting Pearson-subsidised promotions and opportunities available to staff. We have a Group level health and safety policy, with numerous awareness days and other good practice examples at work across our offices. We have also paid particular attention to developing emerging leaders in our developing markets, running more training and leadership events and courses in Asia and India in 2009, including our new Emerging Leaders Programme this year. We are further developing our communications programme to include greater interactivity and collaboration between our global staff through online meetings and webinars, to add to the suite of large-scale presentations from senior managers to staff around the world and informal talks and seminars from colleagues around the business.

The following table shows for 2009 and 2008 the average number of people employed in each of our operating divisions.

Average number employed	2009	2008
Pearson Education North America	15,606	15,412
Pearson Education International	8,899	5,718
Professional	2,662	2,641
FT Group	4,787	4,792
Penguin	4,163	4,112
Corporate	1,047	909
Continuing businesses	37,164	33,584
Discontinued businesses	0	96
Total	37,164	33,680

2009 highlights include:

Diversity and inclusion: We try hard to reflect the societies in which we operate and while we don't set specific targets, we strive to have as diverse a pool of applicants for our jobs and suppliers as we can.

We will always seek the best candidates for a role without regard for race, gender, age, physical ability, religion or sexual orientation, and have targets for tracking our progress on specific elements of that aim. We will make reasonable adjustment to premises or employment arrangements if these substantially disadvantage a disabled current or prospective member of staff, and make every effort to locate a suitable alternative role and/or training for people unable to continue in their existing role due to disability. Our diversity and inclusion teams on both sides of the Atlantic continue to develop our internship programmes for minority groups, winning the Gold Standard in the 2009 Race for Opportunity Benchmarking survey on race equality in UK organisations. We continue to improve on our recruitment and promotion of executives from minority backgrounds to middle and senior management levels, and feel that we still have much to achieve in this area.

Health and wellbeing: Our company can only be as healthy as our people, and we encourage our people to stay fit, eat well and balance their professional and personal lives. Pearson Benefits in the US sponsored National Employee Health and Fitness Day in May 2009. All US facilities with 50 or more people participated in on-site biometric screenings. The results were available immediately and over 2,300 staff had an opportunity to participate and discuss their numbers with onsite nurse educators. At Pearson in the UK, additional benefits will be in place for 2010 including a Weightwatchers programme in the workplace, health assessments and two online health management programmes to help anyone seeking to reduce high blood pressure, combat raised cholesterol or manage their health more effectively.

People for the future: We have a lot of talented people at every level of our company and we strive to identify, nurture and promote them in a number of ways. Our annual Forum brings together more than 100 of our newest and brightest managers from all over the world for a three-day session with the Pearson Management Committee and other senior managers, working on product innovation and better integration of the content and assets across the company. We launched our Emerging Leaders Programme in 2009, bringing together people from different businesses within one region to address organisational and team challenges. 72 Pearson people completed this programme in London, New York, Hong Kong and Minnesota and in total, we ran 589 personal days of leadership development in 2009.

Pearson undertook in 2007 to become a climate neutral company by the end of 2009. We have reached our target through a series of direct actions, including: energy purchase and usage, investment in our buildings, communications and transport, and in the purchase of offset activity related to trees, the main raw material for our books and newspapers.

We continue to work on our supply chain to find the most environmentally-friendly way of producing the books and newspapers we print, actively seeking an FSC chain of custody for our paper supplies in the US for next year. We have been included in FTSE4Good indices since their inception and place great importance on not compromising our standards of quality or causing harm to our suppliers and their workers, wherever they may be in the world. We are committed to complying with the laws and regulations in all countries in which we operate, and work hard to build local partnerships as an active corporate citizen in emerging markets. In this year's global analysis of corporate sustainability leadership by investment company SAM, Pearson was rated as the lead company of the Media supersector for the third year running as part of the Dow Jones Sustainability World Index. We were also classified as one of 100 Brand Emissions Leaders out of 600 brands surveyed by Environmental Data Services magazine, citing our ambitious carbon reduction targets and strong disclosure. Our chief financial officer now has board responsibility for matters relating to corporate responsibility.

2009 highlights include:

Reducing our impact: In 2009, Pearson signed up to the Copenhagen Communiqué¹, pledging to reduce our environmental impact while lobbying governments to create an effective international climate framework. Our formal environmental policy has been reviewed and updated a number of times since its launch in 1992, most recently in 2008, which you can read in full at www. pearson.com/environment. We completed the switch to the international environmental management standard ISO 14001 for all operating businesses in the UK, and our businesses in Australia aim to achieve certification in 2010. We committed to the Carbon Standard as part of our response to the Carbon Reduction Commitment, and have reduced our paper requirements at both Pearson North America and the FT. At Old Tappan, New Jersey – our first on-site renewable energy project for Pearson worldwide – the installation of solar panels is expected to reduce our electricity use at Old Tappan by 295,000 KwH each year, the equivalent of planting about 125,000 trees over the 25-year life of the panels.

Developing our emerging markets: By sharing best practice across Pearson, we can be more effective in our actions as a good corporate citizen in our developing markets. Penguin India has taken a number of freight initiatives which have saved a significant amount of fuel expenditure, increasing the number of books printed in India on behalf of Penguin UK, Penguin USA, Sterling and Bloomsbury to avoid the carbon emissions from moving 95 tonnes of books from the UK/USA to India. Penguin India is also forming an association with other companies in the community in Panchsheel to lobby government bodies to resolve issues such as poor parking facilities, faulty drainage and generators adding to the pollution and health and safety concerns in the area. The formation of Pearson Southern Africa – bringing together our education businesses in the region – means our company is now active in 12 developing countries in the region and employs, trains and develops local staff in each. By underpinning our educational and commercial imperative, with respect for the African environment, we can use our position as market leader to promote education in local cultures and languages to maintain a sustainable, socially responsible business.

Staff activity: Green Teams of volunteers are growing in size, structure and activity at various Pearson offices in India, the US, Australia, the UK, Canada and now South Africa. Several teams have also named specific Green Champions within their areas, tasking colleagues to help each other understand the small steps they can each take to make a big difference to reducing the environmental impact of their department or building. Planet Pearson – a cross-company environmental intranet site launched in 2008 as a pilot in the US – continues to expand in usage across our businesses in the US and Canada. The site serves as a communications hub where Pearson people can share ideas, resources and suggestions on the many ecofriendly initiatives taking place around the company. It has already helped significantly to raise awareness – Pearson North America's recent 'Go Green Survey' showed that 95% of respondents think it is important to work for a 'Green' employer, and 80% were aware of the company goal to be climate neutral by the end of 2009.

¹ The Copenhagen Communiqué was a short statement from the global business community to international governments, synthesising some of the key thinking that has come from business over the last two years.

Pearson's people are some of the most active citizens you will meet. We match their fundraising wherever we can and run a number of volunteer schemes for staff to give some of their working day to community programmes.

Everything the Pearson Foundation, our charitable arm, does promotes literacy and education on a global scale, working with partner organisations to help level the playing field for those without ready access to education. In 2009, Pearson's charitable giving totalled £10.5m (2008: £7.7m). We give in a variety of ways, including provision of in-kind support such as books, website hosting, digital solutions and publishing expertise, as well as providing opportunities for staff to support their personal choice of charity through payroll giving schemes.

2009 highlights include:

The Pearson Foundation: Our Foundation allows us to promote education on an international level, partnering with other leading businesses and not-forprofit organisations to extend educational opportunity. We bring together experts to share good practice, to foster innovation and try to find workable solutions to the educational disadvantage facing millions of young people and adults across the globe.

In 2009, we continued our sponsorship of the annual Citi-FT Financial Education Summit, held in Singapore this year, and we organised the second Pearson International Education Summit in Helsinki, in conjunction with the US Council of Chief State School Officers. Our US flagship literacy campaign, Jumpstart's² Read for the Record continued to expand in 2009, as Pearson people around the world helped once again break our own record for the world's largest shared reading experience and raise funds for early education in low-income communities. More than two million participants read Eric Carle's classic The Very Hungry Caterpillar at organised events across the US, Brazil, and Europe, with Pearson donating over 275,000 Penguin books to children in need, and raising more than $1.5m to support Jumpstart's work.

Pearson people power: Our staff are passionate about volunteering, with many taking part in the organised reading schemes and other community programmes we offer at company level, in partnership with local organisations. This year, more than 200 Pearson UK people volunteered in schools local to our offices, reading with primary school children once a week as part of Booktime³. In 2008/09, our Booktime volunteers gave over 4,000 hours of their time to help children enjoy reading. We held our Pearson Community Awards under the chairmanship of our new director for people, Robin Baliszewski, and learned of the hundreds of people across our company taking on charitable endeavours in their spare time. The variety of activities included running winter clothing drives for the homeless, delivering emergency veterinary care for abandoned animals, performing as a clown in public hospitals and teaching at a community project for young refugees and migrants. We celebrated seven of those volunteers through our annual awards, making a donation of $2,000 to their chosen charity and giving certificates of Special Commendation to three other volunteer groups.

Corporate engagement: Each operating company has a number of different initiatives they're involved in, each promoting literacy in one way or another. We support local schools and colleges, promote or sponsor conferences, and form partnerships with other organisations with similar aims. In partnership with UK charity Booktrust and the Department for Children, Schools and Families, Pearson gave out 750,000 free Booktime book packs to every child starting school in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland this year, each containing Ed Vere's Mr Big. Children in England also received a copy of the Booktime Book of Fantastic First Poems, edited by June Crebbin. Building on the success of last year's UK event, the Penguin Group staged its first global Penguin Walk, involving over 1,000 staff members around the world to raise funds for the UN Environmental Programme's 'Plant a Billion Trees' campaign and develop our 96-acre Penguin Wood in the UK. The FT launched its annual seasonal appeal to support Room to Read, which works with local communities in the developing world to provide schools, libraries and educational scholarships for girls. By the end of 2010, it aims to provide over 11,000 communities access to their first library and has a long-term goal of reaching 10 million children in the developing world by 2020. Running from November to January each year, the FT's annual appeal includes editorial reports about the charity, and print and online marketing that encourages readers to donate. In the previous three years, the seasonal appeal has raised nearly £2.4m for WaterAid and Camfed International.

² Jumpstart for Young Children is a national non-profit based out of Boston, Massachusetts after being founded in Yale University in 1993 to help prepare pre-school children to succeed in their primary education.

³ Booktime was launched by Pearson in association with independent charity Booktrust, to promote the pleasure of reading and encourage parents and carers to read aloud with their children.