CEO Today UK Awards 2021

CEO TODAY UNITED KINGDOM AWARDS 2021 23 Energy What have been some of the challenges that COVID has presented to Electricity North West, and how have you navigated them as the CEO? We are a key worker industry, so the business could not miss a beat from 23 March 2020 because everybody needed electricity just as much as before the lockdown. We had to keep running as close to business-as-usual as possible. Our objective was to strive for that whilst making sure that we could protect not only our employees and our contractors, but also our customers. During the early COVID period we had to manage it like a crisis management project. Our senior team would be waiting for government announcements every week or every other day, and we would respond rapidly to that guidance and turn it into practical policies and procedures. The fastest-moving period were the first six to eight weeks when it became clear what the dangers of COVID were and what the government advice was, and we had to keep people safe and still maintain the electrical infrastructure of the North West region. The main challenge for us was regular communication with the workforce. It was very important to communicate that we had a well-thought-through approach and that our first objective was to care for the workforce and protecting those that were clinically vulnerable, and to maximise those who could work from home. We very quickly got to a position where just over 50% of the workforce could work from home. We spent quite a lot of time working with colleagues in the field, making sure they could work safely in a socially distanced manner. We also did a lot of liaising with the government and Ofgem. We reported data to them on a weekly basis, and also to our stakeholders like the Combined Authority in Manchester, the councils in Cumbria and Lancashire, and all our local MPs. The other group we really had to communicate with were the trade unions. Working with the trade unions gave the wider workforce confidence that we had their interests at heart, and that enabled us to move towards a business-as-usual type operation as the pace of change slowed down. That was how we managed COVID: a lot of communication and a lot of engagement. Because it was a crisis, we could manage it like a project, and that suited the mentality of the business. Can you talk about how you manage to maintain such strong climate scores? We do climate surveys every six months. We did one in May-June 2020 just after the first lockdown was lifted, and we did another one at the end of January this year. We were very pleased with the numbers – the response rate was 76%, and the agreement rate was 75%, slightly down on the previous year but only very slightly. So, how did we manage that? I would point back to communication and engagement with the workforce and the unions. During the crisis I would put out regular blogs explaining what we were doing and why, and we held some virtual roadshows which worked well. They turned from being formal business presentations into more of a mix of informal presentations and Q&A, which was great because I got to know our people a lot better and they got to know me a lot better. We also tried to make sure that all our senior management were visible, visiting the depots, getting out and talking to people in a safe manner. I also think it helped to maintain focus on doing the right things. Because the business provides a critical service it really helped the workforce to focus on delivering supplies to hospitals, the emergency services as well as the public. Being focused on that helped maintain climate and morale. When you pull all that together I think that is how the climate scores were maintained. How has your role as a network operator changed in recent years? How do you think it will change in the future? The role of the networks is definitely evolving. Our job has always been the efficient provision of reliable electrical infrastructure at a competitive cost, and that has not changed. What is changing is the structure. Historically, it has been quite stable, with centralised generation from large power stations and relatively small growth in terms of electricity demand. But that is now changing quickly. I think two things have changed. The technology is changing because large power stations are shutting down, the fossil fuel sites are closing, coal is now almost gone, and some gas plants are starting to close. In their place, we are now getting more renewable generation, much of which is decentralised and scattered about the network not just feeding into the national transmission system, but into local distribution networks like ours. This change in technology means we have to