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Octopus has announced plans to hire up to 4,000 new members of staff during 2024.
The firm said it is planning to onboard between 3,000 and 4,000 new recruits before the end of the year as it expands its services division.
A large number of the roles are needed to tackle the rollout of heat pumps, with Octopus revealing that it already has over 100,000 customers waiting to get such a device.
As well as heat pump engineers, roles on offer include solar and EV charger installers, delivery drivers and operations personnel.
If all 4,000 roles are filed, it will take Octopus’ UK headcount to 10,000 – a 66% increase on the current 6,000 employees in the UK. Globally the firm currently employees 7,300 people.
Octopus said the expected rise in heat pumps was largely behind the need to expand its workforce.
Earlier this year, the firm announced that it expects to install up to three times as many heat pumps in 2024 as it did last year.
To speed up the hiring process, Octopus has created ‘OctoPalooza’ events, which it has dubbed as “the UK’s first same-day hiring festival”.
The regional jobs fairs allow aspiring candidates to partake in hiring tests, and potentially get hired on the spot.
Octopus is planning to hold the hiring festival once a month in different locations across the country.
Launched in January, the first three ‘OctoPaloozas’ in Manchester, London and Peterborough saw more than 600 prospective candidates attend, with Octopus recruiting almost 400 new staff into their team on the same day.
John Szymik, CEO of Octopus Energy Services, said: “In true Octopus fashion, we’ve thought creatively to speed up the process of hiring the UK’s best talent into sustainable services jobs.
“OctoPalooza is our version of F1’s pitstop process – turbocharging the time it takes to hire exceptional people into future-proof jobs that fit around their lives, not the other way around.
“We’re creating 3,000-4,000 new jobs this year alone which will help boost the British economy and drive prosperity across all regions.”
The next ‘OctoPalooza’ events will be held in Oxford (22 March) and Kent (10 April).
The increased public interest in heat pumps was sparked late last year after the government increased the maximum value of Boiler Upgrade Scheme (BUS) vouchers from £5,000 to £7,500.
It has led to a surge in voucher applications, with more than £32.5 million worth of heat pump grants issued between November 2023 and January 2024, almost triple the £11.7 million handed out during the previous quarter.
It means that just over £82 million worth of BUS vouchers have been issued during the second year of the scheme so far. With the current budget due to expire at the end of March, almost £68 million remains unspent.
The recent increase in heat pump applications is in stark contrast to the scheme’s previous record. At the end of the first round of the BUS (which ran from April 2022 to March 2023), £89.6 million of the £150 million budget went unspent and was clawed back by the Treasury.
In August last year, before prime minister Rishi Sunak increased the grant level, Utility Week analysis showed that uptake of BUS grants had again “hit a ceiling”.
However, following the increased grant rate Bean Beanland, director for growth & external affairs at the Heat Pump Federation, predicted that the annual BUS budget could be “blown” before the March deadline.
To cater for the increased application rate, the government announced a major uplift in the annual budget for future rounds of the BUS.
Between 2025/26 and 2027/28, a total of £1.54 billion has been allocated to the scheme, meaning more than £500 million will be available for heat pump grants each year.
The current annual budget – and next year’s budget – is set at £150 million.
Despite the scheme’s resurgence, fewer than a quarter of MPs believe that the UK will meet its target of installing 600,000 heat pumps a year by 2028, recent polling shows.
The survey of 107 MPs by YouGov for the MCS Foundation shows that just 24% are confident that the government’s current package of policies is sufficient to meet the target set by Boris Johnson’s government in 2021.
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