Sector faces leadership challenge in supporting staff

Increased emotional hardship on both consumers and customer service staff means the energy sector has a huge leadership challenge on its hands, the chief executive of the Energy Ombudsman has said.

Speaking at Utility Week’s Build Back Better forum yesterday (21 October), Matthew Vickers said utility companies had greater social obligations than ever before.

He warned how that in addition to the customers they serve, energy company staff, many of which had their own concerns about finances, health and family matters, were trying to deliver key person to person contact against the backdrop of a pandemic.

This, he said, poses a challenge for companies in supporting their teams.

“They’re finding that they are faced with more anxious customers who might be angry, in some cases in really severe emotional distress. We are asking them to do that at point where the normal support network that they might have round them about their teams, managers, the support structures that sit with normally working in an organisation, just aren’t there. I think it’s important that we recognise the emotional burden that dealing with vulnerability effectively is going to put on all of our own people.

“To me that means that there’s a huge leadership challenge that we are going to have to grapple with. And it’s not just one that we can put at customer service teams, it needs to sit right across businesses. It’s easy for people like me sat here to say it’s all about collaboration, empathy and listening. The reality of delivering it is very hard for all of those reasons that I’ve talked about. That to me is why this is one of the most important leadership challenges we face as an industry because it really will decide where we go in the future.”

Vickers added that utilities needed to “invest in kindness”, and described how the work of the sector has changed over the years, with companies having greater social obligations to their customers, adding that the expectations of companies are now “verging on social work”.

He added: “This is going to put huge pressure on organisations, that means we have to have a really clear plan about how we do that and very clear leadership about how we do that because otherwise the trade-offs that come from dealing with that expectation from consumers on one hand and the business realities on the other sits very hard on the front line.

“That’s when we start to see the challenges of stress on the frontline, or where we start to see the challenges of the frontline protecting itself and it turns into robotic responses. That makes it very difficult at the same time as we are trying to build relationships and trying to build that kindness that is the key about how we start to build that trust.”

Furthermore, he added, building trust with consumers was essential to reaching net zero.

“We are talking about issues of vulnerability and resilience at a really key point for that journey to 2050. We know that a low carbon economy is going to have to be a high trust one. That’s not what we have at the moment. It’s going to need consumers to buy into and use new products and services, it’s going to mean new ways of engaging with the market, new modes of consumption for example”, he said.