UTILITY WEEK | 27TH MARCH - 2ND APRIL 2020 |
7
Interview
M
y immediate impression of Steve Fraser, the new
chief executive of Cadent, is that he somehow
doesn't come across like one. As I'm led into a
meeting at the company's headquarters in Coventry, I
momentarily mistake him for another member of the
press team before glancing around to see there is no one
is else in the room.
This impression is clearly deliberate.
Once we've shaken hands and taken our seats, I ask
Fraser whether he's enjoying his new role. For the first
few months, he admits, not really: "I think it was a cul-
tural thing… The company was very formal."
He describes it as being "like a morgue". When he
stopped to chat with the receptionists and staff in the
canteen: "People would look at me like: 'What's he
doing talking to them?'"
Fraser says that creating an open and equal work-
place where no-one is considered lesser is both good for
business and a matter of decency. "I believe you should
treat the cleaners with the same respect as the chairman,
and anyone I catch here not doing that won't be here for
too long. It's humane and it's the culture I want.
"We're all in this together and no matter how much
somebody's paid or what job they do, everybody comes
here to try to make this company better every day, and
we have to work together to do that. And a good com-
pany with a good culture – it's about being much greater
than the sum of its individual parts."
Since the start of the new year, Fraser says people
have been "starting to have a bit more fun and enjoy
themselves". They have relaxed and he has too.
"This opportunity, when I got the phone call, it was
perfect really for me," he recalls.
His previous role was as chief operating officer at
United Utilities – a firm he joined more than a decade
ago. He says the management team at the water com-
pany had turned around its performance in the preced-
ing years: "Obviously, as chief operating officer that's a
big tick in the box personally for anybody doing an oper-
ational role."
But having worked at the firm for the best part of the
decade on both its regulated and non-regulated activi-
ties, "I wasn't getting out of bed with the same sort of
zest and drive".
