Utility Week

UTILITY WEEK | JANUARY 2022 | 31 Energy reset It's no secret that labour short- ages are biting hard and many sectors are now in competition for labour that would be viable for contact centre work. In addition, we are seeing wage in ation, employee choice, depersonalised employment through home and hybrid working, and a gig culture all leading to trans- actional employment behav- iours. So thinking of solutions, I believe there are three vital areas of focus. Onshore and o shore blended service delivery Businesses must seriously consider the location of their workforces and o• shoring is less risky than you may believe. Mature o• shore locations such as Cape Town, with a minor time di• erence and super cultural • t with the UK, have been driven to a point where quality matches the UK with improved sta• retention, linked to an easier recruitment process due to higher unem- ployment rates. Done properly, the bene• ts are endless. Triage deployment How we deploy our people is another solution. Here at Sigma we have introduced a triage deployment of sta• on to new campaigns and set up quickly to cover client recruit- ment challenges. This involves remodelling the business processes, separating out the "easier", light-touch activi- ties for temporary employees to deliver in the UK while we recruit and train permanent resource in South Africa. This enables us to get new employees deployed on to client work much quicker as onboarding time is reduced while maintaining customer satisfaction levels. One recent example saw us sourcing 800 people in just eight weeks, all fully trained. Work from anywhere There is also no doubt that Covid has opened up the opportunity for our agents to work from anywhere. This means we can broaden our target recruitment areas to a nationwide search. With oŒ ce banter and out- of-work socialising removed from the equation, we have found that having a mainly remote team requires ampli• ed employee engagement activity. We have adopted a hybrid approach and we now employ our agents knowing what they need in terms of their workspace. If this means some prefer to work at home more oŽ en, then we will accommo- date that. These are just brief exam- ples from our own experience and like all • rms, we are constantly developing our own ways of working. However, I believe that now more than ever, those across the utility sector must be thinking and doing things di• erently when it comes to their people. For more information about Sigma Connected visit www.sigmaconnected.com EXPERT VIEW MIKE HARFIELD, CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER, SIGMA CONNECTED Staff shortages and why utility companies must adapt companies must adapt Post-Covid economic recovery is under threat from labour shortages, but solutions are at hand. changes in commodity costs at the custom- ers' – or taxpayers' – expense." He suggests that a way round this could be to highlight sup- pliers who are largely unhedged – a way to warn customers tempted by low o• ers from retailers. "That might be a good place to start, just to see if simply making it public knowl- edge was enough to discourage that kind of behaviour. "If you are a customer and signing up for a one, or two, year • xed price deal and some- body in the press was saying you shouldn't sign up with that company because they have taken a bet on prices falling and that if prices rise, they will go bust, that might be enough disincentive for customers to sign up." However, Adam Bell, head of policy at management consultancy Stonehaven, believes such a move would have major con- sequences for the market, while not having much e• ect on consumers. He explains: "It does change an awful lot of the commercial thinking in this space because it would enable all the suppliers to see what their competitors were doing on hedging and it would probably change the structure of the market quite fundamentally. "If everyone knows what risk everyone is insuring against, the cost of insuring against those risks goes up because there'll likely be more demand for similar hedging products. I think it would push up some costs but I don't think it will have a signi• cant impact on consumers." He instead suggests Ofgem could create a risk index to give it a better idea of the levels of risk suppliers expose themselves to, giving it a better picture of supplier resilience. Bell says: "You could look at their hedging posi- tions, what contracts they have taken out and the extent to which they are insulated against price rises and over what period. "Once they have done that and they have got a sense as to how secure a particu- lar company is, Ofgem can say 'company x is not resilient enough' and that it wants the company to have a particular score on a resilience index. In aggregate across the market, this will enable Ofgem to say in the event of another price crisis, they expect X number of companies to go under. "The downside is it makes it much harder for smaller companies to get into the market because they need more capital than they otherwise would have done." Adam John, senior reporter "It's important we remember that hedging is one of those areas where you can compete as a supplier… you wouldn't want to regulate out that ability to compete." DAN ALCHIN, DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF RETAIL, ENERGY UK

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