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People & Opinion Utility Week community UTILITY WEEK | 16TH - 22ND SEPTEMBER 2016 | 7 "Wishful thinking doesn't generate the power we need to heat homes, keep the lights on or the economy functioning" GMB national secretary for energy Justin Bowden on Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn's target of generating 65 per cent of UK energy from renewable sources by 2030. Yorkshire Water confirms chairman Anthony Rabin has been appointed chairman of York- shire Water. He will serve as chairman of Kelda Holdings, Kelda Eurobond Co and Yorkshire Water Services. He assumed the role of acting chairman on 27 May after Richard Parry-Jones announced he was stepping down. His appointment has now been made permanent. Rabin was first appointed to Yorkshire Water's board in August 2013 and became senior inde- pendent director in March 2015. He has been a member of the board of Kelda Holdings Limited since September 2012. He will continue to act as chair of the Audit Com- mittee pending the appointment of a new non-executive director to undertake that role. REA chief exec joins new TfL board Renewable Energy Association chief executive Nina Skorupska has been appointed to the board of gover- nors of Transport for London (TfL), refashioned by London mayor Sadiq Khan to be smaller and more diverse. TfL's board of governors also includes the founder and chairman of the advisory board of Bloomberg New Energy Finance, Michael Liebreich, and the chief executive, president and company secretary of the Association for Consultancy and Engineering, Nelson Ogunshakin. EXECUTIVE APPOINTMENTS I really looked forward to the Utility Week HR Forum last week – we don't get too many opportunities to get together as professionals from our sector and sharing ideas and best practice is so useful. No doubt we all face similar challenges within our different organisations, and one that my team and I are spending time focusing on at the moment is how we engage with our multi-generational workforce. With people retiring later in life, the range of colleagues we work with is getting broader, which means we have to be more considered and creative in the HR space. This ranges from reward and recognition, Speaker's Corner Sarah Hopkins, people & engagement director, Wales & West Utilities communication and engagement to the use of technology and innovation. I've found that broaden- ing the traditional HR team to encompass corporate com- munications and stakeholder engagement has helped us to be more challenging to ourselves and to come up with more inclu- sive people-centric solutions – whether that be from a customer or colleague perspective. One of my biggest frustra- tions a few years ago was when colleagues overlooked the needs of our own people when con- sidering our need to be focused on stakeholders, innovation and change. It might be stating the obvious, but if we don't get it right internally, how can colleagues be expected to get it right externally? We've moved a long way at WWU and I truly believe that an integrated HR team has been the key to that, so that people are not an aerthought but an early part of any new strategy or concept. In light of this, I have also been considering our well- being strategy. We have all the building blocks and some great initiatives, but the main chal- lenge here continues to be how we overcome the myth that wellbeing is the responsibility of occupational health and HR. Getting this right will be the next stage in the evolution of our people strategy. By engag- ing managers and colleagues with different backgrounds, we are really moving in the right direction. An example of our activity was a recent mental health awareness campaign, which was received positively and has really started to remove the stigma and encourage people to talk about issues and concerns. Getting tangible results is the key here, so that there is a business benefit as well as "doing the right thing". We still need to educate colleagues that this is not just another thing for their to-do list, but that putting our people at the heart of what we do is critical to meeting the challenges we are facing in the utilities sector. Sarah spoke at the Utility Week HR Forum in Birmingham last week. Read next week's issue for full coverage of the event. BEIS consents the electrical infrastructure for Triton Knoll offshore windfarm off the coast of Lincolnshire. 900MW Capacity of proposed scheme. £224m Estimated value of the project to the Humber region. 800 Number of jobs created during construction. 8% Amount wholesale energy prices fell in October.