Looking back
When did you first become serious about your career? (not designed to highlight your age! Just an overview of your career pathway)
I started with a role in planning and my current role is in planning so you could say that I’ve come the full circle with quite a few roles in between across engineering operations, L&D, customer service & transformation.
My first role was as a planning engineer, designing gas pipeline distribution networks for residential and small industrial and commercial properties. That was back in 1986 and there were no personal computers or laptops then, just a pipeline flow rate calculator and pen and paper!
I had a very interesting journey through my 39-year career at British Gas and now Centrica, which is the organisation created in 1997 to look after the retail arm of the business post privatisation in 1986. I started as an engineering trainee, working across a range of different parts of the then integrated and nationalised British Gas business, whist studying part time for an HNC. Following a few years in gas distribution planning and in Learning & Development as a technical trainer, I was sponsored to go to University and in 1992 graduated with an honour’s degree in Mechanical Engineering.
It was at that stage, I wanted to develop closer working with customers and moved into the technical side of Marketing, developing and expanding our central heating contract business, Then following a stint working in our Staines HQ developing a new customer contact system, I was part of a Customer Services Management team who set up our first national call centre in Uddingston, near Glasgow, responsible for managing the service cover of our 9 million or so contract customers.
That was a great period for trying new things and leaning from a few mistakes also. As well as migrating customers from 12 different regional computer systems into a single platform and on day 1 found we couldn’t send quotes for new business – Amipro mail merge was a saviour for few months while the IT guys fixed the system functionality. I then had to learn all about direct debit regulations we moved to paperless direct debit which was a milestone for direct telephone selling and that’s allowed me to establish our first outbound telesales team using a dialler – that was fun bringing together motivational sales targeting and predictive dialling pacing algorithms!
In 2000, I had the opportunity to work on a role which was intended to more closely integrate the British Gas and AA membership businesses following the acquisition of the AA in 1999. Following a few challenges with systems development programmes and a significant risk of a sub-optimal solution, I recommended that we didn’t proceed with the new systems implementation. It was just as well we didn’t, as we ended up selling the AA a few years later in 2004!
I started in Resource Planning in 2003 when I became the National Resource Planning Manager for British Gas Services following a period assessing exactly how we were doing resource planning across the business (the answer very differently!) and took the opportunity to shape a new unit dedicated to planning for the Services business. Since then I have been in a range of resource planning roles culminating in my role as Resource Planning Director for UK Customer Operations in July 2016. It was at this time that I really felt I had found the perfect match for my skills, my interests and a great role opportunity. I really enjoyed my time in customer service operations but the opportunity to build and rebuild (over a few iterations), a dedicated and professional resource planning unit was what really changed things for me. It was the place where we combined the people and numbers and I felt we could really make a difference to the service outcomes for customers by the success of our planning activities.
What is different now, to when you first started your career?
The main difference is the pace at which things move now, and our total dependence on data and technology, which is available not only to employees who work in organisations but also to customers through the range of digital channels.
Back in the 80’s mail was still sent by paper and it could take 2-3 days to get a response. When I started in Resource Planning in 2003 we didn’t have a workforce management system, just a bunch of Lotus 123 and then Excel spreadsheets, a lot of manual calculations & a few self-trained experts in how our telephony system worked!
Now it seems, we are constantly invaded by multi-channel contacts, email is still there but instant messaging through teams or zoom or whatsapp means your time can get constantly interrupted – great if you need a quick response on something but challenging if you need to find time to focus on some of the bigger questions, or on completing that now overdue board report.
And of course it’s the same for customers….we live in a multi-channel world where customers are really well informed through being able to self-consume information digitally and often contact us by a range of channels and sometimes more than one channel at the same time! This creates some very unique challenges for demand and capacity planners - in the way that they forecast channel demand, they have to not only to predict contact volumes but by what channel, it creates an added dimension to the skills we need to plan for in capacity planning and it creates a need for real time data access & visualisations in and across channels to stay in control and optimise.
If there was one thing you could change from your past what would it be? (obviously, career, nothing too personal)
I’ve been reflecting on this question and it’s a good one to ask yourself from time to time. I think if I reflect back in the innovation activity we were driving in the late 2000’s around integrated planning and customer planning it feels like we got ourselves a little lost in the internal focus of the organisation around a very determined drive on efficiency and cost savings over the last 10 years or so. Whilst this has been common priority for many organisations throughout this period, I think we diluted some of our focus on the customer and the pain points that we create every day from things like poor end to end journey design, sub-optimal execution and inconsistencies especially across channels. Sometimes you have to go with the flow in organisational directions of course, but given we were already making good progress on this, I feel it might have been an area I could have tried to influence even more. In a similar vein, we set some very challenging call reduction objectives, so much so that we had an absolute obsession with call volumes decreasing but this was on the basis of a limited understanding of call demand triggers and drivers, which had a bit of science and a fair amount of gut and experience rather than being fully supported by insight and analysis. We have also consistently failed to deal as effectively with the levels of waste contacts that we self-generate than we should have (which is a common problem for a lot of organisations and it is estimated that up to 40% of contact demand could be self-generated wastage). The other observation I’d make is that we assumed that there would be much more substitutional contact from digital channels. In fact, whilst we have seen some transactional substitutions which have avoided call contact, there has been a significant increase in incremental activity for which there remains a question to be fully answered on whether this would have resulted in higher call demand or not!
1.Professional Community
What was your first Forum event, or activity? (Don’t worry, we have a few old stock photos of you winning awards and attending our conferences!)
I think I first got involved with the Forum in the mid 2000’s at the same time as we were implementing our first workforce management solution and started to use the time spent at forum events thinking about how we in British Gas could contribute to the discussions and showcase some of the innovation that was abundant in the teams I was working with at that time. This culminated in two innovation awards in successive years in 2008 and 2009 and then in 2011 with a personal Planning Hero award.
- 2008 – British Gas Services gained the Innovation Award for Integrated Planning for a resourcing strategy that joins together recruitment, training and resource planning
- 2009 – award for Customer Planning – Making it easier for our customers
How has your professional networking supporting you and how would you recommend others use and develop their network? (Please think beyond The Forum, and which other user-groups or social media have supported)
I have always enjoyed the opportunity to connect with a range of professional people through the Linked In Network. This allows me to stay in touch with people I once worked with as well as people I met across the industry. It’s not always about posting either for me although I do like some of the thought provoking articles that I get the opportunity to read and comment on.
I am a Fellow of the Forward Institute which I joined as part of a 2016 cohort. This is a growing group of responsible leaders across a range of private, public and voluntary sectors who have accepted the challenges and dilemmas of leading organisations with a clear sense of purpose and strong values through a world that is becoming no simpler. The value of this community is in the discussion and experiences shared through thought provoking stimulation & insight sessions with thought leaders from all walks of life, and the opportunity to debate & challenge thinking and learnings and of course to test and apply this in our respective organisations.
Lastly, I have always tried to utilise Supplier Forums and over the years have attended and engaged in many of these events with companies like Aspect, Genesys and Intradiem where it’s is possible to influence the design and development roadmaps through active user discussion and debate. Bringing your specific issues and challenges to life and getting these adopted into the development roadmaps of supplier products and solutions, can provide a real win/win opportunity.
What do you think stops people playing an active role in the wider professional community? (either consider what has prevented you from being involved, or what typical excuses you see from others)
I think the main reasons are work deadlines & time pressures which restrict the amount of time people can commit to being active in their professional communities and I agree this is a challenge. I experienced this myself over the years, especially as times of significant changes in an organisation. What I have found though, is that leveraging the wider community to help you work through some of these, especially as we often share the same issues and find ways to solve similar problems, can be a really helpful way to actually save time – who amongst us wouldn’t copy a great idea or develop a solution based on a successful application elsewhere!
2.COVID-19 and Beyond
How has COVID-19 impacted you (and your business)? (Once in a “life-time” impact, how has this made you think/act differently?)
There is no question that the Covid 19 Pandemic has asked us to respond in ways most of us would not have considered possible nor even desirable in the old norm. For example, the massive and speedy migration to 100% home working as a way to contain and reduce infection rates from the virus would have not been achieved by most organisations in a steady state environment. Faced with no other option, human beings have proven yet again to particularly innovative and adaptable.
Investment decisions of the past few years have either made this easier or more difficult depending on which way the decision went. Those who adopted cloud based computing and integrated desktop solutions like Microsoft Office 365 found themselves immediately at an advantage.
I think the other thing that I have noticed is that the operating conditions and restrictions have actually created an environment for innovation and accelerating change. I know that my own organisation accelerated the automation of customer processing activity through our back-office partner to allow us to maintain exception management when resourcing capacity was being impacted by the lockdowns in India.
How can we use this as a launch pad for redefining the future? (There are opportunities which we must build upon, how can we harness these [individually and collectively]?)
I believe there are a number of opportunities that will build on as part of creating the new norm in a post covid world. Home working will remain a feature of our operating model which will provide more flexible working, allow more tailored shift patterns, faster response to unexpected spikes whilst providing many colleagues with an improved work/life balance and with less commuting, more time for family commitments, more down time and improved time for physical health & exercise.
Also, we have seen more use of self service and digital channels, some of which will endure as customers have tried and successfully used these options when voice channel performance was impacted by the capacity constraints due to the early part of lockdown. Companies will need to continue to invest in the quality and consistency of experience in these channels and quite frankly make it an easier option for customers to use rather than calling.
There will of course be some challenges to be overcome in operating in this new environment – things like optionality v compulsory home working and developing & operating a hybrid of mixed home and office time. Sustained home working over a longer period will require further investments in agent desktop and systems security and monitoring, as well as infrastructure. Recruitment and training may need to become more virtual and the question of terms and conditions parity between permanent home v hybrid or permanent office workers will need to be considered. The impacts of this on mental health and wellbeing will need to be considered and form an intrinsic part of these solutions.
I think the last area I would flag is an opportunity to move more quickly into a more sustainable recovery. There were noticeable improvements in air quality during lockdown and the opportunity to build back towards a net zero economy. Less traffic and commuting will help of course, but in my own industry the shift from natural gas to hydrogen usage, carbon capture schemes, accelerated growth of electrics vehicles usage and charging and the ultimate ban on the installation of new gas boilers and the move to heat pumps in future will all contribute to new challenges and opportunities for our company and industry. These levels of change will test our strategic planning teams to respond with suitable forward thinking in planning assumptions and solutions with a range scenario testing options and developments to ensure our businesses can survive and thrive in this new environment. I would expect that the support of the forum and the wider professional community will be key in making this a reality we can all learn from and embrace.
What would be your top tip for someone starting on their career right now?
Look at the trends and try find something that really interests you – your career will span 40 year + so might as well find areas of work that you can associate with. Think about what type of work, what place of work, what courses of study, what life experiences are going to put you in the best position to develop and be successful in whatever career choices you make.
Be adaptable - there are many different career paths and routes you could take so you don’t need to stick to one path.
Always remain curious and willing to learn, don’t fight change (that’s exhausting), embrace it and get involved, be a catalyst for doing things better than they have been done before.
Be a giver and a taker – always aim to contribute into and expect to be able to leverage something out of your network. Try to build strong and lasting relationships with others in your discipline, industry or sector.
Try to find a good mentor or sponsor who you can use to open doors, to support you in your development, be a sounding board for ideas and to encourage you, especially when things do go according to plan. Some of life’s best successes started with a failure of some sort or another.
And lastly, whilst its nice to be important, it’s more important to be nice, so treat others with respect and kindness and you’ll receive oodles of it back in return.
How would you like the professional community to support you and others in the future?
The professional community remains an essential part of the ongoing development of the industry and individuals working in it. From setting, maintaining and developing professional standards, to encouraging and recognising innovation and best practice, to creating an environment where individuals and teams can some together to learn and collaborate, to supporting the development of new solutions to the emerging challenges we face in society and adapting to the new norms.