Melanie Berman, Senior Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer for NiSource.
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Those of us in human resources (HR) understand the critical role that strong company culture can play in driving a business’s overall performance—whether in terms of customer satisfaction, productivity, talent retention or other measures of corporate quality.
While HR has always played a role in developing and maintaining an organization’s culture, the labor landscape has changed significantly in recent years. Members of today’s more mobile workforce—especially younger workers—are more prone to seek and stay with jobs they believe are more meaningful and fulfilling on a personal basis.
As a result, HR professionals today have an even greater responsibility to ensure that workers understand the value they bring to their jobs. This means finding ways to help employees recognize they are an important part of a larger team—and see their contributions and viewpoints are not only essential to overall organizational success but valued by those across the larger enterprise.
This can be a complicated task in any industry, but perhaps more so in the energy utility sector, where my company operates. The sector overall has maintained a rather staid identity over the years.
But things are changing fast. Providing reliable energy requires implementing a wide range of new generation, storage and distribution technologies. That is why it is critical for energy utilities today to cultivate a highly motivated workforce capable of creating and deploying innovative solutions to address the challenges of the years ahead.
Efforts to enhance diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) throughout the corporate ranks are essential in accomplishing this goal.
A strong commitment to DEI recognizes the unique value of each person, ensures that all workers are sufficiently equipped to advance and succeed, provides a greater incentive to excel and bolsters the likelihood of employee retention—all of which serve to drive the creation of a high-value workforce. Fostering such an enviable work environment also helps to position a company to become an employer of choice among its industry peers.
Our corporate culture also must do more than simply ensure that employees feel satisfied and content. Instead, it must be designed and implemented to cultivate a high-energy workforce committed to advancing the organization’s goals.
Employee engagement is critical to this effort. For example, at my company, NiSource, we like to encourage employee feedback through a range of tools—including surveys, focus groups, town halls and other means—to understand what is on our employees’ minds, discover what is most important to them and encourage them to contribute ideas that advance our shared mission.
Utilities today find themselves in a period of transition. Fortunately, conversations with utility employees have shown that they want to be involved in solving the challenges faced by their company, its customers and its communities.
To capture and leverage this employee enthusiasm, a utility must shift away from business as usual and work to develop and expand a top-down corporate culture that opens new avenues of employee engagement. Such avenues can support and energize different ways of thinking that solicit and integrate diverse perspectives and that tap into valuable experience at all levels.
Energy companies also can enhance workforce engagement by sponsoring and participating in charitable and public-service initiatives that bring their employees closer to the customers they serve.
Programs promoting volunteerism result in face-to-face encounters between employees and community members. This encourages a sense of connection to fellow stakeholders in a utility’s corporate mission, thereby helping to strengthen employees’ commitment to serving their customers and communities. In 2021, for example, employees at my company volunteered at local food pantries, toy drives and veteran services, among other activities.
Companies that provide energy to the nation’s businesses and consumers have a very complex task ahead of them—one that is complicated by a growing range of environmental and supply-side concerns. We operate in a very different world than we did 50 years ago and have entered a new age that requires employees across the ranks to dedicate themselves to the job of implementing a new energy paradigm.
At the same time, if a utility works to establish a corporate culture that fully engages, values and rewards its workforce, it will find itself well-equipped to meet today’s challenges—and those of the future.
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