Glassdoor Updates
Anglian Water CEO: “This is a Long-Term Business and Employees Get Hooked On It”
Joe Wiggins
Joe Wiggins, Author & Career Expert at Glassdoor | 6 Dec 2017
Anglian Water is the UK’s #2 Best Place To Work for 2018, beating the likes of Apple, Microsoft, Unilever and Waitrose. So how does a company that supplies water in the East of England beat global tech, consumer goods and manufacturing companies when it comes to keeping employees happy? Here we speak to Anglian Water’s CEO, Peter Simpson - himself the current UK Highest Rated CEO on Glassdoor - to find out what makes the company so special.
Peter, you are the Highest Rated CEO for 2017 and now Anglian Water is the #2 Best Place To Work in the UK: which award are you more excited about?
The latter - Best Places To Work. To be honest, they are both interchangeable really. Both sort of reflect the fact that I think we're doing more things right than we are wrong, in terms of the environment we're trying to create for people in the business. Of course, I'm delighted with them, but actually, the second one means more to me really, because I think it's a reflection of all the great people I work with, rather than it just being focused on one person. We’re not an awards-focussed organisation though and it’s not something we set out to achieve just for the sake of it.
What is the best thing about working for Anglian Water?
Well, it's really the people. It's an organisation where lots of people stay for a large chunk of their career; that’s just the nature of the company. So, the sense of community that's created and the fact we've got so many employees with such a passion for what they do and because we're all customers, we're all pretty committed to those communities that we serve.
It's certainly why I've always enjoyed working for the business, doing something really worthwhile, working with a bunch of people who are similarly like-minded. They never cease to inspire me, and wherever I go in the business, I see people doing great things, so it's the sense of a common purpose.
Why do employees stay so long at Anglian Water?
It's because this is a long-term business, to start off with. There are short-term things to do, of course, but also, there's long-term ambition and once you get hooked on it, you want to see things through.
If you've been part of the community of Anglian, it's something which is not a short-term thing, so I think the sense of family that comes with it, does actually mean you want to stay longer. I often talk to our graduates who join us and quite a few of them, if they're being completely honest, anticipate finishing the management program, maybe doing a year or two afterwards and then moving on and doing something else. However, I speak to them five or six years later, when they tell me they didn’t realise the full scope of what the organisation does and the diverse opportunities that are on offer.
We are only a water company, but actually, we are creating opportunities for people to grow and giving them a stretch. If we're doing that, then people say, "Where else will I get that? I don't have to leave this business to get those opportunities". So we focus on career development and opportunities, letting people move around the business, encouraging people to be the best they can be. I think all that stuff just hooks people in.
A lot of your senior leadership team have been with the business for a long time, which is quite unusual, wouldn’t you say?
It is quite unusual and when I was reading management textbooks 20-odd years ago, we were told it would never be the case now. There's actually a DNA to the business, which is built on trust and relationships between individuals in the company, which they've built up, through their careers. There are a lot of people in the business I talk to who remember me when I worked for them or when we were peers or different configurations. So, yes, I know I'm the CEO, but actually, I'm just somebody else in the business. We've all got lots of shared experiences, which mean that, sometimes, when we get things wrong, which we do, despite that, people make it work. Because the DNA in the business is so strong and the network of relationships that exist, you won't find elsewhere.
Does having such a strong focus on customer satisfaction help build strong teams?
Yes, I think it really helps, because ultimately, we all want to work for organisations that we think are doing something useful and worthwhile. I've never heard anybody in our business say anything other than, "we want to be the best", because that is important to people. It's a fantastic way to motivate teams and of course, if you're delivering great internal service, you're delivering great external service, so these things feed off each other.
How does the company foster a strong culture?
We’ve got three pillars that we focus on: innovation, collaboration and transformation.
Innovation is about looking outside the business. We really encourage people to challenge us and be challenging of themselves and each other, by going out to look at other businesses, bringing best practice into our business from outside.
Collaboration comes about from long-term relationships, both with partners and communities and customers. Transformation is about recognising that change is inevitable and not shying away from that. We might have people who’ve worked in the business for a long time, but being open to change is really important.
What about employee well-being, how do you tackle that?
We focus on three areas: “happier, healthier and safer”. We have set out to extol the positive benefits of work, so that work can have a positive contribution to health and wellbeing in particular. That's an important journey we're on. For example, with health, we've done an awful lot of work on helping employees to understand what great nutrition looks like, and we've done lots of programs around weight. We run lots of programs around muscular/skeletal health too. They're not paternalistic, they're designed to say, "Here are the benefits and why wouldn't you be part of this?" It's been incredibly well received actually, as has the focus on mental health.
Work can be a really positive thing, if it's the right environment and we create the right sort of jobs for people. It has a really positive effect on people's overall well-being and frankly, to miss the opportunity of making work like that is a huge shame. Therefore, we've written into our health and safety policy that work is to be a positive contribution to employee wellbeing as well as, of course, making sure people are safe when they come to work.
What impact do employee reviews have on your business?
There's nothing better, actually, than feedback from employees about what we're doing. It takes the gloss off it; it's reality. You see genuine feedback where we haven't got it right, or where people don't have quite the same view and that's because life isn't perfect. I think you get a very clear view into a company when you've got enough reviews to understand what it's really about.
What difference does it make to have informed candidates applying to work for you?
We see more informed people even at the initial application stage, let alone getting to the next stage of a recruitment process. These candidates have got a much better feel for what the company is really like and increasingly, people joining us are not looking solely at how much it pays or all the rest of it, they're looking at the culture of the organisation. "Is this really somewhere I want to put my time? Is this a bunch of people with my values?".
That is much better and, actually, what I've noticed is the people I meet, particularly the people who've just joined, are a lot more challenging of me and the company and they say, "Well, yeah, it's great, but what about this? Why aren't you doing that? Haven't you thought about this?". Which is great, I mean, that's what you want. I don't really want people joining us thinking everything is great and they don’t need to change anything. They need to come in here and say, "We get what you're all about, we love the culture, but how about this? What about that?" I see a lot more of that because of these informed candidates.
Joe Wiggins
Joe Wiggins, is an expert career author for the Glassdoor Blog. Read about Joe Wiggins' experience and latest published articles on their author profile.
Tags:Best Places to WorkInformed Candidate
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