British Water welcomes workforce planning report

British Water has wel­comed guid­ance from Ener­gy & Util­i­ty Skills which sets out how busi­ness­es in the sec­tor can devel­op and main­tain a sus­tain­able work­force beyond Covid-19. The whitepa­per – 6 Easy Steps: A Prag­mat­ic Approach to Work­force Plan­ning – demon­strates how strate­gic work­force plan­ning can assist busi­ness­es as they build their post-pan­dem­ic strate­gies and plan “an effec­tive route back to busi­ness as usu­al beyond Covid-19”.

The prin­ci­ples out­lined may prove valu­able to the water indus­try sup­ply com­mu­ni­ty as busi­ness­es rethink their long-term strate­gies to adapt to the sud­den changes. British Water chief exec­u­tive Lila Thomp­son said: “The water indus­try is crit­i­cal for the health and well­be­ing of the pop­u­la­tion and the sup­ply chain plays a vital role in deliv­er­ing essen­tial ser­vices for cus­tomers. Hav­ing just entered AMP7, the util­i­ties will be rely­ing even more so on sup­pli­ers’ resilience so that post­poned cap­i­tal projects can begin in earnest when it is safe to do so.

“As the rep­re­sen­ta­tive and busi­ness devel­op­ment organ­i­sa­tion for the UK sup­ply com­mu­ni­ty, British Water is lead­ing efforts to sup­port mem­bers and reg­u­la­tors to put mea­sures in place to ensure busi­ness­es can emerge from the pan­dem­ic in a healthy posi­tion. Ener­gy & Util­i­ty Skills’ report pro­vides addi­tion­al insight into how busi­ness­es can ensure they have the right peo­ple in place at the right time to meet cur­rent and future challenges.

“I am pleased the report recog­nis­es that com­pa­nies whose work­force may be scaled back could utilise their sup­pli­ers for addi­tion­al sup­port. “I also ful­ly agree with the point that vir­tu­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion and social dis­tance arrange­ments may fun­da­men­tal­ly change future work­force needs. As part of this new approach, and with health and well­be­ing always at the fore­front, it is impor­tant for com­pa­nies to recog­nise they may need to con­tin­ue to invest in tech­nol­o­gy that enables tasks to be car­ried out remote­ly dur­ing and beyond Covid-19. “Tech­nol­o­gy that allows this tran­si­tion should be embraced as we con­tin­ue our jour­ney to become an even more resilient and sus­tain­able industry.”