Launching our new values and behaviours

Shaping our new culture at DCC

Things are changing at the DCC. Following many months of consultation with employees across the business, I was delighted to be able to announce the DCC’s new set of values and behaviours at our recent all-colleague conference in Manchester.  Our new values, ‘Make a difference’, ‘Act with integrity’ and ‘Be accountable’, will transform the way we work together as colleagues, and with our customers, and is the first step in our ambitious cultural transformation journey.

How did we create our new values and behaviours?

For nine months, we’ve been working hard to shape our future culture through a series of surveys, workshops, feedback and planning sessions with colleagues from all areas and all levels of the business. Several themes kept cropping up – our staff told us they were passionate about our purpose and the ability to make a difference and really liked the people they work with. The things they were less fond of were the feeling of constant fire-fighting and the relentless pace of the job. We worked as a community to design and refine a new cultural ambition, supported by a simple set of new values and the behaviours that would bring this ambition to life. It was a truly collaborative process, with all our colleagues involved in culture surveys and nearly 100 participants in workshops and focus groups.

What were the drivers for a cultural shift?

Over the last few years, DCC has been focussed on the delivery of our core purpose - building and maintaining the secure network which connects all of Britain’s smart meters. We’ve had a goal-seeking culture which has served us well as we’ve scaled rapidly in the three years, from no meters on the wall to now over 23 million meters in 13 million homes across Britain. However, the ‘just get stuff done’ approach is unsustainable in the long-term, leading to intense pressure and even burn-out for our people.

Our work is unique, and is critical to the decarbonisation of the UK, so we need to equip and empower our people to meet the challenges of the future. Our new values and behaviours are an important foundation for our transformation to a culture of accountability, empowerment and collaboration, ensuring we can successfully deliver on our important mission – making Britain more connected so we can all lead smarter, greener lives.

A closer look at our new values

I’m glad that the new values our people chose are clear, consistent and memorable and not something that employees would just put away in a drawer and forget about!  Let’s now look at the new values in a bit more detail, and the big impact they will have on how we do things at DCC.

‘Make a difference’

We are driven by our purpose and are positive advocates for our role in a low-carbon future. We want to do more, and we want to do it better, so we will focus on learning from every experience and improving together. We will also ensure our staff feel appreciated by taking time to celebrate individual and team achievements.

‘Act with integrity’

Our customers are at the heart of what we do and our continued focus on sound business planning will ensure we deliver value for money, not only for our customers, but for energy consumers too.

‘Be accountable’

As we evolve and mature as an organisation, we will improve how we operate by becoming more systematic and process-led. We will do what we say we will, ensuring decision-making is timely and done with clarity, inviting our stakeholders to hold us to account.

What’s next?

We’re not stopping here. We will continue to take steps to evolve our culture and embed them in our ways of working.

Our leaders are central to the success of our cultural transformation. They play an active role in our cultural journey, role modelling the new values and behaviours and encouraging their teams to do the same.  To support this, we will be launching a new leadership programme, designed to equip leaders with a common set of leadership expectations and develop core skills and behaviours aligned to our cultural ambition.

The new values and behaviours will also be integrated into our core people processes. They’ll show up in how we performance manage and recognise success. We’ll also reflect our new values and behaviours in job descriptions and selection guides, ensuring we continue to attract the best talent, who be a ‘cultural fit’ for us.

We’ll also support our cultural journey with changes to our workplace, facilitating better collaboration by creating designated areas for innovating, sharing ideas and cross-team working.

We’re at the start of our journey of cultural change but our new values and behaviours provides an important foundation that will benefit our people, our customers and ultimately the UK consumer.