Published in Kingstown College Coaching Magazine 2020/2021
Coaching and mentoring play a massive role in smart working because it allows the individual and the team to connect with the organization.
Electricity Supply Board (ESB) has a 20-year coaching culture which has led to the creation of The Coaching and Mentoring Academy. Informal Mentoring has always been encouraged however in the past 12 months, the demand for formal mentoring in the Organisation has grown by an impressive 65%. Here Maria Travers and Tom McMahon from ESB discuss the importance of the ESB’s Coaching and Mentoring Programmes in a complex, people centric Organisation.
The ESB Environment
Since ESB was established in 1927, it has always endeavoured to bring light and energy to the people it serves, allowing individuals and communities to fulfil their potential in every walk of life. This is achieved not only through the provision of critical energy infrastructure, but also through ESB’s contribution to the economy in the form of investment, taxes, dividends and jobs.
Electricity Supply Board (ESB) was established in 1927 as a statutory corporation in the Republic of Ireland under the Electricity (Supply) Act 1927. With a holding of 95%, ESB is majority owned by the Irish Government with the remaining 5% held by the trustees of an Employee Share Ownership Plan. ESB is a leading Irish utility focused on providing excellent customer service and maintaining their financial strength. The Company have a regulated asset base of approximately 9 billion with 43% of electricity generation capacity in the all-island market. ESB currently supply electricity to approximately 1.4 million customers throughout the island of Ireland. ESB Group employs a highly trained and committed workforce of approximately 8,000 people operating in the diverse and highly skilled business units and have an expanding business interest in the UK.
As a strong, diversified, vertically integrated utility, ESB operates right across the electricity market from generation, through transmission and distribution to supply. In addition, ESB extracts further value at certain points along this chain: supplying gas, using our networks to carry fibre for telecommunications, developing electric vehicle public charging infrastructure and more.
ESB’s mission is to bring sustainable and competitive energy solutions to all customers and their vision is to be Ireland’s foremost energy company competing successfully in the all-island market.
ESB International, a leading Global Engineering Consultancy, with headquarters in Dublin employs over 750 staff across operations in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and South East Asia, and has worked in over 120 countries around the world.
Electric Ireland is the national retail division of ESB serving customers in a competitive market in Ireland as well as gaining a footprint in the UK.
The staff of 8,000 are spread in several locations across the country. Evolving from a rich history of electricity generation using coal, peat, oil and gas to a strategy and new era of low carbon and replacement of generation with wind and solar power. The landscape is changing having had a physical and industrial presence across the country at stations including in Cork, Clare, the West and the Midlands and on the 18th of December 2020, after 55 years, ESB closed the last peat burning station. The networks business is national with depots in every village in Ireland with 1400 network technicians and 130 supervisors responsible for maintaining and upgrading the network.
Brighter Future Strategy
ESB’s strategy for creating a brighter future is anchored in their ambition to lead the transition to a low-carbon energy future based on clean, reliable, affordable electricity. It sets out a path to achieve this ambition in a way that will also ensure that ESB continues to grow as a successful business and maintain the financial strength to invest in a low- carbon future at the necessary pace and scale. The fundamental essence of the Brighter Future Strategy is about putting customers at the center, providing clean, secure and affordable energy to customers and developing and rethinking new innovative energy services. ESB’s strategy highlights the importance of being adaptable, responsible and opportunistic in an era of unprecedented uncertainty.
The growth of ESB is a balance between, on the one hand, a deeply ingrained reputation and a rich service attitude, for example the responses to storms in Ireland by the ESB employees, and on the other hand, ensuring not to become complacent about their rich reputation with regards to the competitor and customer landscape. Competitors are not complacent, and customers will ensure getting value regardless of the length of service and rich history of the company.
Financial strength and high performance is fundamental to entering this new, very different and exciting world of energy. Business coaching which includes one- to-one coaching and team coaching is a key enabler in delivering a performance culture which supports innovation and collaboration among individuals while also developing them personally. Promoting coaching and mentoring and training managers to have a coaching style of management engages the will to drive performance and capability. ESB are very committed to offering managers the support they need for personal growth and to be effective in their roles, where the purpose to deliver transformational change through the Brighter Future Strategy is driven by changes in behaviour and mindset.
The Impact of Coaching
ESB is known as a people-centric organisation and has a history of coaching and investing in people. It is not a new phenomenon that they are taking a close look at coaching and bringing it to another level in the organization. They are professionalizing it, putting a structure on it and really trying to embed it.
Coaching is well-established in ESB and has been at the heart of ESB for over 20 years. With a dedicated team in place to manage coaching and mentoring, a foundation, structure and infrastructure has been put in place. Part of the foundation is having Coaching & Mentoring Programme Manager, responsible for the strategic direction of Coaching and Mentoring in the business supported by coaching champions and five Business Unit Coaching & Mentoring Coordinators. This has increased senior management buy-in as they know coaching and mentoring contributes to the fundamental success of the strategy and its drive to manage, mind, encourage and inspire performance.
As part of the foundation, they have set up a dedicated monitoring database which tracks members of the internal and external Coaching and Mentoring Panels. This includes the assignment of Coachees both internally and externally and Mentees; availability of coaches and mentors; Coach bios; training including supervision; Continuous Professional Development through the Coaching & Mentoring Academy and the provision of data analytics for costing and budget purposes.
We’ve recently tried to step away from talking about ‘culture’ and talk more about ‘this is the way we work, this is just the way we work.’
Embedding coaching in the organisation is a constant challenge and requires a strong business case and the ability to evaluate impact. Performance is a key tenant of the company and people strategy and stands over the progression of coaching and mentoring in the organization. So, what exactly is the impact of coaching? How does coaching impact on people’s business performance? What kind of culture do they want in the organization?
Tom mentions two elements in the evaluation of coaching. “How do I show up as a leader in the organization?” and; “what does it feel like to work here?” ESB encourages and promotes a coaching style of leadership as distinct from being an actual ‘Coach’. They aim to professionalize coaching, and have a sufficient number of internal and external coaches to support people who are promoted, are transitioning into management positions; in the case of mentoring, new recruits or graduates or those who are at a crossroads in their career. The biggest challenge in the embedding of coaching is seeing the real value, how it affects the bottom line, how it affects performance and aligning it to the way they work. They try to step away from talking about ‘culture’ and talk more about ‘this is the way we work; this is just the way we work”.
ESB are currently working on measuring the impact of coaching. They are applying for accreditation for the International Standards for Mentoring and Coaching Programmes (ISMCP) Award in 2021, awarded to organisations designing, delivering and evaluating mentoring and/ or coaching programmes either ‘in-house’ or externally. One of the key conditions of the award is being able to show that ESB has the ability to measure the return-on-investment, they are looking at various ways of doing this perhaps using the ‘Peakon’ platform in the organisation which supports analysing performance and generating metrics from the data. ESB is a complex organization comprising five different business areas which makes measuring difficult. To eliminate the silo effect as a result of the different business units, HR acts as one – a unified department serving the organisation as a whole.
In relation to Team Performance they have found that where the focus is on improving team performance, the effect is more immediate and easier to see because when the team comes together, there is clarity about the actions and the actions they are going to take.
ESB engages an external coaching panel as well as an internal coaching panel. The external panel consists of nine companies that provide coaching to their senior and executive leadership team. External panels bring additional distance and objectivity and observations from another perspective outside the company.
Some examples of feedback received are:
“the interaction between the coach and the client was excellent and I achieved what I needed”
“great structure prioritization and focus on development needs, good feedback and suggestions from the coaching and excellent relationship”
“my coach encouraged me to explore issues in a safe environment and determine actions that I should take”
“the option to have both internal and external coaches is very important, as with external coaches it adds additional distance, objectivity to observations as well as increasing comfort around discussing sensitive topics”
“my coach has shared with me their experience within ESB and gave me good advice on how to develop my career”
The ESB Coaching and Mentoring Academy@ESB
The Coaching & Mentoring Academy @ ESB is a new initiative designed, developed and aligned to support the delivery of ESB’s Brighter Future Strategy across ESB Group. The Academy was launched by Professor David Clutterbuck in September 2020, with the support and advice of Paula King, Kingstown college, who was instrumental in engaging David. The Academy is championed by Capability Development & Resourcing in People and Organisation Development in ESB and is managed by a Coaching & Mentoring Programme Manager partnering with five Business Unit Coaching & Mentoring Coordinators representing the various businesses.
The objective of the Coaching & Mentoring Academy @ ESB is to enable locally driven transformational change by supporting succession planning, capability and leadership development also empowering individuals and teams to broaden, develop and motivate each other to achieve improvement in their performance.
The purpose of the Academy is to provides a safe and supportive environment, creating a sense of belonging, self- reflection and collaboration amongst all our coaching and mentoring panel members. The Academy supports this cohort, by providing personal and professional development (CPD) which will typically comprise formal training (e.g. Coach and Mentor Training, Supervision, Tools & Techniques for Line Managers); and informal training; (e.g. participation in conferences, webinars, masterclasses, self-development, lunch & learns, reading). For members of the academy this means ongoing commitment to developing their knowledge base and technical expertise. It also means keeping up to date with evolving best practices.
ESB is a complex organization and mentoring is utilized to set people up for success in the organization. Mentoring is one of a suite of development solutions ESB uses to support individual growth and development. Mentoring is important for people joining the organization, for those at particularly critical points of their career, for people joining new parts of the organization and for people taking up leadership roles of whatever kind. Mentors play a pivotal role in safeguarding retention and building organizational commitment. At ESB mentorships are life-altering relationships that inspire mutual learning and development.
Determining whether Coaching or Mentoring is the correct development objective, or perhaps a combination of both are agreed through the individual’s ‘My Development’ process, with the support of the individual’s line manager and invariably a discussion with the Business Unit Coaching & Mentoring Coordinator to define the difference between both. So, having a clear definition of either process is so important.
There is certainly a demand for coaching and mentoring and the crucial thing is to have the conversation with the individual to determine what it is they actually need. Conversations are fundamental. Otherwise it just becomes a conveyor belt which is the wrong approach to coaching and mentoring. In some cases, engaging in coaching and mentoring is not the answer at all, for example if the employee simply needs to step up!
Mentoring is generally in demand by graduates, apprentices and new recruits. At senior levels, employees seek mentors when they transition from a mid- leadership level to a senior leadership level. Coaching is primarily reserved for leaders and senior management.
In ESB there has been a 65% increase in mentoring in the last year!
There is a relentless focus on coaching and mentoring in the organisation to set people up for success and to improve and sustain performance and attract and retain talent. All engineering graduates receive mentoring and there is a pull now from the business units to have mentors for everyone, to develop capabilities and enhance the sharing of skills and transfer of knowledge and this initiative is even extending to the UK branches. Another added benefit is the self-development and learning-in-reverse for the coach and the mentor as they are learning from the coachees and mentees and leverage inter-generational relationships.
Implementing a Coaching and or Mentoring Programme
For those considering either developing or implementing a Coaching and or Mentoring Programme in their Organisation, Maria recommends doing the Mentoring and Coaching Programme Manager Bespoke Practitioner Course. The purpose of the programme is to equip Mentoring/Coaching Programme Managers with the knowledge, skills and behaviours to design, implement and evaluate mentoring programmes in a variety of organisational settings and contexts. In addition, the programme addresses the ongoing training and development of Programme Managers. The programme is accredited by the European Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC) and holds the Programme Manager Quality Award (PMQA) Bespoke at Practitioner Level 5. On completion of the course and related registration requirements and assessment, participants will be awarded the EMCC Individual Programme Manager Accreditation (IPMA).
“No one is going to say coaching or mentoring is a bad idea! Building a solid structure and foundation is fundamental before bringing it to next level. Paula King from Kingstown College has been absolutely instrumental in supporting and advising on various coaching and mentoring initiatives as well as being extremely service-minded and approachable.”
When choosing a training partner Maria’s advice is ‘make sure the programmes are accredited’, which they are with their training partner Kingstown College. Over the last six months, ESB in collaboration with Kingstown College developed an inhouse ‘Internationally Accredited Certificate in Coaching Program me’, scheduled to be launched in March 2021, QQI Level 6 Professional Coaching Practice and Ethics, EMCC Accreditation (Foundation Level). This internationally certified coach training fulfils the criteria to apply to be an internal coach with the ESB Coaching & Mentoring Academy. They have also redesigned, and remodeled their Mentoring Training Programme, based on feedback from the various training cohorts of mentors and mentees, and as a result introduced a Mentee Training Programme in November 2020.
There is widespread agreement that successful coaching and mentoring training programmes within organisations need to be strongly linked to the organisation’s overall strategy, and business drivers. Coaching and Mentoring training @ ESB is aligned to the ESB’s Brighter Future Strategy, to specific Business requirements and also to the accreditation standards, as defined by EMCC Global (European Mentoring & Coaching Council). In ESB their coaches and mentors have been adapting to challenging times. The coaching and mentoring environment has changed drastically since the recent Coronavirus Pandemic, so they have introduced ‘Virtual Coaching Training’, to support the transition from face to face coaching and mentoring into a virtual coaching space or mentoring space for the foreseeable future, coupled with the requirement for their coaches to support their managers; and mentors to support new graduates, new recruits to make a connection with the organisation in these unprecedented and adverse times.
The Future of Work
ESB has carried out a comprehensive capability review across the whole organization in 2020 which will be complete in Q1 of 2021. It looked at what are the future capabilities, what are the skills that may not be needed as much of in the future. Knowing what skills will be required less, is equally important as knowing the skills that will be required, in the context of redirecting talent and developing people in a particular direction.
For example, a hundred years ago when ESB was founded, the world of an engineer may not have changed very much in sixty years and now that world is changing every five years. There are very real technological changes in the organisation – the whole concept of self-serve and data analytics and digital transformation.
ESB looks at both the technical skills and the behavioural skills required for the future. Behavioural skills include strategic orientation, leadership and innovation and it is important that people have the discipline to avail of coaching as it is linked to developing behavioural skills and being customer centric as opposed to ‘managing’ customer relationships.
ESB has a Smart Working Manager senior position in the organization, to lead out on smart working and the life and work benefits for employees in the company. There are 3,500 people working remotely today which is half the employee population. The other half work in the power stations, on the networks etc.
Despite the awfulness of COVID-19, as a singular benefit, ESB has probably leapfrogged five years in terms of the culture of working smart and working remotely. It has matured in terms of understanding that productivity doesn’t relate to presenteeism, there is a value of trust and people respond positively to that. New recruits are appointed a mentor and the mentor acts like a buddy and helps to connect them with the organization, the network and the process of what to do what not to do. ESB were on that journey anyway and acquired more understanding that people work in different ways at different times.
Coaching and mentoring play a massive role in smart working because it allows the individual and the team to connect with the organisation. If there is one person who is not present face-to-face that creates a virtual team where that person is included. And we ensure that inclusiveness is very much part of what we do.
By Maria Travers and Tom McMahon
