Reminding leaders that “We’re All Citizens,” President and CEO Jeffrey Harrison spoke about company culture at the fourth annual State of the Trust event on October 3. Below are highlights of the speech.
Organizational Achievements
- Citizens has exceeded the primary commitments we made to the community during the acquisition in 2011 because of the significant progress made toward creating a unified culture in pursuit of a common set of goals.
- We have made more than $1.6 billion of investments that have improved the reliability and integrity of our utility systems while benefiting the environment.
- We have enhanced service delivery with innovative online solutions that are allowing customers to manager their accounts on their terms rather than ours.
- We have deepened our commitment to community service through volunteerism and targeted philanthropy.
- We have strengthened our relationships with all Trust stakeholders including regulators, customers, and the community.
- While we continue to make great progress toward our goals, we are still on the journey to creating One Company, One Culture in which we can truly say, “We’re All Citizens.”
Shared Passion
- Our culture and shared passion are inspired by our vision to serve our customers and communities with unparalleled excellence and integrity.
- Our culture is influenced by our mission to provide safe, reliable services while maintaining the lowest possible rates and sound financial management, as we build and renew our businesses.
- Our five core values of Safety, Teamwork, Quality, Diversity, and Integrity are the guiding principles of our culture.
Benefits of a Unified Culture
- Employees repeatedly work together with a shared passion, demonstrating One Company, One Culture.
- There are many benefits to a unified culture:
- Produces better decisions and better overall performance
- Drives enhanced customer satisfaction and efficiency
- Leads to more satisfied and engaged employees and lower employee turnover
Cultural Strengths
- At Citizens, we are creating a unified culture by ensuring our employees understand and embrace our Mission, Vision, and Values through continual training and daily emphasis by leaders.
- Our employees demonstrate daily commitment to safe, reliable and effective operations.
- Our employees’ commitment to customer service is the foundation of our culture and the central reason the Public Trust was created and has endured for 132 years.
- Likewise, our employees are committed to community service. They care deeply about their community and work each day to make Indianapolis a better place to live.
Cultural Challenges
- Our employees are spread across 18 work locations stretching across Central Indiana. We must lead our employees and departments away from operating silos and toward decisions focused on the good of the entire Trust.
- Our larger, more complex organization makes it more difficult to communicate, and effective communication is vital to developing and maintaining a unified culture.
- Our changing workforce also presents a number of challenges to developing and maintaining a unified culture. About 30 percent of our workforce is eligible to retire over the next five years. This pending loss of institutional knowledge and experience presents an enormous challenge. Also, we must be aware of, and manage, generational differences to achieve and sustain a unified culture.
Completing Our Cultural Journey
- Creating a unified culture begins with ensuring all our goals and decisions are driven by our Mission, Vision and Values.
- We must consider our Mission, Vision and Values in the Performance Plan and Review process.
- A unified culture is achieved and sustained by leaders and employees who model our five core values in their daily behavior and decisions.
- Open and honest communication is vital to creating and sustaining a unified culture. We must create opportunities for dialogue and practice active listening rather than just communicating top-down.
- While team decision making is preferred, we cannot let bureaucracy slow down problem solving that in some cases could be achieved by an individual or small group of employees.
- Focusing on employee development, learning and knowledge management are keys to sustaining our unified culture.
Culture Drives Our Strategy
- We are working to improve customer satisfaction by enhancing our customer-first culture and providing customers with choices for additional service offerings. We are addressing affordability by expanding our programs to assist low-income customers.
- We are becoming an employer of choice in the state of Indiana by promoting a culture and work experience that retains and attracts talent. We are sustaining our workforce by developing the employee skills and competencies necessary to meet the needs of the Trust.
- We are continually improving the financial stability of each business unit by reducing levels of debt and are increasingly funding annual capital expenditures with net revenues. We are sustaining financial integrity and ensuring the affordability of our services by enhancing our cost-conscious culture.
- We are sustaining performance excellence by utilizing innovative solutions to enhance service and infrastructure delivery. At the same time, we are eliminating waste in work, policies and procedures.
We’re All Citizens
- Thank you for your daily efforts toward achieving our Strategic Goals.
- We will continue to face challenges, such as utility industry consolidation and restrictions on the use of natural gas in some parts of the country by those wanting to intensify efforts to address climate change.
- As we confront immediate and long-term challenges, we must refocus on the fundamentals for creating One Company, One Culture.
