Why being community-focused is essential for survival

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Ellen Fraser, Baringa

At Baringa we believe that kindness pays, that by being honest, saying the hard truths and tackling the tough challenges head on, we build trust in our clients, and that creates better results. In short, we believe that by putting people first, we create impact that lasts. I'm here today with Andrew Reaney discussing the role of corporate kindness. Andrew, So could you tell us a little bit about the roles that you've had and why you're the right person to talk about kindness.

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Andrew Reaney, Centrica

I’ve had senior leadership roles, predominantly in Centrica, including British Gas, but also at Thames Water. So I've had the opportunity to lead change about the opportunity to lead big people organisations, and I've had the opportunity to actually lead initiatives which have leveraged the generosity of those organisations and the people that work for those organisations. And I guess I've also felt the impact of some of the change that has been effective as well.

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Ellen Fraser, Baringa

So Andrew, help me understand why is it so essential for businesses to be community focussed?

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Andrew Reaney, Centrica

Well, I think first of all it's how you define communities. So communities can be your physical community where you are located. It can be in the moments like with COVID where communities were created because of the situation that we were in, or it could be segments, it could be certain types of communities that you serve or that you're trying to attract or that influence how you perform as an organisation.

So communities are absolutely, massively important.

00:01:31:04 - 00:01:35:09
Ellen Fraser, Baringa

What happens if a business doesn't look after that community in that kindness?

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Andrew Reaney, Centrica

Well, you're kind of relying on the basic of the product. Is it cheaper? Does it offer a feature that nobody else offers when actually it is the emotion that customers buy? You know, I always think that customers will buy product, but they'll stick with a brand. So you've got to be absolutely focussed on making sure that your brand has resonance with the communities that you serve.

00:02:00:03 - 00:02:17:22
Ellen Fraser, Baringa

Engineers are such a pivotal part of the services business, particularly within British Gas, yet you've had to make some really, really difficult decisions on how you manage that labour force, what kind of pension provisions are in place, etc. and that's obviously caused some challenges. How have you navigated through that?

00:02:18:03 - 00:02:45:17
Andrew Reaney, Centrica

It was a difficult time for the engineers. It was a difficult time for the leadership at that time. All you can do is be really honest about why you had to do it. Be really honest about how you're going to move forward as a as a team, continue to move forward, provide opportunities. I mean, what's very, very positive now in British Gas, again, looking in from outside is they've taken apprentices on, which again is a fantastic positive thing to do. So there's a...

00:02:45:17 - 00:02:46:18
Ellen Fraser, Baringa

Rebuild activity.

00:02:46:23 - 00:02:56:23
Andrew Reaney, Centrica

Rebuild and and you're reinventing yourself all the time, and especially when you come out of a really tricky time. That was an awful time for the people in the organisation.

00:02:56:23 - 00:03:03:12
Ellen Fraser, Baringa

You've talked a little bit about COVID. What did that mean for engineers and how big was that impacts on the labour force?

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Andrew Reaney, Centrica

It's one of the things in 36 years I had at Centrica, British Gas, that I'm most proud of because the easy thing for the business to do was to batten down the hatches, furlough the engineers, focus on where they needed to go in and just focus on that and wait for this to pass by. But they didn't do that.

What they did is they said, How can we help? So coming back to kindness, what does doing the right thing look like for us? And it's one of the proudest things I was involved in. So we contacted the Trussell Trust, who are the biggest organiser of food banks in the UK. The food banks rely on a logistics model where people donate food at supermarkets.

That food is then taken to. The local food bank is then parcelled up and it's distributed. That disappeared overnight and we've been for weeks. We'd set up a national logistics model for them where we working with Trussell Trust in Tescos would collect food delivery to forge and furnish food banks across the UK. That's 4 million food parcels that we delivered food through COVID in that way.

But what was more impressive was you've got 50,000 engineers, volunteer the engineers that furloughed the business organised so that they could use their vans to support local charities. So they had the ability to put their skills to action and make a fundamental difference in their community effectively.

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Ellen Fraser, Baringa

You're saying British really rallied together. Positive impact on engineers, positive impact on communities.

00:04:42:01 - 00:04:51:20
Andrew Reaney, Centrica

Yeah, and and I even had a positive impact on customers as well because it was it was demonstrating what the brand stands for.

00:04:51:21 - 00:05:02:13
Ellen Fraser, Baringa
Now a sceptic could then say, yeah, that's all very interesting. It's a nice PR initiative when actually you're laying off staff and having some very tough conversations with staff as well. How do you view that?

00:05:02:22 - 00:05:15:13
Andrew Reaney, Centrica

Interesting. The only time we have a use in advertising was at the closure when we talked about how we operated pre-COVID and I think was a very positive statement to make.

00:05:15:20 - 00:05:21:24
Ellen Fraser, Baringa

What would you say to somebody who questions the value of corporate and community involvement?

00:05:22:07 - 00:05:48:00
Andrew Reaney, Centrica

Most people in organisations really genuinely want to do the right thing. It doesn't mean they don't want to be profitable. It doesn't mean they don't want to, you know, do right by their shareholders. But they do want to do it in the right way. And actually any organisation and corporates especially want to be sustainable. They want to be around for the long term better and for the long term means you've got to be embedded in the community, means you've got to do the right things.

00:05:48:03 - 00:05:52:17
Ellen Fraser, Baringa

On a very direct question, if I may. Does kindness pay?

00:05:52:22 - 00:06:18:12
Andrew Reaney, Centrica

I think not being kind can make a business fail. And yes, kindness absolutely pays. And going back to what I said before, if you believe that kindness is underpinned by doing things that matter to the communities and building trust in your organisation, that improves the retention of your employees and it gets customers once in your products more wanting to stay with you longer.

Yes, it pays.