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Utilities: water, electricity, gas and waste
Insync is the only staff, customer, stakeholder and board research company that specialises in utilities.
We are passionate about helping utility corporations engage with all their stakeholder groups to increase performance. We do this through enduring partnerships, high quality work, thought leadership and industry knowledge.
It is easy to say that all organisations have the same issues; and to an extent that’s true. However, most utilities share a number of characteristics that make them different:
- Natural monopolies
- Aging workforce
- Very high tenure and low attrition
- Highly unionised
- Highly regulated
- Often political
- Costs dominated by WACC and RAB more than OpEx
- Balancing a social obligation with commercial imperatives
We appreciate how these differences make utilities uniquely challenging to manage.
For many years we have helped utility corporations engage with customers, stakeholders and staff with services including:
- staff engagement surveys
- customer perceptions surveys
- stakeholder interviews and advisory
- board effectiveness surveys
- deliberative techniques for community engagement and consultation
- safety culture surveys
- strategic thinking about bringing tariff structures into line with community expectations
- assessments of uptake rates on new products
- choice modelling and willingness to pay studies
Key issues in the sector
Community and consumer engagement: Insync’s certified IAP2 practitioners run deliberative forums and other participatory techniques to help regulated corporations confirm their social licence to operate.
Benchmarking: quality controlled fieldwork methodologies allow corporations and regulators to compare customer outcomes across a region, a jurisdiction or a country.
Stakeholder universe: sending a respectful and knowledgeable researcher to find out what your stakeholders really think of you pays dividends beyond the balance sheet
Reviews of processes and committees: reviewing documentation, composition, behaviours and outcomes of high profile/impact strategic advisory committees gives access to best available practice
Research design consultancy: advisory related to the design and implementation of multi year programs of work which materially change internal culture, customer outcomes and bottom line performance.
Leadership advisory: staff and 360 degree surveys and fearless advice lead to outstanding organisational culture and engagement
Annual studies: regular and repeatable studies that yield insight and provide a high degree of certainty about year on year changes.
Community insight: roads, WWTPs, pipelines and the like require community engagement and support to be implemented on time and on budget.
