It’s not just about a day, it’s about every day

Today I was fortunate enough to host Dr Lisa O’Brien, CEO of ‘The Smith Family’, at AGL for a talk about balance in the workplace and the work The Smith Family does in the community.

The Smith Family is an independent charity with a mission to support disadvantaged young Australians to get the most out of their education and is one of AGL’s long-standing community partners. Their work provides disadvantaged young people with the resources they need to reach their full potential. This work extends beyond the day-to-day – it has the potential to have a lasting impact, breaking the cycle of disadvantage for the people they help, and the generations that follow them.

It’s a perfect example of how tackling the big issues needs to be addressed with both a short and long-term view, and to do this we need to deal with the symptoms and the root cause.

As individuals, we all have a role to play in addressing the socio-economic and discriminatory barriers present in our community, but I believe that as an Australian essential service provider, AGL has a particular role to play in responding to disadvantage. This needs to be ingrained in our business and become a part of what we all do in our jobs every day.

Like The Smith Family, AGL needs to look at what we can do both today and in the long-term, when it comes to addressing inequality, hardship and supporting our vulnerable customers.

On equality

When it comes to addressing gender equality it’s great to have specific moments like International Women’s Day to reflect on our progress, but embracing diversity and inclusion is essential every day. We know that greater diversity – not just in terms of gender, but also across culture and experience – inspires better conversation, a broader range of perspectives, greater innovation, and better business outcomes. It’s also the right thing to do.

AGL’s Equality Network has a mission to advocate for gender equality, helping to connect and empower women to achieve their goals.

AGL also has a long-term commitment to increasing the number of women in our senior leadership pipeline to 50% by 30 June 2022.

AGL also has leading workplace flexibility and leave arrangements which are offered to all our eligible employees – men and women. We believe that making flexibility part of our culture for all of our people will help us to build gender balance and equality in the longer term.

On affordability and supporting vulnerable customers

When it comes to affordability, we’re not just addressing the ‘now’ in terms of prices and hardship assistance, we’re also by taking a longer-term view by increasing supply.

Last year we introduced new measures to identify and support hardship customers. In our FY18 financial results, we also announced $50 million of debt relief for hardship customers, a $6 million Energy Literacy fund to support and empower vulnerable customers and a $2 million program to provide dedicated assistance for small businesses.

We have hardship policies across NSW, Qld, SA and Vic and we offer customers who are doing it tough a range of support, including our Here to Help tool and a range of Easy Ways to Pay options.

The hardship program also offers access to financial counsellors, guaranteed discounts, payment plans, placing bill payments missed on hold where appropriate, energy reviews, audits and tips, and protection from disconnection.

We’re also rolling out new measures to identify and support customers at risk of hardship early so we can help stop things getting harder to manage, and we have an integrated domestic violence policy in place to actively support those impacted by family and domestic violence.

Our Family and Domestic Violence Support Policy provides AGL people with up to 10 days paid Domestic Violence Leave along with flexible work arrangements and access to counselling services through our Employee Assistance Program. All of our people are also encouraged to attend Family and Domestic Violence Training to build awareness about the impact, and to help employees know how to recognise the signs of someone who may need support, and how to confidently respond in a caring and useful way. 

Importantly, our Family and Domestic Violence Support Policy also extends to customers. Our contact centre employees receive specialised training on how to assist customers experiencing family violence, both in terms of account security and referral to external assistance services, and we provide flexible payment arrangements and debt relief on a case-by-case basis.

There is still more to do         

These are big issues, and as a community we have a long-way to go to address them. From my perspective, simply saying ‘we care’ is not enough. Our commitment to getting this right, has to go beyond our internal policies, to how we act in our communities and with our customers.

I’m not under any illusion that we have got this right yet but I’m proud of how our people are embracing the need to ingrain caring for our community and for each other in our culture, so it is a part of what we all do at AGL.