Trusted and respected, working at the leading edge of regulation
As the economic regulator of the water sector in England and Wales, we have an ambitious strategy and vision for the sector.
We strive to be a trusted and respected regulator working at the leading edge of regulation. To achieve this we need to enable our people to be at their best with the right support, learning, culture and environment to achieve this.
We have been on a journey of transformation to create a flexible and agile organisation that is able to respond the challenges of regulating the sector.
Improving planning and management information
Over the last year we have significantly improved our management information and systems for procurement, planning, budgeting and forecasting to support better decision making and value for money.
We also agreed a five-year financial strategy, based on the evidence we gave the UK Government during the 2015 Comprehensive Spending Review. The Spending Review settlement gave us, for the first time, a clear medium-term budget and greater flexibility to meet the major contingencies we face. This will significantly help our financial planning and value for money.
Developing and recruiting the skills we need
To deliver our strategy, we must have the right people, with the right skills, at the right time. This means:
· identifying the skills we need and when we need them;
· attracting people to work for us; and
· retaining and developing our people.
Last year we developed our strategic workforce model and plan to give us the management information we need to make sure we have the right size, shape, and skills at the right time to deliver our strategy. As part of our approach, we:
· successfully ran an Apprentice, Graduate and Associate Director scheme to help grow skills within the organisation;
· successfully appointed 62 people with a mix of skills and professions and from a wide range of backgrounds, including economists, legal professionals, communicators, project managers, accountants and a range of operational and business skills;
· developed a new recruitment strategy to attract prospective employees;
· began a major project to look at alternative, collaborative delivery models; and
· developed a new learning and development package to attract new employees and develop our staff – from formal training to mentoring and sharing skills through communities of interest.
Making Ofwat a great place to work
To deliver our strategy we need our people. And we need our people to be happy with Ofwat as their place of work. We carry out an annual in-depth survey ('Heartbeat') – and quarterly checks ('Pulse surveys') – to measure our people’s mood and to gather specific feedback on areas of life at Ofwat which people do or do not like. We also refreshed our corporate values in an exercise engaging all of our people.
Our annual people survey produced significantly improved results last year.
· 85% of people thought our new ICT enabled new ways of working – and 78% thought our refurbished Birmingham accommodation did too, despite its smaller footprint;
· 80% of people reported that they enjoy their jobs;
· our 2015 Civil Service engagement index − which gauges how much employees like their workplace, based on a range of factors – was 63%, compared to an average for the Civil Service of 58%;
· 70% of our people said they have confidence in the leadership of Ofwat – compared to just 31% in 2013; and
· 57% of people thought that we put our values at the forefront of our work – compared to 32% in 2014.
Improving delivery
We have made substantial progress in how we plan and deliver our strategy to support our vision: to make Ofwat a trusted and respected regulator, working at the leading edge, challenging ourselves and others to build trust in water. This included:
· implementing and embedding our new governance framework and programme management toolkit, which helped us successfully introduce more effective programme working;
· refreshing our finance system, implementing a new time recording system that supports full programme budgeting;
· improving our information asset management, business continuity and disaster recovery processes;
· beginning a significant reconfiguration of our ICT infrastructure by moving to the cloud;
· enhancing our case management system by introducing an information request management system;
· enabling our people to work in new, more agile and collaborative ways by:
· developing a modern, vibrant and flexible office space;
· significantly improving our ICT infrastructure; and
· launching a new corporate website to enable our people to engage both internally and externally.
Collaborating with other regulators to deliver benefits
We can develop more efficient and effective regulation by learning from other sectors and working closely with other regulators. This is why we are an active member of the UK Regulators Network (UKRN). UKRN members are delivering a range of projects aimed at:
· developing coherent and consistent economic regulation across sectors;
· understanding cross-sector issues related to the affordability of services;
· empowering customers to engage effectively in markets;
· maintaining a positive environment for efficient investment in the UK's infrastructure;
· delivering efficient regulation;
· making markets work better to improve outcomes for customers; and
· achieving better understanding of the effectiveness of economic regulation.
But we need to keep improving
We operate in a fast paced environment where external factors may influence how we regulate. Standing still isn't an option for Ofwat, we need to be continuously looking for improvements in the services that we deliver to ensure we are as efficient and effective as we can be.
That is why we will be:
· making sure we have the right people, with the right skills at the right time who are supported by the right culture and infrastructure to do their jobs to the best of their ability;
· developing our model for our corporate enabling functions to provide the resilient support we need to work;
· maintaining a strong culture of compliance and assurance, while encouraging innovation in the way we do things;
· improving our strategic workforce planning and the supporting mechanisms to enable us to better forecast the skills, capacity and experience we need to respond to our changing environment with ease;
· keeping our people motivated and engaged
· retain our people as they have clear career progression and rewards, we have a learning culture and growth mindset that encourages innovation
· successfully growing skills within the organisation and seeking and growing skills through our networks with other organisations.
How you can get the latest information
You can get the latest information on our performance in our annual report and accounts.
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