12 | Community engagement Aurora Energy employs 160 staff across its three offices. T T from page 10 Aurora Energy REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT nity because their support helped make this unique project successful. Winning the awards was affirmation that Aurora Energy is doing the right thing, particularly with community engagement.” Since completing the project it has been complemented with tree planting on the island where the towers were removed, with team members joining the local community to plant natives donated by Aurora Energy. “It has been a great project involving a lot people across the community. I wish every project we did could be like that.” Aurora Energy’s community engagement with the Dunedin Harbour Crossing upgrade project showcases the company’s focus on being a customer/community focused provider of energy, with communication at its heart. Richard makes the point that customers want reliable power, but they also they want information when the power is going to go out, or if it goes out unexpectedly, they want to know why and when it will come back on. “The community wants to know that we’re acting in their long term interest, that there is oversight on what they are paying for their power and that we are operating efficiently. So our engagement with the community is ensuring that we keep the power on and that we communicate.” Attending community events such as A&P shows, being present on the ground before, during and after a project, writing directly to communities, people and businesses, and a new, more informative website about to be launched are all ways in which the Aurora Energy team engages and communicates with communities. “People have an expectation that power should be available one hundred percent of the time, but it can’t be. So the more we communicate the better.” Aurora Energy employs 160 staff across its three offices; Dunedin, a satellite office in Cromwell and a small Christchurch office established to assist with recruitment of staff with specialist skills. The diversity of roles includes electrical engineers, project managers, customer service staff, IT, finance, operations, human resources and people, health, safety and wellbeing specialists, and more recently sustainability and environmental staff. As Richard observes, like most businesses Aurora Energy needs to retain its people and attract new people into the business. “We have a graduate programme which runs each year, enabling graduates to move around the various areas of the business so that they can see what we are about. We place a lot of emphasis on supporting the development of our staff. We have an inhouse leadership programme which commenced late last year. We do staff surveys throughout the year to understand what our staff’s concerns might be, which we then aim to address. As a result of that we have introduced flexible working and we enable our people to work out of any of our offices. The younger generation of staff coming through want to know what we’re doing around diversity and inclusiveness, and our environmental and governance responsibilities. We take those very seriously.” AVON INDUSTRIES LTD 31 Pipiwai Road, Kamo PO Box 27, Whangarei New Zealand Ph: 64 9 435 1033 Fax: 64 9 435 2565 Email: avonind@callplus.net.nz www.avonindustries.co.nz Proud to support Aurora Energy • Production Engineering • Profile Cutting • Abrasive Blasting & Painting • Hot Dip Galvanising Christchurch Branch Ph: 03 323 4433 Cromwell/Central Branch Ph: 027 665 8956 Please contact us for a quote or a discussion to see how we can help your specific inquiry. • Water, Wastewater, and Stormwater • Deep Drainage and Dewatering • Site Works and Subdivisions • Civil Utilities including Power Reticulation, Poles, Gas, and Fibre • Structural (Pads, Retaining Walls, Structural Foundations for poles) • Traffic Management (Design and Implementation) • Trenchless Services • Hydro Excavation • CCTV Specialities include: for our future Building networks For all your electrical contracting and servicing requirements: 0800 768 9300 | electronet.co.nz Central Otago West Coast Tasman Taranaki Proud to Partner with Aurora Energy
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NDc2Mzg=