People power

Jennifer Weber explains how Duke Energy’s employees are driving the energy giant through some dark times.

“The growing realization that a company culture can be a key differentiator gives HR an opportunity to really take the lead”
-Jennifer Weber

If the financial crisis and subsequent economic downturn have taught us anything, it is that no one is immune to the potential impacts. Even providers of seemingly essential commodities like power have felt the pinch as individuals and businesses attempt to cut costs by reducing the amount of energy they use. Less demand means less revenue and this has left companies like Duke Energy, which provides gas and electricity to some four million customers in the US, with some tough choices to make. For Jennifer Weber, Chief Human Resources Officer at the energy giant, balancing the needs of her people with those of the organization has been a major professional challenge since she came into her current role in 2008.

Weber is emphatic about one thing when it comes to being a successful HR professional: it's all about the business. "One of the things I always tell individuals that are interested in entertaining a career in HR is to make sure that you focus on being a good business person first and an HR expert second," she says. "If you're going to focus some developmental time, focus it on learning the business, understanding the business drivers, understanding how the company that you're supporting makes money, understanding the P&L and the balance sheet." It's a lesson that HR has been learning in recent years and something that needs to be taken on board if people specialists are going to retain their seat at the table.    

The trick is to develop the more conventional areas of HR expertise in support of the challenges faced by the organization. "HR facilitates a lot of decisions around things that can save the company money or cost the company a lot of money," Weber continues.  "It also controls things that impact the health and well-being of the organization just in terms of employee engagement, in terms of productivity and things like that. Understanding what the business drivers are, how those vary by area, is very important."

The growing realization that a company culture can be a key differentiator gives HR an opportunity to really take the lead. This is particularly true for Duke Energy, which has faced the challenge of building a coherent culture at a company largely formed from a series of mergers and acquisitions. Weber explains that having clearly defined ideas of what a culture should be and driving that through senior management has been key. In addition, an attitude she describes as 'take the hill' is essential in Duke's work to meet its goals, particularly in our current climate. "When there's something that we need to get done - like recently because of the economic downturn we've had a focus on cost management - this company has a way of knowing how to take the hill and how to go get it done," Weber says. "That's something that really needs to be leveraged in times like this."

Dark days

The impact of these tough times cannot be underestimated. Organizations of all types have had to weather huge challenges, with large-scale job losses becoming an increasingly common feature. In these situations, HR finds itself in an unenviable position, squeezed between its commitment to the preserving the bottom line and loyalty to its people. So what are the qualities that have allowed Weber and her team to work through this rocky period? "I think one of them is tenacity," she replies. "It's just really keeping the energy levels up and making sure of that. It's also about agility. It is unbelievable how unpredictable our environment is these days. Just when we think volumes in our business are starting to show some signs of recovery, we look out a few more months and we see visible signs that we are going to continue to be below where we've performed historically in terms of demand for our product."

Weber tells us of a heavy focus on cost-savings and acknowledges that this can have a big impact on company morale and energy levels. However, she is adamant that the company's management is leading from the front in maintaining an air of positivity. "We have a very dedicated, very high energy senior team," Weber explains. "I would say a lot of that comes not just from them.  I think everybody just is wired in a way that they've got a very diligent focus on the business and a lot of energy that they put into it.  But (CEO) Jim Rogers does as well. If you ever see him in action, he's got a lot of enthusiasm for this business.  He's been in the business and in the industry almost his entire career. 

"He is incredibly high energy, and that inevitably rubs off on all of us. We're all looking forward to a time when we've turned the corner in terms of our economy, and we actually do start seeing some recovery in terms of the demand for our product and services. But in the meantime, I think that this has gotten the adrenaline going in all of us to just not lose our focus. We've done it through we get together routinely, both in the office and collaborate on various solutions and challenges that we're facing."

But energy can only do so much. Cost saving on any meaningful scale inevitably results in headcount cuts, a traumatic reality both for the employees who leave and those that successfully dodge the bullet. Nonetheless, Weber insists that the kind of relationship that exists between Duke and its people goes at least some way towards diminishing the pain caused by reductions in staffing. "We do engagement surveys of our employees every year," she says. "The most recent survey that we did came just after we froze merit increases in 2009.  So in the summer of 2009 we do our engagement survey, and our engagement levels were higher than they've been for many, many years. I think that that is a reflection of employees' appreciation for having a job, because so many people around them - their neighbors, their family members - have been impacted by this recession and have lost jobs. We had a lot of write-in comments to that effect."

Skill sets

Even in challenging times, an organization cannot neglect preparing for its future. More than many other industries, power and energy is going through a technological revolution. It is essential that people on the front line keep pace with this development. "One of our first priorities is to figure out ways that we can retool our current employees to actually meet some of the needs that we're going to have in the future," Weber confirms, citing the developing smart grid as just one are that is going to require a whole new set of skills. "Our employees and our managers know that that's a fundamental part of our strategy, and I think people appreciate that. That being said, we do try to bring in people from the outside where we have strategic needs so that we're always getting an influx of new talent and new ways of thinking and doing things."

Continuous learning is another way that Duke ensures its workforce is fit for the future, and Weber believes it is a key factor in building an organization that is stronger in every respect. "You build a company that thinks in terms of innovation and comes up with innovative ideas," she says. "You build a culture of diversity and inclusion. I think all of those kinds of things are an outgrowth of being a learning environment. We certainly make investments, like a number of companies do, in a learning and development curriculum for our employees."

This learning environment applies to people at all levels in the organization, ensuring that development goes on from top to bottom. "We have things that are very targeted to new supervisors and managers in terms of helping develop their skills," says Weber. "We have things targeted at mid-level managers that we designate and determine are high potential; we send them to something we call a strategic leadership program at UNC, which is very, very customized to Duke Energy.  And our executives are actively engaged in partnering with the professor that's delivering the curriculum to make sure that it's Duke Energy-specific."

Weber also tells us about something called the CEO Challenge. High potential employees are presented with real world problems facing the business and asked to work on solutions over the course of several months, ultimately presenting their ideas to senior leadership. Another key spoke is the continuous rotation of talent. "This is actually a philosophy of Jim Rogers," Weber explains. "Just when somebody's starting to feel comfortable in their role, he believes it's the time to move them.  I agree with that philosophy, and many of us do and have embraced that. So in multiple levels of leadership you'll find that we rotate people around pretty routinely so that we make sure that they're constantly stretching, challenging themselves, and growing professionally."

Making progress

A critical component of the HR function at Duke Energy is proactive career progression and succession planning. "We have various job categories, and we routinely track," says Weber. "We look at these numbers and ask ourselves how we are doing. Every year we look at movement and progression, we look at diversity metrics and we look at readiness. We go through a fairly time-intensive succession planning process with the company every year." Weber explains that close attention is paid to the talent pipeline, making sure that there is capacity to replace any people who may leave unexpectedly. "If somebody were to win the lottery or there was someone that we tapped on the shoulder and wanted to move to a new role, we need to know how ready are we behind them to backfill the skills and leadership that they bring into those roles," Weber says. "So we look at those kinds of metrics and see how we're doing, and we actually identify areas of weakness."

Plans are put together to work out how to accelerate development of key individuals so that they are ready to fill new roles in the future, and engagement is central to this process. "We look at engagement," continues Weber. "We can cut that every way under the sun. If there are areas where we see that there are some employee engagement challenges or morale issues, HR actually works in support of the area to actually put some action plans in place to improve or turn things around in those areas. 

"We look at retention across areas, which we have had historically high retention in our industry and with our company.  Those are some of the things that we look at and we track and monitor. The board is increasingly interested in this, so every December Jim Rogers and I are in front of the board talking to them about how we're doing on all these metrics."

Ultimately though, HR is the business of people. Metrics and data are vital in their own way, but the human connection at the heart of the function cannot be ignored. "I think we do a very good job of that," Weber states. "I don't think we would be viewed as trusted advisors to our businesses if we weren't flexible enough to not be so wedded to the metrics that we can't manage and accommodate the subjective judgments related to people and their readiness and their growth and their development. By and large, most of the decisions of how to move people, what their next growth opportunity is, who's going to take on what responsibilities, are largely subjective in nature. 

"We talk about their competencies. We talk about their track record and performance.  But we also talk about some of the softer intangibles that fit in chemistry with the team, their ability to develop others and their managerial effectiveness. We address all those things. This is now my second year of going through this process with the company. I actually find it very refreshing. At least at the senior table I find that people challenge each other quite a bit."

So does Weber have any parting words of advice for those seeking to build a successful career, be it in HR or in another area of business? "Always seek out opportunities to challenge yourself," she replies. "That allows you to really round out your professional growth so much.  At the point in which you feel like you've got it down, you know your job, when you're feeling really competent, take yourself out of your comfort zone and go learn something new."  In a business environment as unpredictable as today's, it's a sentiment that makes a great deal of sense.

---

Out in front

Weber explains the necessity of developing leaders.

I believe that there are attributes of leadership that can certainly be taught. I absolutely believe that, and we actually structure our curriculum around leadership competencies. In our selection process we consider those competencies when we hire and when we move somebody into a key role.  We look at those and we say, 'Is this individual either already exhibiting these attributes, or do we believe that they actually have the potential to learn them?' 

So we do invest time and resources in the teaching part of leadership, and I do believe that many aspects of leadership can be learned. I do think among some leaders there are certain things that come naturally, so you don't have to invest as much time and attention.  But nobody's perfect, and everybody can continue to improve in their capabilities and their leadership style.  In these times, because they're so unpredictable and so unprecedented, I think it has become a time that has really challenged leadership.

The people who it's come naturally to or who have invested in their own self-development and developing their leadership skills, are probably faring better across many companies than those that haven't made that investment or haven't been mindful of it.

---

Duke Energy: quick facts

18,680 employees

$57 billion in assets

35,000 megawatts of owned capacity

50,000 square miles of service territory

4.5 million customers