The dedication of our more than 2,400 employees is the reason we can continue to deliver the safe and reliable energy our customers need every day. Knowing the incredible value they bring to our business, we understand how vital it is for us to invest in their success – personally and professionally. We’re committed to providing a workplace that offers career advancement, inclusivity and opportunities to give back to our communities. To ensure the sustainability of our organization, we need to be a great employer that attracts a diversity of talent across every role in the company to meet the needs of today’s and tomorrow’s customers.
Recognizing the dedication of our employees
We always look for ways to celebrate our employees and every year we highlight those who have shown continued hard work and dedication in their careers within our organization.
Congratulations to this great group of employees who are showing their excitement for reaching their well-deserved career milestones.
We’re proud to celebrate these achievements with our employees and we will continue to invest in their growth and development so they can reach their next career milestone.
Delivering safe and reliable energy to our customers 24/7 means some of our employees work after hours and on weekends. To better support these employees, our customer service team launched a Work at Home pilot to provide them with more flexible working conditions and evaluate if this approach could be expanded to help other customer service team members. The results of this pilot will be evaluated later in 2020 and could provide our customer contact centres with a variety of new staffing options that could improve job satisfaction, attract new talent and provide new options for work spaces.
Every year we hold our annual Customer Service Awards to recognize our dedicated employees who work each and every day to help our customers across the province.
Recognizing the dedication of our employees goes beyond the workplace as every year we award scholarships to support their families’ education. In 2019, a second year student in Electrical Engineering Technology was the recipient of the $5,000 Michael Mulcahy Legacy Scholarship and eight $1,500 scholarships were awarded to children of our employees continuing their post-secondary education.
Inclusiveness and diversity in our business
FortisBC, along with the whole Fortis family, is committed to fostering an inclusive and diverse working environment for our employees where all ideas are valued, respected and welcomed. By bringing together individuals from throughout the company of different ages, backgrounds and cultures, we are able to unlock solutions by looking at our challenges from new perspectives. A diversity of opinions and thoughts lead to better outcomes and we strive to provide opportunities for our employees to contribute.
One initiative that brings individuals from across our organization together is our Innovation Ambassadors Council. Building this council involved recruiting 40 employees of different ages, backgrounds and positions to advance the innovative ideas and projects brought forward by fellow employees.
Our employees are testing out new virtual reality technologies that will help keep employees safe and be used for future infrastructure projects.
In 2019, this council took on a pilot project that used augmented and virtual reality technologies to improve training. One of our electrical substations in Salmo needed to be rebuilt and virtual reality was used to build a three-dimensional digital model of what the substation would look like when built. It showed employees realistic situations they may encounter without putting them at risk. Having employees at the centre of driving innovation has led to practical ways to use cutting-edge technology and more opportunities for employee development.
Our employees are leading the way
Providing continual challenges and opportunities to excel helps us build the next generation of leaders at FortisBC. Our annual Leadership Action Learning Forum brings together managers from across the company to address some of the major challenges we face, learn from each other and develop new ideas from different perspectives. In 2019, we had 16 FortisBC employees complete the program, present new solutions to some of our biggest challenges to our leadership team and develop great new relationships within the company.
Employees giving back
While our employees are dedicated to their jobs, they are just as dedicated to the communities where they live and work. The Warm Hearts Charitable Foundation was founded by employees and continues to be funded and managed through the generosity of our current employees. In 2019, we celebrated the 25th anniversary of this foundation and more than $1 million donated to help many communities across the province. Warm Hearts donated $54,000 in 2019, including a $10,000 donation to the Royal Columbian Hospital Foundation to help fund new intra-aortic balloon pumps. These pumps are used daily in cardiac labs and surgery intensive care units to provide life-saving assistance to patients who experience severe heart attacks. Providing needed replacements for this critical equipment will help patients for years to come and our employees are proud to support life-saving care in the Lower Mainland.
Three members of the Warm Hearts Foundation, Tanja Percival, vice chair (left), Lorel Cop, treasurer (middle left) and Pauline Hum, secretary (right), stand with Catherine Cornish, associate director, major and legacy giving at the Royal Columbian Hospital Foundation (middle right), to give this generous donation to the hospital on behalf of FortisBC employees.
With help from the Warm Hearts Foundation and the MoveUp and IBEW unions, our employees were the driving force behind our annual fundraising campaign helping United Way, a large non-profit organization helping thousands of communities across Canada.
As a way to raise money for the United Way campaign, our executive leadership team is put in jail at our Surrey office. To post their bail, employees make donations to the campaign, and they almost always raise enough money to set everyone free.
As we continue to evolve our safety practices with the help of our employees, we look to learn and make the necessary adjustments. To help adopt principles consistent with this mindset, our health and safety team spearheaded the implementation of a learning and design strategic safety team. This team examines safety incidents and near misses to help us better understand how to make our workplace safer and our safety system more robust to better prevent future incidents. We also invested in hazard identification and risk assessment training for our employees and supervisors. Learning about potential hazards and the risks involved is key to continually improving our safety practices as an organization.
With employees working in the field, in offices and travelling across the province, it’s critical that all of our employees go home safe at the end of each day. Every May, we celebrate North American Operational Safety and Health week showing our employees the different ways to stay safe and healthy at work. In 2019, we held 19 events throughout the province promoting ways our employees can stay safe at work, from a wellness fair to a backup rodeo where employees showcased their excellent reverse stall parking skills as part of our first move forward policy that helps keep drivers and pedestrians safe.
Employees celebrating diversity
With our natural gas and electricity infrastructure crossing more than 150 traditional territories, we encourage our employees to learn about the ways we’re building relationships with Indigenous communities because we know how important it is for them to understand the significance of Indigenous histories and cultures so they can apply this knowledge in their jobs.
In June 2019, we celebrated National Indigenous Day with eight events at our offices across the province and had more than 500 employees join these celebrations. We respectfully hosted members of Indigenous communities allowing for the opportunity to come together and show that we are inclusive of people who bring and share diverse thoughts and perspectives. This helps our employees understand the histories of Indigenous Peoples so we can continue to build sustainable, respectful relationships with Indigenous communities.