The Energy Collective is a global retail energy and technology business that sells electricity and broadband using proprietary data analysis technology. This helps keep its prices low and has established the company as a major challenger to the big utility companies. After growing rapidly across four sites in Australia, New Zealand, and India, and creating a more complex organizational structure, The Energy Collective still managed everything to do with its people with spreadsheets and emails. They wanted to find an HR platform to help them nurture their caring and fun corporate culture across all of their sites and gain value from their employee data. Bob was chosen over its competitors for its social media style interface and capability as a system of engagement for their global employees. They couldn’t be happier.
Bringing entities together around the world
The Energy Collective was concerned that its rapid growth would have a negative impact on the awesome culture they’d worked so hard to build. They had hired 50 new staff in just one month and scaled from a New Zealand start-up to a multi-national business. There are also several different business entities under The Energy Collective parent company, and they wanted to ensure that these entities and the people who worked for them didn’t grow apart with the expansion. The Energy Collective wanted to find an HRIS to help them maintain their warm company culture across sites and become a single source of truth for all of their data. They also wanted to provide a consistent and engaging digital experience to every team member while incorporating the different regulations and business structures in their sites in New Zealand, Australia, and India.
The social-media style interface was a big part of why The Energy Collective chose Bob. This gelled with the culture of fun the company has worked hard to build. The Energy Collective has also been focusing on employee recognition. Bob’s Shoutouts and Kudos features have helped by providing a way for staff who work together but are based in different countries to celebrate their peers’ achievements and milestones publicly. Staff in Australia can now easily recognize people in India and vice versa. The Energy Collective’s executives also use Kudos at the end of each quarter as a basis for allocating internal awards.
Bob has helped The Energy Collective create a genuine sense of connection among their people in different hemispheres, increasing employee engagement company-wide. No matter where employees are physically located, or which entity they work for, they can communicate and congratulate each other, which maintains the sense of community that the company had as a start-up. They believe that the Kudos feature has been instrumental in the recent increase in their eNPS score—used to measure employee satisfaction and loyalty—from 34 to 45 in just a few months. They’ve also seen an increase in engagement from 76 percent to 82 percent in the same time frame.
As part of maintaining a warm and safe culture, The Energy Collective also uses Bob’s Your Voice as a way for employees to speak up about important issues anonymously. This feature plays an important role in strengthening employee engagement and provides a safety net for employees to report personal concerns or those relating to health and safety, bullying, harassment, and so on. Your Voice also satisfies the whistleblower guidelines requested by The Energy Collective’s legal team. It provides peace of mind for everyone at the business who knows they have an easy, safe, and anonymous way to voice concerns if necessary.
Analyzing important data at the touch of a button
The Energy Collective needed their HRIS to provide real-time data on their workforce. Before Bob, the company used spreadsheets and a third-party payroll service to store all of their information. Basic questions like how many employees the business had at any given time or who was on what contract took hours to answer. This meant senior leaders at the business didn’t have real-time access to the data they needed to make big decisions. Bob makes this information and much more—such as the current gender pay gap—available at the touch of a button. The ability to display this data in easily understood visual representations has saved hours for the people team.
Bob’s Compensation Management module has also changed the way The Energy Collective assesses compensation. It used to be run entirely on spreadsheets through the finance department and was a really messy and admin-intensive process. Now, using Bob, every manager has their own allocation of funding for their team. This transparency has increased satisfaction with compensation management and empowered The Energy Collective’s teams to set their own goals and work towards them together.
Main takeaways
- Bob has replaced spreadsheets and emails as a single source of truth for The Energy Collective’s employees.
- The Energy Collective uses Bob’s Shoutouts and Kudos to strengthen culture and collaboration among their people across Australia, New Zealand, and India.
- Bob’s People Analytics makes it easy to pull and analyze important data such as the gender pay gap or average salary.
- Bob’s Your Voice feature provides a safe and anonymous way for employees to come forward about any issues they may experience.
