Stressful, Overworked & Underpaid - Energy Specialist Octopus Energy Employee Review

Hi there, Thank you for taking the time to share your feedback. We genuinely appreciate all insights, as they are crucial for our continuous improvement as a business. I’m sorry to hear that your experience was stressful, and that you felt overworked and underpaid. We take your concerns about work-life balance, and the intensity of calls very seriously. I do want to clarify that while there may be occasional periods of increased activity, extensive overtime is not common, and typically happens no more than once a month. While our standard working hours are until 5:30 PM, we do value work-life balance and teams finish early at 4:00 PM every Friday, without any expectation for that time to be made up. The energy industry, and our business, is indeed growing in complexity every year and we are always looking for ways to enhance our training programs to ensure our team members feel well-equipped and supported in their roles. We continuously review our Skills Academy and Octo-Boosts to make sure they are fit for purpose, and this year launched three new core modules in Skills Academy in response to feedback from the team on what they wanted to know more about. Thank you for your observations about our management structure. While we do not operate with a traditional, centralised HR department, we want to assure you that our managers and team leaders are fully trained to ensure we are always doing what's right by our people. This decentralised approach allows for more personalised and direct support for our employees from someone they work alongside every single day and not a stranger they only see a couple times a year. Our people platform, HiBob, is also key in making sure everyone has access to their leave, and any documents like sick notes, which are all easily accessible, the same as any other business with a traditional HR team. I really appreciate your comments on what you found challenging about the structure, with team leaders also being a friend at times. We always prioritise internal progression, which means our team leaders are all former energy specialists and sometimes can be managing their old team; this is not easy and definitely comes with its challenges. Your feedback will be really helpful in looking at how we can improve this structure for both leaders and energy specialists. We are continuously working to improve our team's experience, from onboarding and training to workload management and overall well-being. Your advice, especially concerning training, management structures, and the importance of a sustainable workload for retention, is invaluable and we’ll be taking it into account as we grow. All the best, Inés Head of Operations