Energy Charter signatories are at different stages of maturity in relation to the Energy Charter Principles, a Maturity Model has been designed to help signatories self-assess their current maturity and drive better customer outcomes.
“The Maturity Model is an innovative framework based around the Energy Charter principles that enables signatories to understand the status of current capability and set a direction for progress. It’s not about ticking boxes but focuses on the long term and what we need to do to build pathways and capability to deliver better outcomes for customers. The model is designed to help us have a conversation and an honest assessment of self. Signatories can apply it in their own way and we will continue to tweak and add comparable measures and metrics over time.” – Nicky Burns, General Manager Risk, Compliance & Insurance, APA Group
Nicky Burns, General Manager Risk, Compliance & Insurance at APA Group was instrumental in the co-design and development of the Energy Charter Maturity Model earlier this year. Nicky explained that by understanding that each signatory has different capabilities and priorities she applied her experience of risk maturity models to create articulated criterion aligned to the Energy Charter principles. This enabled a constructive comparison of capability and performance over time by individual businesses.
“It’s not a compliance tool, but a resource to encourage continuous development over time within a business to better customer outcomes” Nicky said.
The Maturity Model outlines five classifications of maturity from elementary, emerging, evolved, empowered to exceeding. Elementary is where there’s no formal approach to the majority of the Principles in Action under the Energy Charter Principle. Exceeding is achieving optimal customer outcomes through greater capabilities. Underlying design principles such as ‘insightful, collaborative and flexible’ also helped to guide the development of the Maturity Model.
Nicky explained that a Maturity Model designed in this way has never been done before in Australia. In line with the Energy Charter’s values of “be open, learn and improve” the Maturity Model is innovative, allowing signatories across the energy industry to lift their own capability aligned to a standard model.
This year Energy Charter signatories have used the Maturity Model through their disclosure process to genuinely self-assess their current performance and maturity against delivering for customers. It has helped them to articulate where they intend to progress to, over what period and how to achieve it.
Moving forward, the focus will be on leveraging the Maturity Model for critical conversations within signatories and across the supply chain to focus on authenticity and collectively driving better outcomes for customers and communities to “deliver energy for a better Australia”.
Download your copy of the Energy Charter Maturity Model.
