At the start of lockdown earlier this year, we made the decision to very quickly move all of our staff to working from home. This was a challenge in itself due to the increased requirement for technology and the obvious implications of running a customer service operation remotely. All of our staff had their own personal situations that had to be taken into account, such as needing to look after children or elderly relatives or shielding. As a company, Gazprom Energy has been fully supportive of the need to have more flexibility in the general working day, allowing our staff the ability to schedule their working day around their home situations. One of the positive side effects of this is that sick days on our Operations team reduced to nearly zero during lockdown.
Our UK based operations have been very strong, and we have not had to furlough any staff, in fact we have actually employed new people in the team during lockdown. Our customer service team have been focused wholly on our existing customer base, ensuring that all queries have been answered quickly. Our customer complaints have gone down by 50% because we are talking to our customers on a more regular and proactive basis.
In order to ensure that our team is looked after during lockdown, we have been using regular online social activities to keep the team engaged and connected with one another. I have been running weekly quizzes and we have done activities such as yoga, cookery classes, fitness classes and even running clubs together in order to make sure that the team continue to experience the strong culture we have at Gazprom Energy. And cultural integrity is a really important part of keeping a team connected. We have over 300 employees in Manchester, and its vital that they all feel that they are part of one business, working together towards common goals, rather than a set of disparate individuals.
Working from home has been a huge transition for many, and the business has had to fast track many of its flexible working initiatives to make this happen successfully. We are delighted to see how quickly the staff have adapted to what has been an extraordinary situation and to see the positive outcomes that we have been experiencing both from our staff feedback and from our customers. Although the future or returning to work is uncertain, we can be sure that our staff are in the best possible position to continue to deliver the very best service to our customers and they will always receive the full support of Gazprom Energy management whether they are working from home or in the office.
By Phil Ivers, Head of UK Operations, Gazprom Energy