Origin Energy's Sarah McInerney on implementing a successful HR strategy

For Sarah McInerney, general manager of people and culture at Origin Energy, one of the keys to implementing a successful HR strategy is understanding not only where the market is, but where your business, customers and workforce are as well.

“It's fantastic if you bring to that process a wealth of HR knowledge and experience of all of the different offerings and areas of expertise that we have,” she told HRD Australia. “But you really need to know what your diverse workforce needs, what their current state is, and where they're at right now, and what the gaps might be to get to the outcome that the business is going for.”

Another key is to know what the value drivers are in the business, McInerney added.

“What are the things and where are the areas that P&C [people and culture] or HR can get the biggest bang for buck?” she said. “Really support those areas first. And make sure that you are always consulting with your business to showcase how what is happening in the industry and what is happening more broadly in the space that HR is responsible, can impact them.”

McInerney went on to highlight some of the issues currently affecting the HR industry, from legislative changes such the recent publishing of employers’ gender pay gaps by WGEA, through to the right to disconnect.

“So how do you translate that for your business?” she said. “How do you make that meaningful for them, what they might need to change, how they might need to leave work differently?”

Origin and sustainability

McInerney said Origin and its P&C team have been instrumental in bringing together the company’s purpose, which is around getting energy right for its customers, community and planet.

Internally, Origin has a number of initiatives in place to encourage sustainability, from not using single use plastics to focusing on energy ratings when it leases buildings for its corporate office locations.  

“[We] partner very closely with our landlords to make sure that they're meeting the standards that we hold ourselves at,” McInerney said.

She also said Origin offers employees electric vehicle subscriptions.

“This allows them to make their own transition to electrification away from petrol or fossil fuels,” McInerney said. “And that is something that we can support them with, not only with leasing the vehicle, but also with the infrastructure that can support, [such as] a battery on the side of the house to help charge the car.” 

In addition, a focus on sustainability is not only about the work Origin does in its community or power plants, but in how it operates as a team as well, she said.

“We have a value here at Origin, which was put in place through consultation with the people and culture team and our senior leaders and across all our people around ‘How do we care about our impact?’” she said. “And so we make sure our employees have that mindset in all of the work that they do.”

One of the ways Origin continues to make an impact is through the Origin Energy Foundation.

“[It] allows anybody at Origin to volunteer with one of our partner organisations,” McInerney said. “But also, any donation that they make to a charity of their choice that they're passionate about gets matched by the foundation.

“And we love that because we have so many passionate people working at Origin who are deeply committed to changing how we make energy and how we impact our planet. And therefore, their values align internally with what they do externally and we can support them at Origin with that.”

The National HR Summit

Origin Energy is one of the event partners at HRD’s upcoming National HR Summit in Sydney. The event will be held on March 20 – 21 at the Winx Stand, Royal Randwick in Sydney.

The National HR Summit will feature a main conference, director’s forum, industry expo and a program of workshops to address the challenges HR leaders are facing.

This year’s keynote speaker is 9-time Olympic gold medallist Ian Thorpe, with the director’s forum including speakers from organisations including HOYTS Group, Australian Business Lawyers & Advisors, and BAE systems.

McInerney will also host a session in the director’s forum on How to drive employee engagement further. She said she is looking forward to the event as it provides an opportunity to hear about the challenges other HR teams are coming up against, how they're solving them and new paths forward that might be possible.

“That opportunity to network and hear from other HR professionals and get that perspective of their stories and their journeys – I just think it's fabulous to have that forum and platform to do that,” she said.