Development of Standard Operating Procedures and Performance Training Plans Enable Full Potential of Client’s New Business Unit

The Client

Our client is the largest electric utility in one of the ten most populated states in the U.S. They have invested billions in smart grid technology and are the main power provider for a major American city.

The Challenge

Our client’s new business unit was shorthanded and struggling to process customer requests for new electricity service. Disorganization, delayed response times, and poor communication were straining their operation. Our client’s customers were left frustrated as they waited for power, sometimes without answers or a point of contact.

Our client lacked the resources internally to handle service requests effectively and efficiently, without sacrificing high quality customer service. Pay grade parameters also limited the competitive wages that our client, as a utility, could offer, making the lift heavier still.

Augmenting their own staff with contingent workers had also been ineffective. They lacked procedures and training to support this workforce and didn’t have the managerial bandwidth to develop and oversee this aspect of their organization.

Customer satisfaction, employee engagement, reliability ratings, and revenue were at stake unless the client found a solution.

The Actalent Solution

Actalent and our Project Management Practice designs solutions to solve problems just like this. That’s because we shift the weight of certain hiring, training, work management, and people oversight responsibilities from the client’s shoulders to ours. How does it work? Actalent oversees the recruitment, interviewing, hiring, onboarding, training, engagement, and performance of highly skilled, mission-focused project execution teams. And every solution is scalable and customizable depending on each client’s specific needs.

The speed of having a solution implemented and operational was of ultimate importance to our client. Our goal was to have the delivery solution launched and our project execution team members trained, proficient, and independent within a few weeks.

We met with the client to fully understand the scope of work. We determined the level of effort needed to execute on the scope month over month. Our comprehensive and scalable solution consisted of a multi-phased approach. Our focus on the processing rate and improvement in our client’s end-customer satisfaction were crucial.

Our first priority was to deploy immediate help for our client with an initial project execution team. Our in-house subject matter experts (SMEs) learned the processes and procedures to efficiently execute the work.

Then, through our continuous improvement process, we analyzed and identified key steps that we would take to scale up the operation. We collaborated to build out and execute on our solution.

• We worked with our internal Talent Operations team to create our project execution team success profiles, job descriptions, and a competitive compensation package
• We leveraged our learning and development team to develop a robust, but expedient training program including an onboarding toolkit and ongoing development of the project team
• Our in-house subject matter experts (SMEs) defined standard operating procedures (SOPs) for handling new service requests
• Our SMEs worked with the client to determine weekly Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and reporting requirements

Once these steps were in place, we were ready to recruit, interview, onboard, train, and deploy a largerscale, customized project execution team.

Throughout the entire process, we established a culture of clear communication between Actalent, the client, and our project execution team. We provided regular progress updates, benchmarks assessments, and performance analysis. Within the initial implementation, the client and our project execution team were active partners providing feedback and insight.

The Results

Since 2021, we have continued to scale and evolve our solution to meet the increased demand growth for our client and their customers. We’ve been able to execute on the work faster by quickly hiring and properly training a large project execution team going from 3-4 months lead time to 3 weeks lead time, which is a 75- 80% improvement.

We’ve been able to improve customer satisfaction and the overall end-user customer experience through an increase in customer contacts while freeing up the client’s project leads, design and construction coordinators, and engineers. Instead of fielding customer calls, they are supporting the utility demand expansion and new program development as required by the city’s EV initiative.

Ultimately, we’ve created a solution to a problem that was diverting valuable time and energy away from the client’s core business objectives. Now they can reserve and allocate their resources strategically and proactively, as opposed to reactively. And together we built a solution with lasting value and returns.