“This course gave me the tools to be an effective First Line Manager.”
Grant was grateful for the opportunity to study the FLM4 programme. He says, ‘It gave me a lot better understanding of the roles and responsibilities of a First Line Manager. It gave me the tools to choose the correct team to do the work, and to communicate with people effectively’.
Grant is a member of a North Power, Faults Team. It’s a team of four based on Waiheke. During his studies, he identified an opportunity for his team to take on the added responsibility for new connections on the island. So, through discussions with his manager and those responsible for both departments it was agreed that Grant’s team would take on the additional work.
The ramifications were significant for all parties. Most significantly, the operational budgets improved. It meant the faults team could register 100% utilisation of time because now it was working on new connections rather than being stood down and assigned to the depot when not responding to faults.
The Faults Team members were encouraged to be onboard because there was a financial benefit for them. By utilising hours through the week, they were permitted to complete additional hours on weekends and also expanded their skillset.
Grant was responsible for everything relating to each job, the planning, designing for the work, allocating resources to it, and completion. By doing these tasks he was able to journal out 70% of the team’s weekly costs.
Grant also set up a digital process to supersede a fax system for logging work. This enabled relationships, both interdepartmental and within the team, to improve considerably, because previously paperwork had gone missing, invoicing wasn’t being done on time and work wasn’t being processed correctly. The new digital process meant jobs were logged immediately, all the relevant information was in one place and able to be retrieved at any time both on Waiheke and in the city. There could no longer be a blame game. It was winwin all round.