Head of Policy and Public Affairs - FTC

The OVO Group’s purpose is to drive progress towards net zero carbon living. To reach Plan Zero, we need everyone to come together - not just as customers buying energy, but as members with a common goal. As part of this ambitious plan, our goal is to become the ‘Leading Employer in the UK’ by 2030. If you think you could be the talent we’re looking for, then come and join the adventure!

We launched in 2009 with a mission to change energy for the better. Since then, we’ve welcomed over a million members, planted a million trees, and set our sights on helping save the planet.

As a Group, we’re working to become a net zero carbon business by 2030, while helping our OVO Energy members halve their carbon footprints at the same time.

Green energy and technology are great tools to fight the climate crisis with. But it’s people power that will rewrite history.

So we’re building a zero carbon team inside and out. Of people who share our values, feel inspired by our mission, and want to make change happen. When you work for OVO, it’s not just a job. It’s the work of a lifetime. And we want the sharpest minds to help.

Up for the challenge?

Where in the world of OVO will I be working?

Reporting to the Director of Corporate Affairs, as Head of Policy and Public Affairs, you will drive forward OVO’s commercial priorities and protect and enhance its reputation through effective policy development and external engagement with priority political, regulatory and policy stakeholders. You will work collaboratively with colleagues across Corporate Affairs to proactively drive forward campaigns and will lead OVO’s ‘Sustainable Retail Market’ workstream.

What will I be doing?

Key responsibilities include:

Policy development

• Leading the ‘Sustainable Retail Market’workstream - working on the energy price cap, COVID-19 commercial impacts, auto-switching and other areas of government and regulatory policy impacting the energy retail market.
• Maintaining up-to-date information on political, governmental and key influencer activities to provide policy advice and strategic support to OVO.
• Establishing and maintaining strong relationships with internal colleagues to develop policy positions and drive engagement activity to positively influence their outcome.
• Actively seeking to inform and influence debate by distilling complex industry issues into clear, coherent, evidence-based arguments.
• Leading policy responses to Government, Parliamentary and regulatory consultations to ensure OVO’s views are formally represented in policy development, and maintaining auditable paper trails to ensure that this process is robustly documented.

Public Affairs

• Maintaining a strong understanding of external stakeholders’ views, legislative developments, select committee’s activities and parliamentary groups.
• Building and maintaining a strong external network to become a trusted counsel internally and externally on key issues.
• Taking a proactive approach to stakeholder engagement by seeking to actively shape external thinking.
• Identifying thought leadership activity and events and executing initiatives in support of OVO’s strategic goals.
• Representing OVO at external events.
• Writing briefings for the senior leadership team for external meetings.
• Coordinating priority external leadership for the senior leadership team.

Team development

• 
  Line management of OVO’s Policy and Public Affairs Manager and Senior Policy and Public Affairs Executive.
• With the Director of Corporate Affairs, setting and monitoring team progress against objectives and KPIs, ensuring performance is continually measured, evaluated and reported to demonstrate value.
• Ensuring the team’s processes are followed and maintaining a current bank of policy position papers.
• Ensuring that key milestones and activities are captured and shared in forward plans.

• Ensuring that the team’s knowledge of both business priorities and the GB energy market is current and relevant, so that policy development (and therefore the business decision-making) takes place in the appropriate context.

Is this the job for me?

• 
  Proven experience and knowledge of working on energy retail market policy and regulation.
• Public affairs experience, in-house or agency.
• Ideally, experience of working within a similar organisation, Government or Ofgem.
• Ability to manage internal and external stakeholders and ability to build, develop and maintain relationships and present confidently to senior stakeholders.
• Previous experience of operating in a fast-paced, autonomous working environment.

We want the best people

At OVO, we empower our people to have choice around where and when they work - flexible working arrangements can be discussed for all of our roles. Please speak to the Talent Acquisition team for more info.

We’re keen to meet people with varied backgrounds - our view is the more inclusive we are, the better our work will be. We want to build teams which represent a variety of experiences, perspectives and skills, and we recognise talent on the basis of merit and potential.

We understand some people may not apply for jobs unless they tick every box. If you’re excited about joining us and think you have much of what we’re looking for, even if you’re not 100% sure… we’d love to hear from you.

Learn more about working in the OVO family of companies on our careers page and Glassdoor. We’re also delighted to have received a Top Employers certificate in 2018, 2019 and 2020!