Shedding light on decision making – Centrica selects its 2024 shadow board

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Centrica has selected its 2024 Shadow Board, ten colleagues from across the business who meet regularly with business leaders to drive colleague-centric decisions and improvements.

The shadow board aims to provide a unifying voice for Centrica colleagues, ensuring they feel empowered to positively disrupt and challenge decisions that impact them.

Initially introduced in 2021, the Shadow Board acts as a reverse mentoring programme, aiming to find solutions to inclusion issues. Over the last three years this has led to a significant uplift in employee engagement.

The concept is simple and works by pairing a member of our leadership team with someone who is willing to ask ‘What could I share with you that might help you, as a leader, to create the right kind of environment in which people from all sorts of backgrounds can be themselves and flourish?’

The shadow board undertakes quarterly listening sessions to help shape Centrica’s culture and inclusion efforts. They are also called upon to act as a sounding board for other proposed Centrica-wide changes.

The 2024 Shadow Board are:

Jenna Forbes (Chair)

Rani Samra (Secretariat)

Lucy Martin

Paul Whitehead

Debbie Hamilton

Flora Finocchiaro

Helene Lynch

Timothy Odeniyi

Kristin Hansen

Matthew Long

Catherine O’Kelly, Managing Director of British Gas Energy, is the first Shadow Board Executive Sponsor for 2024, “I’m delighted to be the first Executive Sponsor of the 2024/25 Centrica Shadow Board. I loved working with our last cohort and I’m confident that our incoming Shadow Board represents another diverse and empowered group of colleagues who will give us unique insight into key areas for Centrica. We hugely value this initiative and the real impact it delivers. By taking the learnings from the last cohort we’re heading onwards and upwards with the Shadow Board!”

Rani Samra, Secretariat for the Shadow Board adds, “We are all enthusiastic about the prospect of our ideas having the potential to shape the organisation's strategy, policies, and initiatives, and it is a fantastic opportunity to directly contribute to its success.

"We're excited to work closely with the Corporate Leadership Team over the next couple of years, building a strong partnership and assisting in conveying vital messages to our business units. Additionally, we're committed to facilitating communication between our business units and the leadership team, ensuring that concerns and viewpoints are heard and acted upon effectively.”