How we do things is just as important to us as what we do.
Our values
All our work is underpinned by our 'SAILOR' values. They set out how we behave and what we aspire to be.
It's not just what you do, but how you do it, that's important to us. We actively encourage autonomy, collaboration and innovation and there’s a real adult culture fostered by trust, flexibility, and respect. In our recent People Survey, 90% of our people said they were treated with respect by the people they worked with and 78% said they felt valued for the work they did.
We put a priority on everyone's health and wellbeing. You will have the freedom to work 'smarter' and achieve a work/life balance by taking advantage of hybrid working, combining time in the office and time at home.
As a learning organisation we actively embrace new ways of working. We've been recognized with a Silver accreditation for Investors In People Award. The assessors commented on our 'stand-out' culture: our values, behaviours, ethics and working environment.
Being ourselves at work
Our aim is to create an environment where colleagues feel comfortable in bringing their whole self to work, where everyone is treated equally, empowered to thrive, and together we achieve our vision of improving life through water.
We believe that equality, diversity and inclusion is good for business. By bringing together people with a wide range of thinking, experience, background and skills we can be more creative and innovative with a better understanding of the importance of water to all our lives. Encouraging diversity of thought helps us to avoid ‘group think’, leading to better decision making and minimising risk.
We know how important this is to each one of us. Our recent People Survey 2021 showed that 90% of our people agreed that Ofwat respects our individual differences. Our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion strategy, Being Ourselves, sets out how we are working to make sure Ofwat is a place where we can all be ourselves and reflect the communities we serve.
"Our strategy is clear – we have a key part to play in delivering public value and encouraging corporate social responsibility across the sector. To do this, we must ensure that Ofwat and the sector reflect the communities they serve – that is, they must be equal, diverse and inclusive. We must be the change we wish to see in the sector”
– Ofwat Board discussion, March 2021
How we organise ourselves
We each belong to a cluster, which is made up of people with similar skills. Our clusters are:
- Company Performance and Price Review: designing and shaping the 2024 Price Review to help achieve the sector's long-term goals
- Corporate Enablers: providing corporate support for Ofwat to be a highly performing place to be, effective, efficient and continually improving
- Insight and Impact: providing insight on how the water sector is performing, evaluating our policies to understand their effectiveness and developing Ofwat's data capabilities
- Policy and Outcomes: developing and implementing regulatory policy, and driving improvement to support our strategic goals for the sector and deliver the best outcomes for customers and the environment.
- RAPID: A joint regulatory unit between Ofwat, the Environment Agency and the Drinking Water Inspectorate (DWI).
- Regulatory Enablers: cross cutting teams that work across Ofwat including Legal, Corporate Governance, Communications, Casework and Enforcement and Investor Relations.
People from different clusters collaborate in project teams, so that each of our projects has the right resources and set of skills.
We have two main locations, Birmingham and London with our all of people working hybrid – combining office and home based working