JEA Managing Director and CEO of Paul McElroy is working to improve the "culture" of JEA and he has brought in two consultants to help the utility to develop a strategic plan for growth.
Robert Miles, president of Corporate Transformation Resources, and William Kemp, managing director of economists.com, met with JEA staff and board of directors during a workshop Tuesday to explain the process of reviewing the utility and implementing changes.
"What we don't want is to develop a book that will be put on the shelf and never used. We want this information to be active," said McElroy.
The plan will be developed through March 1 at a $175,000 cost.
The development of the plan will include the information attained during town hall meetings with customers.
These meetings help McElroy and JEA staff develop a "vision" for the utility to "Leverage and preserve our expertise in asset deployment, operational excellence, environmental stewardship and financial management to lead a cultural transformation, passionately focused on winning customers' loyalty, strategically valuing all stakeholder relationships and realizing the untapped potential of all employees."
To achieve that vision, JEA realizes changes will be needed to be made in its culture, strategy and business execution in market and customer focus, stakeholder and regulatory relationships, human resources and organizational effectiveness and strategic alignment.
"We have reviewed things that we wanted to make sure we addressed as we developed the strategic plan with JEA. Obviously, higher customer satisfaction is job No. 1 right now," said Kemp.
Other areas identified for improvement included clearer organizational accountability on costs, customers and service execution, containment of long term cost pressures, healthy stakeholder relationships, environmental stewardship and workforce development.
Also from Tuesday's JEA
• The board welcomed Angelia Hiers as the utility's new chief human resources officer. She most recently served as vice president of human resources for Baker Distributing Company. Interviews are ongoing for JEA's chief financial officer opening and McElroy plans to have it fill by the end of January and the chief customer officer position filled by mid-February.
• Former JEA Managing Director/CEO Jim Dickenson attended his last board meeting as a JEA employee and the board provided him a token of the company's appreciation, a framed C. Ford Riley painting. "Not too many people have the privilege to be hired out of college by a company and spend their entire career there. It has been a great privilege to serve JEA," said Dickenson, who had 40 years of service.
• JEA Board Chair Ashton Hudson will reach term limits at the end of March and will step down from board. He will serve with Ron Townsend and Cynthia Austin on the nominating committee to select a new slate of officers for the board.
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