Without our 1,400 unique individuals all working together as one team every day, we couldn’t do what we do. We constantly invest in our people, support them personally and professionally, whilst injecting a bit of fun. Everyone has their own unique set of skills and experience to offer and we have lots of amazing opportunities for you - whether you’re passionate about customers, environment, improving infrastructure, or water.

What we offer

A sense of purpose. Our people know that their work contributes to an essential service and sustains life in our regions. We encourage them to take pride in what they do and who they serve. For example, we provide four ‘Affinity Days’ a year so our people can volunteer in their local communities.

Challenge. Water will always be needed, but we face increasing challenges to keep it flowing. We’re embracing new technologies, investing in ambitious infrastructure plans, and working with our customers to promote water-saving and sustainability for the future. If you enjoy solving problems and you’re committed to continual learning and performance improvement, you’ll thrive with us.

Career support. Many of our people have developed into new roles and progressed with us. We provide technical and professional skills training, and we have a wide range of open learning resources, internal webinars, and bite-size learning events. We encourage everyone to participate in our mentoring programme as a mentor, mentee, or both.

Openness and engagement. We encourage our people to regularly share how they think we’re doing and how we can work together to keep improving. Our quarterly ‘Tap In’ listening survey puts us among the top performing energy and utilities companies for employee engagement.

Reward and recognition. Our company-wide annual bonus acknowledges everyone’s contribution to our high performance and ambition to lead the way. We take time to recognise the achievements of our people with on-the-spot recognition and quarterly values awards. We have a Tap4Perks platform that gives our people access to a wide range of discounts at hundreds of leading retailers, as well as health and well-being benefits and support. Our generous SMART pension scheme matches employee contributions up to 12%.

Flexing to different needs and life stages. We tailor things to enable people to perform at their best. We offer hybrid and flexible working arrangements where business needs permit. Generous family leave benefits include fully paid paternity leave, 6 months’ fully paid maternity or adoption leave, up to 3 months of fully paid shared parental leave, 5 days’ paid carers leave, and leave and adjustments for those going through fertility treatment. We provide adjustments for disabled people or those with long-term conditions and through our workplace menopause policy. We give the option to purchase up to 5 extra annual leave days a year, and everyone gets a ‘celebration day’, in addition to their annual leave and public holidays, to celebrate a cultural or religious festival or something else in their lives that is important to them.

Equality, diversity, and inclusion. Our ‘Diverse voices. One team’ strategy shows the steps we’re taking to make sure everyone feels valued and part of our team, so we can benefit from the innovation and high performance that diversity brings. Our EDI Committee and our networks for women, ethnicity and cultural heritage, disability and neurodiversity, and LGBTQ+ inclusion.

Health, safety, and well-being. We are committed to zero harm, and we expect everybody to play their part. Our well-being approach covers all aspects – physical, mental, financial and social well-being. There’s lots to get involved with, from social club activities, to walking challenges and local park runs, to our partnering with Joe Wicks to encourage healthier food and exercise habits.

None of us are at our best unless we’re healthy and happy. The jobs we do are important, but that should never stop us from enjoying our lives at work and at home.

Our Wellbeing Committee is here to put people’s wellbeing first, with an established programme to support every team at Affinity Water.

We hold company-wide health and wellbeing webinars on a range of topics including Seasonal Affective Disorder, resilience, mental health, sleep, stress and finding your work-life balance.

We also partner with established charities to raise awareness about health issues.

We hosted a Wellbeing Fortnight, where we held mindfulness sessions, online exercise classes and a Walk/Run/Cycle Our Chalkstream Challenge.

Our internal network of qualified Mental Health First Aiders understand how to listen to an individual’s challenges and needs. They can offer a friendly ear if our employees need someone to talk to, but can also give advice about looking after your emotional and mental health.

We have a duty to treat everyone with fairness and respect

Supplying water to our customers is an essential public service, so we have a duty to treat everyone with fairness and respect. We must also be accessible and remain responsive to different needs.

We need to attract, retain, and develop talented people across our diverse communities to help us build trust and better serve our diverse customers.

With diversity comes a breadth of knowledge, insights, and different perspectives, which we need to help us innovate and meet the big challenges we face. To get the benefits of diversity, we need to be inclusive and show we care. When people feel valued and accepted for who they are, they feel safe sharing ideas and voicing concerns, and confident taking on challenges and learning from feedback. This is essential to achieving high performance and safety at work.

Our Diversity and Inclusion strategy explains why it matters to us as a business and to our people, and how it can help us deliver our purpose and vision.

We continually listen to our employees and ask them for feedback through our quarterly ‘Tap In’ survey.

Employees score us and give anonymised feedback on how engaged they feel at work, and how well we support health and wellbeing, and diversity and inclusion.

Over 90% of employees have participated in the survey in at least one of the surveys in the previous 12 months.

We review and discuss the feedback with our people and use the valuable insights it gives us to drive improvements in our culture, at both team and company level.

Over 2023, our engagement scores have improved in every round and been above the average for the wider utilities sector. Our people score us above average for diversity and inclusion and we’re at the sector benchmark for health and well-being too.