Our culture

We’re a responsible business that’s as concerned with its impact on society as it is with profit. We want to be a force for good in the world and our values reflect this. 

Every day our people do the right thing, find a better way and make it happen. Our vision for a clean, fair, and affordable energy future sets out what we want to achieve, and our values guide how we do it.  

Living our Values  

‘Living our Values’ is a global initiative that aims to celebrate those colleagues who are outstanding role models for our values. It also helps us foster a culture of excellence, integrity, inclusion and innovation across our organisation. The campaign invites colleagues to nominate their peers for awards and we use those stories to celebrate the achievements of those who live our values so others can learn from them.  

The 2024 ‘Living our Values’ campaign was the most successful one to date, with a record number of participants, feedback, and positive impact.    

The campaign succeeded in raising awareness of our values and behaviours and how they help National Grid show up in the world as a force for good. It also uncovered hundreds of real-life examples of people across the business who live our values, which were shaped into compelling stories designed to inspire our 30,000 colleagues.  
 

Engaging our colleagues  

We engage extensively with and listen to our colleagues, be they on the front line delivering for our customers or supporting those who do. Some of the ways in which we do this include:

• Regular live webcasts with our CEO
• A programme of leadership visits out to our field and operational sites
• Engaging through a range of channels and platforms, including our intranet Grid:home and our internal social media network Viva Engage
• A twice-yearly engagement survey, Grid:voice, to understand and act on colleague feedback

This allows us to build culture that is purpose-led and results-driven, with a great colleague experience. As a result, we enjoy high engagement and strong advocacy, above external benchmarks.    

Our commitment to employee relations  

We engage with our colleagues on employee rights through their representatives in various trade unions across the US and the UK.

In the UK, we have collective bargaining agreements with four recognised trade unions covering our staff grades, and this is the formal mechanism for consultation and negotiation on a range of matters, including pay and terms and conditions of employment. We have an employee relations framework at a national and a local level which is used to facilitate collective discussion with the trade unions.  

In the US, we commit to collective bargaining with unions, setting out terms and conditions of employment for represented employees. Neither party may deviate from the terms of the collective bargaining agreement, except in extraordinary circumstances.  

There are several trade union recognition agreements in place for collective bargaining purposes.

None of our colleagues are denied the right to exercise freedom of association.