Operational Risk and Controls Lead

Role OVO-View

Team:  Customer Enablement

Location: Hub based-Bristol, London or Glasgow - regular travel will be required

Salary banding: £64,270 - £75,000

Experience: Expert

Working pattern: Full-Time, hybrid

Reporting to: Head of Outsourcing and Oversight

Sponsorship: Unfortunately we are unable to offer sponsorship for this role.

This role in 3 words: Business Partnering, Operational Excellence, Risk Management

Top 3 qualities for this role: Analytical, Engaging, Flexible

Where you’ll work:

Depending on the needs of your business area, we expect hub based people to be in the office at least once a week, and to go to OVO Connection events in-person. 

You’ll be assigned to the closest one of our three hub offices, Bristol, Glasgow, or London; unless your role requires field-based work. Each hub has accessible spaces to park your laptop, is designed to inspire people, help them connect and bring big ideas to life.

Everyone belongs at OVO

At OVO, we are on a mission to solve one of humanity's biggest challenges, the climate crisis. And we know it takes all of us to change the world. That's why we need diverse people from all abilities, gender identities, ethnicities, ages, sexual orientations, life experiences and backgrounds to join us.

Teamworking for the planet

Everything we do here spins around Plan Zero. So, naturally, the team you’ll be joining plays a gigantic role in making that happen. Here’s how:

In Customer Enablement we ensure that our Operational teams have the tools and support required to deliver consistently high quality outcomes for our customers. We’re encouraged to try new approaches, test, learn, and adapt quickly. We’re always searching for opportunities to deliver customer value in a constantly evolving market with Plan Zero at our core. 

We embrace challenges, continuously provide feedback and proactively seek opportunities to improve, innovate, and progress towards a zero-carbon future.  

This role in a nutshell:

Within OVO we operate a three lines of defence risk model, and as a member of the Operational Oversight leadership team, you’ll take overall responsibility for making sure we have an effective first line of defence across Operations.

You will be responsible for working with key stakeholders and process owners across Operations ensuring that we identify, assess and manage risks in our day to day operations and put in place an effective control environment to mitigate these in line with our risk appetite.  You will lead the validation and evolution of our first line risk governance, supporting the wider leadership team to grow their understanding of risks and controls.  

At a strategic level you will help us make sure that risk and control considerations are reflected in our strategy and our change agenda and that we have an appropriate risk awareness and culture across our business.   This role is crucial in ensuring that the organisation delivers high-quality customer outcomes, maintaining compliance with industry regulations and minimizing operational risks.

You’ll work collaboratively across the business, building trusting relationships. You will thrive on high levels of accountability and aligned autonomy while navigating ambiguity.  You will be confident in senior-level forums, able to simplify complexity for easy consumption, and able to communicate across the entire organisational landscape at all stakeholder levels.

Working in the Customer Enablement team you will work across Operations to surface and connect overlapping risks.  You will serve as a critical friend to the process owners and policy makers; reviewing controls with a customer journey lens.  You will work closely with Customer Experience and 2nd-line Risk and Compliance teams to make sure that the controls framework is robust.  Your  role will identify opportunities for innovation and efficiency leveraging tech solutions to increase the quality of the controls.

You’ll be a role model for the wider team, embodying OVO’s leadership qualities. You’ll be a builder and someone who thrives on forging new relationships and creating operational controls to help us manage and oversee day to day work.

Your key outcomes will be:

Strategy and Change

• Ensure Operations works within all regulatory and/or legal obligations
• Support the development and delivery of operational strategies and change , ensuring risk and control environment needs are reflected
• Collaborate with stakeholders across the business to deliver the service strategy, and support delivery of the wider business strategy
• Work collaboratively across the business to ensure risks and positive customer outcomes are reflected in priorities.

Risk Management

• Work with stakeholders to deliver a robust approach  to identify, assess, and monitor risks across Operations within OVO’s wider risk framework
• Ensure the quality and completeness of risks identified and support mitigation planning
• Ensure the Operations senior leadership team maintain a comprehensive understanding of the key risks
• Run risk workshops, as required, to engage and empower team members in risk identification and control implementation.

Control Environment

• Implement robust frameworks to put in place operationally effective controls to mitigate risks in line with our agreed risk appetite in a proportionate and cost effective manner
• Ensure the health of controls across, including within third party suppliers
• Escalate areas of risk that do not have appropriate controls and the subsequent risk that this poses to OVO in line with OVO’s risk framework
• Ensure that first line control testing is in place to provide confidence in the robustness of the operation of our controls
• Facilitate comprehensive reporting to ensure that the leadership team maintains an understanding of the health of controls across the Operation.

Risk Culture and Awareness

• Define an appropriate risk culture in Operations in line with the teams risk appetite statements
• Assess the team alignment with the required risk culture and awareness
• Drive a culture of risk awareness in line with the agreed culture and appetite statement across the function
• Collaborate across Operations to make sure risk management and control practices are integrated seamlessly into day-to-day operations and meet the OVO-wide risk framework
• Working cross functionally to proactively anticipate, assess, and reduce future potential risks
• Alongside OVO’s 2nd-line Risk Team, deliver training, coaching and awareness programs to ensure team members understand and are able to fulfil their responsibilities.

Risk Governance

• Work closely with OVO’s 2nd-line Risk Team to oversee risk appetite statements, supporting measures and scorecards and ensure these remain current and fit for purpose
• Make sure operational leaders have clearly defined operational limits based on the risk appetite statements to enable effective decision making
• Support the establishment of effective first line risk governance across Operations
• Provide clear, actionable risk and control reports to support decision-making
• Ensure that appropriate escalation mechanisms are in place to wider COO and enterprise risk function and governance.

Incident and Issue Management

• Oversee the investigation and resolution of operational risk incidents
• Lead wider business incident retrospectives
• Develop and maintain an effective internal incident reporting system including third party suppliers
• Work closely with OVO’s 2nd-line Risk Team to make sure incidents are escalated to the right level.

Business Continuity

• Oversee Operations’ contribution to OVO business continuity, disaster recovery, and operational resilience plans
• Ensure critical functions remain effective during disruptions.

People Leadership 

• Embed OVO’s vision, culture and values across the Operations
• Role models the OVO way of working and supports effective collaboration across COO and the wider business
• Be a consciously inclusive leader, proactively supporting and advocating Belonging
• Develop a progressive people environment where people feel seen, valued and supported, and individuals and teams are recognised and rewarded for the value they deliver
• Work collaboratively enabling empowerment and delegation, creating a robust talent pipeline that is able to fulfil the future needs of OVO
• Recognises and embeds belonging, diversity and inclusion through the function.

You’ll be a successful Operational Risks and Controls Lead at OVO if you…

Have significant experience in operational risk management within a regulated industry and experience in building an effective first line of defence. We’re looking to build our muscles in this area and are looking for someone who can immediately make an impact and quickly accelerate our maturity.  Experience of operational risk management in an energy supply setting would be advantageous.

It goes without saying that you will have a strong understanding of risk management frameworks, tools and methodologies and you will also have a proven ability to analyse complex operational risks and design practical control solutions.  

You will have an ability to communicate complex risk concepts to non-specialist audiences, and a proven track record of collaborating with senior leadership and cross-functional teams. Experience of change and project management is helpful but not essential.

You should be an authentic leader able to balance strategy and execution. Someone who could easily maintain high performance across conflicting priorities but who also isn’t afraid to roll up their sleeves when there is a need. You will be able to form strong working relationships quickly and be ready to take on a challenge.

We’re all different here at OVO and that is just the way we like it, but we all share the values that have driven our achievements so far; 

Find A Better Way - Do you have a curious mindset, determined to find a better, simpler and more efficient way of doing things? Do you collaborate well with others to solve problems and come up with solutions? Can you balance pace with attention to detail and effectively prioritise tasks?

Do What’s Right - Do you actively listen to others, seeking to understand first and foremost? Are you courageous enough to challenge things when they don’t look or feel right? Are you comfortable facing into difficult conversations, giving and receiving constructive feedback?

Build Something Great - Will you continually challenge yourself and others to find innovative new ideas which contribute to OVO’s long-term vision. And most importantly, will you put OVO’s members at the centre of everything you do, achieving brilliant results every single time.

Is this you?

Let’s talk about what’s in it for you

We’ll pay you between £64,270 - £75,000, depending on your specific skills and experience.

We keep our pay ranges broad on purpose to give us, and you, flexibility to match your experience to our zero carbon mission.

You’ll be eligible for an on-target bonus of 15%. We have one OVO bonus plan that focuses on the collective performance of our people to deliver our Plan Zero goal. 

We also offer plenty of green benefits and progressive policies to help you feel like you belong at OVO…and there’s flex pay. We'll give you 9% Flex Pay on top of your salary – 4% of this is auto enrolled into your pension, and the remaining 5% is yours to do what you like with. You can use this to buy from our extensive range of flexible benefits, including our green benefits which we've put at the heart of our offering, add to your pension or even take it as cash.

Here’s a taster of what’s on offer: 

For starters, you’ll get 34 days of holiday (including bank holidays).

For your health
With benefits like a healthcare cash plan or private medical insurance depending on your career level, critical illness cover, life assurance, health assessments, and more

For your wellbeing
With gym membership, travel insurance, workplace ISA, will writing services, dental insurance, and more

For your lifestyle
With extra holiday buying, discount dining, home & tech loans, and supporting your favourite charities with give-as-you-earn donations

For your home 
Get up to £400 towards any OVO Energy plan, plus great discounts on solar, smart thermostats and EV chargers

For your commute
Nab a great deal on ultra-low emission car leasing, plus our cycle to work scheme and public transport season ticket loans

Want to hear about our full range of flexible benefits and progressive people policies? Our People Team can tell you everything you need to know.

For your Belonging

To find better ways to support our people, we need to listen to each other’s experiences and find ways to build a truly inclusive and diverse workplace. As part of this, we have 8 Belonging Networks at OVO. Led by our people, for our people - so when you join OVO, you can play a part - big or small - with any of the Networks. It's up to you.

Oh, and one last thing...

We’d be thrilled if you tick off all our boxes, yet we also believe it’s just as important we tick off all of yours. And if you think you have most of what we’re looking for but not every single thing, go ahead and hit apply. We’d still love to hear from you!

If you have any additional requirements, there’s a space to let us know on the application form; we want to make the process as easy and comfortable for you as possible.