Energy Assistant

We are seeking an Energy Assistant (Domestic) to join Portsmouth City Council’s Energy Services Team. The Energy Assistant (Domestic) role provides support and assistance to residents looking to reduce the amount of energy they use, save on their energy bills, and cut their carbon emissions. The role will support the Switched On Portsmouth, Switched On Gosport and Switched On Havant services, which provides advice and grant funded measures.
The post holder will organise stalls, drop-in sessions, and other opportunities to provide face to face advice to residents on a wide range of topics relating to domestic energy. Approximately 25% to 50% of the post holder's time is expected to be allocated to attending these events. The post holder may also be required to deliver training and presentations to front line staff, to encourage and support them to refer residents into the Switched On services, and in addition may on occasion be required to carry out home visits to provide advice. The remainder of the role is office-based, and includes responding to phone, email and social media queries from residents, helping to maintain the Switched On websites, updating the Switched On Portsmouth social media accounts and providing content to Gosport and Havant Borough Councils for use on their accounts, organising stalls and events, building relationships with other Council teams and relevant organisations to help increase the reach of these events, managing the collateral used on stalls, and liaising with suppliers providing Switched On services. Energy Assistants work principally on domestic energy efficiency and fuel poverty mitigation; however, they may be asked to work on other tasks as deemed necessary by management.
The Energy Assistant must be confident in giving advice on domestic energy and water efficiency, energy decarbonisation, energy generation and storage, as well as on fuel poverty mitigation schemes, minimum energy efficiency standards, grant funding and utility metering and bills. The post holder will be using phone, email and social media to respond to customer and contractor enquiries.
The Energy Assistant will be expected to manage and track outcome statistics, including obtaining data from contractors, to support development of an engagement strategy, and to help to identify trends and resolve issues. They will also need to track progress of referrals for individual residents and ensure they are supported as fully as possible. In addition, they will help with raising purchase requests and making payments to suppliers.


Skills:

The candidate should have experience and knowledge of the domestic energy sector and a passion for helping potentially vulnerable customers. The ability to work in a customer facing role is essential; with evidence of call handling and face to face customer engagement, ideally in the provision of advice about energy.
The candidate should be practical and comfortable with working independently and managing their own workload. The ability to adapt to a situation presented by a customer is essential; tailoring energy advice according to the needs of each client on a case by case basis.
The candidate must be comfortable building and maintaining relationships with a variety of stakeholders, and must have excellent administrative skills and demonstrate attention to detail; as well as being confident in the use of Office programs; in particular Word, Excel and Outlook.
It is desirable that the candidate hold Level 3 Energy Awareness or similar qualifications related to energy efficiency or fuel poverty, although training may be given to the successful candidate. A full clean driving licence is required.
Essential criteria:
• Knowledge of and experience in the energy industry; particularly prevailing national funding mechanisms.
• The ability to prioritise your workload to meet targets and deadlines.
• Experience in customer service, including working with vulnerable customers and managing expectations.
• The ability to show confidence, skill and knowledge in handling enquiries, whether in writing, over the phone or face to face.
• Good interpersonal skills and an ability to actively engage and rapidly build rapport with a wide variety of individuals.
• Ability to build and maintain relationships with a variety of stakeholders.
• Ability to support project administration and support project managers.
• IT skills including competence in Excel, Word and Outlook.
• Full UK driving licence.
Desirable Criteria
• National Energy Action Level 3 award in Energy Awareness, or equivalent.
• Experience in providing energy related advice to residents.
• Experience in delivering training to front line staff.