National Grid, SAP and PwC driving growth through workforce transformation

Affordable, reliable and secure energy is fundamental to economic growth. In the UK and the North East US, National Grid plays a pivotal role in keeping energy flowing for the 28 million people it serves, supporting homes, businesses and communities every day, “making sure that the lights are on and the gas is flowing” says Kath Harris, their Vice President of Global People Operations.

“We do important work,” says Steve Raymond, Chief People Officer, HR Operations and Transformation at National Grid. That is clear in the scale and complexity of the infrastructure National Grid operates which includes towers, substations and underground cables and interconnectors, alongside the transmission and distribution networks that move the power to where it is needed most. This is practical, essential work: connecting homes and businesses, strengthening energy security and enabling the investment needed for future growth.

A highly skilled workforce is critical to that mission. From engineers and field teams to planners, digital specialists, corporate functions and customer-facing colleagues, National Grid depends on people with the right skills, in the right places. This is supported by systems that help them do their jobs well. As energy demand grows, empowering that workforce has become even more important.

Video 03/07/26

National Grid SAP

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High-stakes investment for growth

National Grid is investing £70 billion over the next five years to enhance networks across the UK and US. This is central to the company’s strategy: strengthening resilience and reliability, unlocking capacity and supporting economic growth while also enabling the transition to a cleaner energy future.

“You cannot grow as a country or community without an affordable, reliable and secure energy supply,” Raymond says. National Grid is “right at the centre of that”. Antony Cook, Sector Leader for Power and Utilities at PwC UK also emphasises the value of this once-in-a-generation investment: “Energy security is economic security. Coordinated action between government, business and investors is essential to ensure reliable and competitive energy for all.”

Jeremy Lief, HR Transformation and Technology Lead Engagement Partner at PwC UK, adds that “high energy costs and increasing demand have been a real barrier to growth for industries, manufacturing in particular, and therefore a barrier to growth for the UK economy.”

Liberating the workforce through technology

Working in collaboration with PwC and SAP, National Grid is modernising its global HR and UK payroll technology and processes. As Lief highlights, their landmark People Digital Transformation Project, "sets up the foundation upon which National Grid can build the workforce of the future." This first step supports the people who will deliver the company's investment plans for customers and communities.

The need for change was clear. Legacy HR systems were fragmented, outdated and difficult to navigate. Replacing them with a single, standardised global HR system is simplifying processes, improving consistency and giving colleagues and managers better access to the tools they need.

These new systems are also helping National Grid build resilience for the future. Rob Mooney, Head of SAP SuccessFactors UK & Ireland, says the cloud-based platform provides the “foundations to adopt new AI innovation as that comes along.”

Just as important is the data behind the platform. “Having access to critical workforce data is so important to adapt to change and to apply the right strategies to support decision-making,” Mooney says. With one source of truth for properly structured workforce data, National Grid can make better, faster decisions - improving visibility, efficiency and reliability. Harris describes this as being “more intentional” in how the organisation acts.

To date, 20,000 colleagues have migrated to the new platform, with 6,000 moving to the new UK payroll solution, Employee Central Payroll. It is already “making people’s lives easier, holistically,” says Raymond.

With National Grid providing critical infrastructure, Mooney adds, “it’s so important that the technology is right and that it works for the organisation.” But technology is only one part of the equation.

People-first transformation

Every successful transformation has people at its core, and this project is no exception. For National Grid, workforce capability is central to delivering its strategy. The company needs people who can operate and maintain today’s networks while also building the infrastructure, digital capability and customer solutions needed for the future. It supports that through practical training and development, including apprenticeships across engineering, technical, digital, IT, business, HR and commercial skills.

Freeing up employees and managers from unnecessary HR admin gives them more time to focus on safe, reliable delivery for customers. These changes may be incremental day-to-day, but at scale they help build the productivity, consistency and resilience needed to deliver National Grid’s investment programme.

The impact on the workforce will be significant. Building new electricity transmission infrastructure is expected to create a further 130,000 jobs across the industry, including engineers, surveyors, construction specialists and apprentices. Additional skills will also be needed across related sectors, from solar and wind to electric vehicles and heat pumps.

A collaborative, ground-up implementation

A people-centred approach was critical to implementation. Vasiliki Dusoe-Galanis, New England Transformation Divisional Lead at National Grid, explains that the team focused on a “shift in change management from change happening to them to change happening with them.”

Understanding the issues on the ground was essential. Harris says the team “consulted with the colleagues who would be using the system on a day-to-day basis.” By drawing on existing relationships built on trust and transparency, National Grid was able to implement change more effectively across the complex organisation.

That approach reflects a broader principle in National Grid’s transformation: delivery happens through people. Technology can simplify processes and improve insight, but lasting change depends on colleagues understanding the purpose, seeing the benefit and feeling supported through implementation.

A global, integrated approach

None of this would have been possible without a shared delivery mindset across National Grid, SAP and PwC. “We operated as one team, working together to solve problems and identify opportunities jointly,” says Lief.

With these foundations now established, National Grid is better positioned to deliver the next phase of its strategy. Lief describes the work as a “phenomenally successful HR transformation.”

But the significance of the programme goes beyond HR. It is part of the operating backbone National Grid needs to deliver its wider ambition: investing in the networks customers rely on today, building the infrastructure needed for tomorrow and enabling economic growth through affordable, reliable and secure energy.

National Grid, SAP and PwC have delivered an important foundation. Now, the focus is on what that foundation enables: a stronger workforce, better data, simpler processes and greater capacity to deliver a once-in-a-generation transformation of the energy system.

Vasiliki Dusoe-Galanis, New England Transformation Divisional Lead - National Grid
When you take this and you multiply it across our company, it frees up hours and hours of time.

Steve Raymond, Chief People Officer, HR Operations and Transformation - National Grid
It's allowed us to standardise our processes across the group so we're far more efficient.

Kath Harris, Vice President of Global People Operations - National Grid
So it really was a phenomenal HR tech transformation programme that's really set us up for success in the future.

Steve Raymond
National Grid does big work. We look after the transmission and distribution of electricity in England and the South West of the UK. We have expertise in marine engineering by laying cables in the English Channel. We are a mining company. We've just completed a 32 kilometre tunnel in our London power networks.

Vasiliki Dusoe-Galanis
In the US, National Grid’s, regulated electricity and gas networks serve customers both in New York and Massachusetts, delivering energy to over 20 million customers.

Steve Raymond
National Grid’s right at the centre of the energy transition that we're in globally, so over the next couple of years we’ll be investing 70 billion pounds into the assets and infrastructure across the US and the UK. The UK economy's main focus right now is growth, and you cannot grow without reliable electricity.

Jeremy Lief, HR Transformation and Technology Lead Engagement Partner – PwC UK
The high energy costs have been a real barrier to growth for manufacturing industries in particular, but others as well, and therefore a barrier to growth for the UK economy.

Vasiliki Dusoe-Galanis
It may appear that on the surface we buy and sell power, but it's really about our people.

Kath Harris
Our workforce is hugely skilled. The majority work out in the field and they all do really important jobs.

Steve Raymond
So underpinning this investment, we need the right people in the right places, with the right skills and a people function that is able to support that.

Rob Mooney, Head of SAP SuccessFactors UK & Ireland - SAP
Yes, this was a complete HR technology transformation across multiple countries, covering 31,000 people in the workforce.

Kath Harris
There was a really important partnership on the programme between SAP, PwC and National Grid and each brought a different set of skills. We looked at PwC to make sure that we were really implementing leading edge technology, but processes as well.

Jeremy Lief
SAP SuccessFactors is the software that sits behind all of the services that the HR function delivers to the business.

Rob Mooney
We work with lots of organisations, but National Grid providing critical infrastructure makes it so, so important that it has to be right for the organisation and the employees.

Kath Harris
We made sure that we consulted with colleagues who would be using the system on a day-to-day basis.

Steve Raymond
Fundamental premise of the project was just to make people's lives easier. So some examples of that is people were spending 15 minutes trying to raise a requisition to hire someone. And thanks to the work we've done with PwC and the implementation team, we can now turn that into a one-click process.

Vasiliki Dusoe-Galanis
In the US, we have a large workforce that includes gas pipeline engineers, sub-station workers and meter workers. So having an HR tech platform that's digitised and modernised is important to enable them to fully do their work.

Steve Raymond
When you look at the fact that we cleaned up 3,400 pieces of knowledge content and bought them into one place so it's easier to find, it's just making people's lives easier holistically.

Rob Mooney
There's also integrations like Microsoft Teams, where we're really meeting employees where they're at. They can do things like book in a holiday, all within the Microsoft Teams environment.

Vasiliki Dusoe-Galanis
The compounding effect of those incremental changes is huge.

Steve Raymond
It was a lot of work, 18 months of running really hard.

Jeremy Lief
We really did operate as one team, often in workshops, but very much working together to solve problems. Our relationship with National Grid goes back over 25 years.

Steve Raymond
I think the length of time that PwC has worked with National Grid means they know how we operate in depth, and that showed.

Jeremy Lief
We've delivered over 300 SuccessFactors implementations globally. That means that we've learned lots of lessons, which we can deploy to our clients’ benefits.

Rob Mooney
Business and technology is moving faster than it ever has before, so having access to critical workforce data is now so, so important to be able to adapt to change.

Jeremy Lief
National Grid can build the workforce of the future, which will allow it to meet the energy demands of the wider economy.

Steve Raymond
What we're now able to do is look at the way we run our compensation, our performance cycles, start looking more in-depth into our insights and analytics, and invest further into AI interventions as well.

Kath Harris
So whether that's understanding where we might have a skills shortage or a high recruitment need, we’ve got the visibility of that now, so we can be more intentional about the actions we take.

Steve Raymond
Now that this transformation is done, work starts to ensure that we are able to provide energy that is affordable, reliable and safe to the customers and communities that we serve.