October 2023 – ongoing
Jemena Electricity Network has been implementing a comprehensive engagement program for the organisation's 2026-2031 Regulatory Proposal, employing a multi-dimensional approach to allow customers direct influence over proposed future pricing and services. MosaicLab codesigned and lead the facilitation of the process, that included a deliberative panel and brings diverse customer, stakeholder, and industry perspectives into the decision-making process.
SNAPSHOT
Process: Peoples panel
MosaicLab’s role: Co design & Facilitation
Host organisation: Jemena
Timeframe: October 2023 - ongoing
Deliberative panel participants: 50
Outputs: 16 panel recommendations to support Jemena’s pricing structure and future energy transition.
FAST FACTS
THE DILEMMA (REMIT)
“Everyone uses electricity. So how they run and maintain their network directly impacts the consumer.”
“The expert facilitation and ability MosaicLab have to make customers feel comfortable and able to share their stories, had a positive impact on our engagement.
Through their authentic and engaging approach to facilitation, they helped us strengthen our relationships with customers and truly understand their needs.”
KEY CHALLENGES
Jemena delivers electricity to 350,000 households in the northwestern region of greater Melbourne and manages infrastructure spanning over 950 square kilometres.
The process needed to:
ensure participants were representative of a diverse cohort of customers
engage people meaningfully around a dilemma that involves technical detail, complexity and impacts people’s lives
build a clear understanding of customer and stakeholder needs and preferences
elicit informed outputs that directly influence solutions submitted in the proposal and reflect lived experiences and future needs.
““It’s just important finding a good balance but still moving in the right direction and it does feel like that has been taken forward. I do have a lot of faith that Jemena is taking what we’re saying on board. ”
THE PROCESS
Energy reference group: An independent group of approximately eight members that oversee and advise Jemena Electricity Network on complex regulatory matters.
Customer voice groups (CVGs): Six different groups of randomly selected customers (approx. 15 in each group) that broadly represent a particular lived experience including First Nations people, young people, multicultural communities, people with a disability, seniors and people living with mental health difficulties.
Business forums: Information sessions and several forums to understand the needs and perspectives of small to medium businesses.
The Jemena People’s Panel: A randomly selected, representative group of 50 customers that deliberated over 5.5 days to date. The group was challenged to weigh up difficult trade-offs and reach a collective agreement on recommendations put forward to Jemena.
“We were all able to see each others point of view, where each other was coming from, and come to conclusions that help as many people as possible.”
“MosiacLab brought our price reset engagement with residential customers to life. They helped us achieve breadth and depth of our engagement with diverse customers and implemented outstanding deliberative engagement.”
OUTCOMES
Reports were developed detailing the outputs of all engagement sessions and were used to inform panel deliberations. The panel discussed, refined and agreed on 16 recommendations to support Jemena’s pricing structure and future energy transition and presented their report to Shaun Reardon, Executive General Manager, Jemena Networks.
“It seemed in the beginning a daunting process, but it’s actually really amazing to see the diversity of ideas that came out, and also where there were so many ideas that were very similar, there seems to be a number of themes which are quite centralised, which is interesting because we’re such a diverse group of people. ”
NEXT STEPS
Jemena will now develop a draft proposal that will be published for broad customer and stakeholder feedback in August 2024 so it can be tested, ensuring it meets Jemena and their customers’ needs. The Jemena People’s Panel will reconvene in August / September to consider this feedback and the draft and provide further recommendations to Jemena on other focus areas, such as customer service incentives.
The proposal will be finalised with consideration of these outputs and submitted to the AER in January 2025.
LEARN MORE
Learn more about Jemena’s People’s Panel and customer engagement here.
Read more of our case studies
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