Women of Meridian - Sarah Hutchison

Driving through the wide-open expanses and craggy ranges of the Mackenzie Basin on her way to her first day of work at Meridian Energy’s Benmore Hydro Station, Sarah Hutchison felt an overwhelming sense of freedom.

“It actually felt like I’d got out of prison,” says Sarah.

It wasn’t that she didn’t love her time working her way up from the company’s call centre into managerial roles at the company’s office in Christchurch – quite the opposite. It’s just that she’d never really been much of a city slicker.

“I’m not a mall girl,” was her response when asked during an interview for a site manager role at Benmore how she thought she’d handle living in Twizel.

She loves the town and the “salt of the earth” nature of her job and colleagues – but Sarah isn’t exactly what you might expect from someone tasked with overseeing the performance of six power stations.

She doesn’t have a technical background, and had only set foot on a hydro station three times before applying for that Benmore role in 2019.

Until then her professional – and academic – careers had been centred on the study of people as opposed to infrastructure and operations.

After dabbling in anthropology, gender studies and feminist studies at Canterbury University she eventually settled on a major in American studies.

While it was a niche qualification, the subject matter was anything but.

“It was like history, English, cultural studies, anthropology all in one. It was the study of humans, basically - how power and control across the world influences and changes history. It was just fascinating.”

With current happenings in the United States having a major impact across the globe, the subject is perhaps more relevant than ever.

However, two decades ago it didn’t exactly lend itself to immediate job opportunities straight out of university.

“When I finished I had no idea what I wanted to do. I’d been doing bar work when I was at uni just part time and loved being in hospo because of the people side.

“My first day working behind the bar it took me six hours to get a kid out of the pokies. Within a month I could literally look across the room and they'd leave within a minute.

“We used to do all the security on the door. It taught me a lot about relationships – about empathy and influencing.”

When the bar closed down, Sarah received a tip off about a job opportunity in Meridian’s call centre.

“I thought I'd stay for six months while I figured out what I wanted to do,” laughs Sarah.

“Last year was my 20th anniversary at the company.”

Her time in the call centre helped shape Sarah into the leader she is today.

“It was one of the hardest jobs I've ever had. I used to say working in the call centre was like my umbilical cord. There were no wireless headsets back then so you couldn't even leave your desk.

“It was incredibly non-flexible work, but I found that I had a knack for working with difficult issues and customers and problems.”

Her leadership aspirations weren’t initially shared by her managers. She interviewed for several positions only to be told that she wasn’t leadership material. But her persistence eventually paid off. When Meridian created a new customer resolution team, Sarah landed a team leader role, and ultimately worked her way up to managing the department.

“That job taught me so much about leadership and life,” she says.

Sarah adopted an approach of viewing every complaint as a chance to turn an angry customer from an adversary into an advocate.

“It's the same in leadership. If you have a team that's really disgruntled or disengaged and they can share that with you it gives you the opportunity to listen, empathise, understand and then work with them to resolve the problem.

“I've done no formal degree or diploma in leadership but at Meridian we have leadership development programs running pretty much constantly and I've always put my hand up to do them.

“I'm a real believer that you never fully get there as a person. You're always learning and growing and helping other people to do the same.”

Sarah’s first foray into an operational space came when she managed a metering and switching team in 2016.

The team was responsible for medically dependent customers, customer switching, planned outages, network disconnections and even meter fires and thefts.

The role helped her build a reputation as a strong leader with the ability to bring together diverse groups of people.

She didn’t imagine for a second that her next step would be managing a frontline generation team at Benmore.

When a colleague suggested the possibility at an awards dinner her initial reaction was that the idea was preposterous.

“I’d been on a hydro site three times in my life! But the idea percolated and by the time the role came about I was super excited. I was like, gosh, what an amazing job. It has everything that I love – operations, a diverse team, a salt of the earth type environment. How cool.

“I never thought I'd get it but, somehow, I did.

“I've been really lucky that over my career the thinking around non-technical leadership has really developed. It's now recognised that to be a leader in a technical area you don't have to be technical yourself.

“That's really helped me because when you're not technical you can't micromanage.”

It’s not just Sarah’s background that makes her “a bit of a square peg in a round hole”.

She’s passionate about disaster and humanitarian relief, education, environment, human rights and social services – perhaps not your typical power station tearoom chat topics?

“I have this essential belief that humans are good,” she says.

“One of my key values is to make a difference as a person and that's what I've always aimed to do at Meridian.

“I really do believe that, from a business perspective, if you look after people and create great teams and make work a fun, emotionally-rewarding place to be, you will get the best out of your business.”

That’s not to say her role is in any way more care than responsibility.

“I’m ultimately responsible for the performance of the six power stations and dams. One of my key responsibilities is prioritising our asset work - what we're spending money on, what projects we're doing and what goes into the financial year plan.

“It's really challenging. We've got a lot of work to do and, being a commercial company, we always have to balance risk and value.”

Ultimately, it’s input from her team that informs those decisions.

“Often we have lots of different opinions to consider. I'm a big believer that diversity creates strength in a team.

“It's really exciting when you can get a whole lot of different thinkers together who appreciate each other's differences. That's when the magic happens. If you can really build that level of respect, you get some pretty cool outcomes.”

Meridian is an equal opportunity employer with Advanced GenderTick accreditation. To learn more about working at Meridian, check out our careers homepage.