Former Pennant Power employees have begun work at Brightmere in Swansea, moving from uncertainty after the supplier's failure to jobs within the company that took on its customers. The transfer of 142 staff took effect on 1 April under TUPE arrangements, with their existing terms retained.
Brightmere bought Pennant's Swansea customer-service operation from the administrators after the supplier failed in December. The incoming colleagues join the centre at SA1 Waterfront, where Brightmere has based its Welsh-language service since 2016. The move brings experience of the former supplier's accounts into the receiving company's service operation.
An employee who transferred from Pennant said the confirmed employment arrangements had made a difference to conversations at home. 'There is an answer now when somebody asks where I am working,' the employee said. 'That is a relief. There are still plenty of questions about the work, but they are different questions from the ones we had before.'
The employee asked not to be identified because they wanted to describe the transition without speaking on behalf of colleagues. They said familiar faces and knowledge of customer accounts had travelled with the operation, while processes and the relationship with the wider company would take time to learn.
'You can be experienced and new at the same time,' the employee said. 'I know how to talk to a customer about something difficult. I still need to find out which route to use here when the account needs another team.' They said clear explanations from managers would be useful as the combined operation settled into its work.
Maxine Doyle, regional officer for the Energy and Customer Services Union, welcomed the preservation of existing terms. She said the union would want staff to understand their arrangements and how questions could be raised during the transition. 'A transfer is a point in time, but people continue working together after that point,' she said. 'There needs to be room to ask what the new arrangements mean in practice.'
A Brightmere spokesperson said the company valued the incoming colleagues' experience and would support them as they joined its service operations. Their knowledge of Pennant customers would be useful as Brightmere continued working through transferred accounts, the spokesperson said.
The two groups of Swansea staff will work within the same supplier while retaining the terms that apply to them. Brightmere has not presented the announcement as a single new contract for everyone at the centre. The company said questions about an individual's arrangements should be discussed through the relevant employee support routes.
For the transferred employee, retaining existing terms was important, but familiarity with the everyday work would take longer. They wanted to know where to turn when instructions were unclear and how established colleagues would hear about changes affecting both groups. 'The welcome matters,' they said. 'Then you need to know who to ask on an ordinary shift.'