Recruitment, training, and personal leadership

The energy transition poses a large and complex challenge for Enexis. This requires high quality, well-trained technical personnel. Recruiting and retaining employees was more important than ever in 2023.

At year-end 2023, Enexis employed 474 FTEs more own personnel compared to 2022.

Finding technical talent

The overhaul of the energy system leads to a lot of extra work. Enexis is urgently looking for technical employees who can contribute directly to this task. Unfortunately, the shortage of technical personnel is greater than ever at present. It is difficult to find suitable personnel in the whole technical sector. This is especially a problem in the south of the country.

To reach this scarce and sought-after personnel as well as possible, we expanded our recruitment team substantially in 2023. We developed a new employer branding strategy together with the Communications department: what do we offer our existing and future employees? The underlying idea is that working at Enexis is more than a good salary, career opportunities, a pleasant working environment, and satisfaction in your work. It is about the personality, culture, and values of our organisation and our employees. This message also resounds in our new labour market campaign: Met energie kan het [Energy makes it possible]! This campaign is a framework for all our new labour market communications. Our new working at website is also part of this campaign and people who are interested in Enexis and jobs at Enexis can visit this website for more information. In addition, we have made it easier to apply for a job. People no longer have to submit a resume or motivation letter.

Recruiting new colleagues

Our target for 2023 was to recruit 361 new colleagues in technical positions. This is an increase of 186 colleagues compared to the previous year. We are proud that we have succeeded in doing so in this very tight labour market. We also worked together with organisations such as the Refugee Talent Hub to recruit ICT professionals. Our own employees were also ambassadors for Enexis. Since October 2022, we reward colleagues who refer people from their own network for a job at Enexis. We have already recruited over 200 people this way. Moreover, we also look ahead to the distant future: we participate in Power up the planet, a campaign of all the grid operators to make young people enthusiastic for technology. We also participated in Girls’ Day in 2023, together with Alliander and Stedin, an initiative to introduce girls to the world of technology.

Training new employees

Safety is also a top priority for new colleagues. All our employees must be well-trained and comply with all safety requirements. To ensure that new employees have the right skills and can work safely and productively, we develop new training programmes. For example, we started the dual training programme for electro-technicians together with Avans, which attracted twice as many electro-technology students. Because we offer our existing training programmes in a flexible manner, we also have been able to accommodate the demand for training programmes within Enexis. In 2023, 238 students started the training programme for technician, technical manager or engineer.

Learning and development

Enexis took major steps in the area of learning and development in 2023. The aim is to thus strengthen our employees' skills, improve processes, and continue to provide innovative solutions to our customers. We developed modular training programmes that train our employees specifically for the tasks that they will be carrying out, such as the vocational training programme for low-voltage distribution technician (level 2) and the programme for connections technician. We also launched the project Infra Talents, in which we recruit and train personnel together with our contractors. The objective of this project is that both the work packages of Enexis and that of our chain partners can be carried out successfully. We also developed new training material for students, such as training programmes with the HoloLens, which shows 3D objects in the real world. To improve efficiency and user experience in requesting and consuming training, we worked hard in the past year on the further development of EnexisLeren [EnexisLearning] to a full-fledged learning management system.

Traineeship Young Talent

Besides new employees, we also treasure our existing employees. We do our best to retain our employees with training programmes and career opportunities. For instance, we have a two-year traineeship for (operational) management designed for young professionals with a strong development potential and change capacity. In an accelerated development programme, we prepare them for a position as team manager, advisor, or specialist. 2023 was a successful year for the traineeship. All nine trainees found a position within Enexis at the end of their traineeship. And all twelve, who passed on to the second year of the traineeship, have found a new assignment. As planned, we also recruited twelve new trainees who are carrying out an assignment at ten different business units or branches.

Best Traineeship

Enexis won the Best Traineeship Award in the category Learning & Development (L&D). The jury judged whether the traineeship was well thought out and embedded in the whole organisation. The traineeship must strengthen the participants and ensure that they are well-prepared to steer the company’s performance. The jury also examines whether the programme contains an analysis of the trainee's individual learning requirements, such as an L&D plan that is adapted as the trainee develops and takes on new projects. The jury was impressed by the combination of the use of creative and game-like programme elements such as the animal model and the 4-day action-based learning outdoor programme. This results in the creation of a safe environment, with support and guidance, allowing the trainees to fail, experiment, and learn. To strengthen the inflow and upward career mobility of young talent within Enexis, in 2023, we decided to pay more attention specifically to work placement students, graduate students, trainees, and starters. 

Personal leadership

Enexis considers it important that employees not only put the core values into practice but also promote these values. This requires leadership. We are convinced that everyone has leadership qualities - irrespective of their job title - and we inspire and motivate employees to demonstrate their leadership qualities. This enhances mobility. Strengthening leadership qualities starts with self-reflection, interest in others, asking questions, and listening.

We have determined our core values clarity, inclusiveness, and continuous learning together with our employees. We promote these core values within Enexis in various ways:

• Employees were able to take note of meaningful stories and best practices of their colleagues via internal channels in 2023. In this way, they come into touch with the core values in a low-threshold and accessible manner.

• Together with several business units, the HR department launched a new leadership programme in May 2023. This programme is directed at curious and reflective employees who wish to strengthen the collaboration among colleagues and work on their personal leadership in a dynamic organisation. The programme started with 95 employees and welcomed another 105 employees in November.

• We continued with the development of the leadership compass that we introduced in 2022. This compass provides employees with concrete tools to be clear, inclusive, and learning-oriented in their work.

• We started looking for influencers within Enexis in 2023 via an internal survey. These are employees who colleagues see as informal leaders; employees whom people go to when they have questions or when they want to get something done. The aim is to build a community together with these influencers across all layers of the organisation. 

• We are working on a new type of performance appraisal. The changing world and personal needs of employees demand a new approach. Therefore, we developed a performance-management approach focusing on attention for each other. When employees are continuously working together on their personal development, skills, vitality, and team and individual performance, they are better able to function in a changing environment. The trade unions gave their approval for this new approach in December.