Focus on professional skills

To find solutions for the energy issues of today and tomorrow, we invest in our people. We do this, on the one hand, by offering good pay and benefits, and, on the other hand, by helping our employees get the best out of themselves through training opportunities. That is good for them and good for the company. Employees are encouraged to develop their professional skills with a range of training and development opportunities. Special attention is devoted to safety training for specialist roles or roles involving specific risks. 

Alliander’s own technical college

In 2024, the inflow of participants in the various intensive and long-term training programmes increased to 250 (2023: 121). New and experienced colleagues enrolled in more than 2,300 BEI/VIAG courses to obtain or renew their certification. To facilitate the growing demand for training, 2024 saw significant investments to scale up our training facilities: the new buildings at our Amsterdam and Leeuwarden locations were completed in 2024, and we opened a new location in Zevenaar.

As the inflow is expected to remain at this high level for the coming years, we are holding intensive discussions with Regional Training Centres that provide the qualification programme for Alliander. They, too, need to scale up sharply due to the growth in inflow, and the training model must also be modified to match. Close collaboration with Regional Training Centres and other stakeholders, such as contractors and industry partners, to ensure high quality of training in the long term is a key priority for Alliander.

Unlimited Learning

Alliander started implementing a new platform for learning interventions in 2024. The platform will be accessible to all employees. Various learning and development opportunities are important components of talent management and trainee programmes.

Performing Together 

In the ‘Performing Together’ approach, we offer teams an opportunity to improve their effectiveness and reflect with each other on results and behaviour, so that they can perform better together. 

My Energy Plan

The energy transition requires a transition within our own organisation. That means we all need to refresh our professional knowledge and continue to learn and perform. So we dropped the PRO assessment system on 1 February 2024 and now use ‘My Energy Plan’. This is a personal plan that helps employees make the best use of their time, talent and energy. Employees make agreements with their managers about their personal results, behaviour and development, and constantly review their progress. ‘My Energy Plan’ offers more flexibility, has no final assessment, gives more autonomy to the employee, focuses on the future and encourages us to learn as we perform and to celebrate our successes more often. 

Leadership 

In 2024, under the motto of ‘every colleague deserves a good manager’, the leadership programmes evolved into training programmes that strengthen managers in the ‘skills of leadership’. In these training courses, managers develop their ability to reflect on their own leadership, learn how to improve the quality of their dialogue with employees and their management of inclusive and safe teams that learn as they perform, and how to focus these teams on Alliander's strategic goals. The training courses are based on the Alliander leadership profile introduced in 2023, which is expressed in terms of helpful and non-helpful behaviours. Participants gain insight into their leadership style via 360-degree feedback.