How National Grid Upskilled Their Future Leaders to Drive Transformation of the Energy Industry with Hive Learning

“We’re definitely seeing people making career moves, they’re improving their leadership behaviours and they’re really making an impact across the business” – Helen Fawcett, Head of Early Careers at National Grid

Overview

National Grid launched the Future Leaders programme to develop a pipeline of senior leaders to meet strategic goals. This 12-month blended learning programme, delivered in partnership with Hive Learning, EZRA Coaching, and MindGym, aimed to equip high-potential employees with practical leadership skills. The programme has run for five cohorts over two years, showing consistently high engagement and measurable impact.

The Challenge

National Grid is on an exciting mission to connect millions with clean, fair, and affordable energy. The next six years promise unprecedented challenges and dynamic changes, demanding more efficient energy solutions and decisive action against climate change.

Set for a remarkable transformation with increased infrastructure and bold investments in new technologies. To succeed, we have identified that we must stay agile, enhance our customer focus, and drive innovation.  

Committed to building ‘tomorrow’s workforce today’ we will be creating 60,000 new roles. Our journey to a brighter, more sustainable energy future, will be underpinned by the leadership capability we build to inspire and drive teams to reach our goals. 

To achieve this, National Grid faced several challenges, including:

• Creating a strong and sustainable pipeline of future senior leaders, equipped with the necessary skills and behaviours required to successfully navigate future challenges.
• Closing the talent gap across the business and help champion a transition of cultural change towards a more secure future.
• Facilitating the learning requirements across two different regions and meet the needs of office and field-based colleagues for greater inclusion.
• Delivering measurable results in personal progression, adoption & satisfaction, behaviour development and organisational impact.

In response to this challenge, we introduced a brand-new development programme for colleagues who had the potential of becoming future senior leaders across the organisation. This was called the Future Leaders Programme and involved a blended approach of online peer-to-peer learning, personalised coaching, fireside chats and peer-led discussions.

The Rationale

The Future Leaders Programme was designed to accelerate the progression of our managers to more senior roles by focusing on their leadership behaviours and providing tailored support for their development. 

The programme was produced in collaboration with business units across the group to ensure content was aligned with National Grid’s talent strategy, whilst engaging with both the US and UK audiences.

To facilitate the two different regions and be accessible by office and field-based colleagues, a ‘digital first’ approach was the desired method to deliver the programme. 

A series of online tools offered a practical solution designed to be more intuitive to use and less intrusive on work/home obligations. This encouraged quick adoption, increased engagement, and was the most effective way to individually deliver each part of the learning and development process. 

Supported by the Chief People Officer and Chief Executive as a vital business need, National Grid partnered with Hive Learning and EZRA Coaching to help deliver a powerful learning system to develop our future leaders.

Recognising the need for external expertise to help build and implement a programme that effectively develops future leaders, National Grid decided to partner with Hive Learning and EZRA Coaching. Selected for their experience, understanding and resources to deliver a powerful, cost-efficient solution using reliable, intuitive technologies.

The first six months of the programme HIVE gave candidates access to the learning content and the ability to easily connect with their peers through an online platform.

After which, colleagues were then invited to join EZRA for a further six months, helping them to focus on their individual learning and development goals. 

The Journey

A company-wide comms campaign was launched to introduce the new programme and to spotlight National Grid’s investment in our talent. Interest in the first cohort was high and received more than double the number of applicants than spaces that were available. Selection was limited, to qualify, colleagues had to meet with clear eligibility criteria, be on a band D grade and demonstrate a strong potential for progression. This meant they should be positioned in the top right corner of National Grid’s nine-box grid and have a leadership index score between 80 and 100.

To apply to the programme, candidates had to share more about their personal career goals and aspirations, as well as complete a digital assessment to better understand their strengths and areas of development to demonstrate their suitability as a senior leader in future. To ensure everyone felt comfortable to apply, our Employee Resource Groups helped with the promotion of the programme to encourage colleagues from underrepresented groups to complete an application form. 

The National Grid Performance and Development team decided to focus the programme on:

• Developing their Manager Essentials through learning on Hive and on-the-job activities.
• Making participants feel comfortable carrying out activities that National Grid expects from their leaders, such as conducting one-to-ones, giving feedback, and developing others.
• Building their network by sharing ideas and learning with and from their peers.
• Refreshing their development and career plans using their assessment reports, feedback, and insights gained during the programme.
• Having the time and space to focus on their personal goals with their coach, such as improving confidence, influencing skills, and more.

The Future Leaders Programme comprised of:

1. A personalised development plan tailored to their career goals, designed and managed by them to carry into their future.
2. Access to an online peer learning platform through Hive Learning, where participants could learn from one another, share ideas, ask questions, and engage with bite-sized interactive content. This provided a group social learning experience designed to bring National Grid’s values and leadership behaviours to life.
   • The peer-to-peer learning experience spanned five 4-week learning sprints, each with a specific focus. For instance, month 1 focused on ‘Create Belonging’.
   • Content delivered as a series of short bite-sized content cards, totalling 10-15 minutes of reading time each week. The pathways ended with an action-based card that could easily be applied in their daily roles, accounting for around 20 minutes of learning and application each week.
3. Encouragement to participate in peer-to-peer discussion calls at the end of each sprint to further enhance their peer network and share learnings with colleagues through another forum.
4. Access to a selection of development solutions to aid their growth, including career networks, mentoring, and career talks in the form of fireside chats, all interspersed throughout the journey
5. Access to a 6-month EZRA coaching programme, aligned with the National Grid’s Manager Essentials, focused on behavioural change and developing participants personal goals. EZRA offered an individual 1 to 1 coaching experience that’s accessed via a browser or through the EZRA app.
6. EZRA Measure a module that allows the participant, their manager and their coach to report, assess, track progress and measure performance.  

As National Grid progressed through its Future Leaders Programme, the popularity in the first cohort led having multiple cohorts to accommodate the number of colleagues wanting to be involved. The team approached this increase in demand with agility and adapted the programme as it developed to ensure continued engagement and greater impact. 

For the peer-to-peer learning element on Hive Learning, the Performance and Development team used data from each cohort and insights from participants’ conversations to evolve and enhance the programme continuously. These incremental changes boosted the monthly active usage, increasing the number of participants engaging in conversations and leaving comments on the platform. This improved all the short-term measures of participant engagement and tangible actions taken from the programme. The true impact of the programme can be best quantified after 1-2 years by tracking promotions, lateral moves, and retention of colleagues involved in the programme, as detailed in the next section.

The Impact

At the outset of the programme, it was important for National Grid to understand how to measure the impact of the programme on the business and on individuals’ performance. To do this we identified success by the following indicators:

• High engagement with the learning.
• An increase in the Leadership Index score, where applicable.
• Participants making lateral moves.
• Participants achieving vertical career progression.
• Participants being identified and aligned in succession plans for critical roles.

The first cohort generated such a high level of interest, that over 250 applicants applied to enrol with only 100 spaces available, this led to a further 4 cohorts being rolled out to meet demand.

Since starting the Future Leaders Programme, we’ve seen 431 future leaders join the programme across five cohorts. We observed impressive levels of engagement with the programme for each cohort. Additionally, we’re now starting to see the business impact from the earlier cohorts who engaged in and completed the programmes 1-2 years ago.

Hive Learning Engagement Measures:

• The participants involved in the programme had an average weekly active usage of 48%. 
• They completed over 2,000 action-based workouts, enabling them to apply their learnings to their roles and integrate what they’ve learned into their daily work.
• The benefit of the Hive Learning platform lies in its support for self-driven and asynchronous learning, allowing participants to interact and collaborate with their peers on set topics over six months.
• Across all five cohorts, we saw an average contributor rate of 66%, with over 2,200 posts and comments left on the platform. This demonstrates the power of social and collaborative learning in helping to embed their knowledge.

EZRA Coaching Engagement Measures:

Adoption and Satisfaction

Adoption and satisfaction were tracked closely in the first few months of the programme. This included the usage of the EZRA app and anonymized qualitative programme sentiment from both participants and their coaches.

• 98% of participants matched with an EZRA coach (vs. 94% global EZRA avg.) and 94% of participants giving their coach a 5/5 rating (vs. 81% global EZRA avg.), the programme achieved high adoption and satisfaction and above average results. 
• Coachees were having a session every 16 days which is in line with the recommended EZRA average for maximising coaching impact during a 6-month programme.
• Furthermore, qualitative participant feedback reflected high satisfaction rates 

‘I have found a great deal of value in this coaching experience.  It was a great support to me while I was in an interim Director role. The experience has validated my strengths and opportunity areas for development and provided a resource of support for me professionally and personally during a tremendous time of change when I needed it the most!’ 

Behaviour Change

Behaviour changes focused on the core competencies of participants from the start of coaching to the end of the 6-month programme, based on self and manager reporting as measured through EZRA’s proprietary coaching impact assessment tool (EZRA Measure). 

• +16% average of participants reported improvement in each development area (EZRA Energy industry avg. = 14%)
• +8% average of managers reported improvement in each development area (EZRA Energy industry avg. = 10%)
• The largest self-reported behavioural changes were seen in key leadership competencies that are critical for leaders early in their career journey: 
  • Developing others: +23%
  • Developing self: +22%
  • Performance conversations: +20%
  • Accountability and achievement: +16%

Overall Business Impact

The programme aimed to advance National Grid’s future leaders across the organisation, with the goal that these colleagues would progress in their roles over the next 1-2 years. Looking at data for Cohort 1, who completed their programme in July 2024, we have seen noticeable results in the following areas.

Promotions:

• 33% of participants were promoted within 18 months of the programme, including 22 band change promotions, compared with the typical National Grid promotion rate of 21%
• Participants who went through the programme were 10 times more likely to be promoted than colleagues who applied but didn’t make it through the selection process.

Lateral Moves:

• There were 3 participants out of a 100 in cohort 1. Notably, most of these participants had above-average engagement on Hive.

Retention of High Potential Talent:

• Being a participant in the Future Leaders Programme meant that colleagues were 50% more likely to stay in the business compared to their peers who didn’t complete the programme. There was 7% attrition for Future Leaders participants versus 16% for applicants who weren’t selected from the shortlisted candidates. 
• In addition, Cohort 2 respondents to a National Grid administered feedback survey said that the Future Leaders Programme positively impacted their leadership skills. 70% of the same survey respondents reported feeling more ready for a promotion because of participating in the Future Leaders Programme.