Involvement and Development

Nuon College

Nuon College, our in-house Corporate University, celebrated its tenth anniversary in 2007. Nuon College closely monitors general developments in the field of learning and development, and translates these developments into its own training offerings for employees.

In 2007 several new workshops were developed on the basis of a needs analysis of Nuon and its employees. These learning activities are unique in the training market:

• Communication Core Training
• “Voorsorteren op Leidinggeven”, a course for employees who want to find out whether management is their best next career move
• Professional Management Assistant Course   

Partly thanks to these new offerings, Nuon College grew compared to 2006:

• Number of participants by 34%
• Number of meetings by 44%
• Number of half-day sessions by 127%
• Total number of hours by 122%   

These figures are in line with the long-standing structural growth trend for Nuon College. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is a central theme in the training courses of Nuon College: during the introduction programme for new recruits, the CSR Department explains how Nuon pursues its ambitions in this field; participants in the Core Programme for Managers are required to work out CSR subjects in a project; and the Essence of Energy programme ends with a meeting centring on Al Gore’s film ‘An Inconvenient Truth’.

In 2008 additional attention will be devoted to ‘Generation Learning’ in order to take account of the preferences of specific age groups.  We analyse the consequences of age for the content and format of existing programmes and the development of new training offerings. In addition, Nuon College is seeking to make arrangements with the mainstream education system so that diplomas, certificates and minors can be given for its courses. This is in response to the current social trend where it is increasingly important for trainees to obtain certificates or diplomas. A final aim for 2008 is to create a course that successfully combines the subjects of safety, technology, management and communication.

Employee Involvement

Since 2001 Nuon has conducted an annual employee survey among all its employees. In 2004 the survey was given a more evaluative character where the employee also evaluates his/her manager. Involvement has a direct bearing on key results such as customer satisfaction, staff turnover and sales.

By taking part in the Nuon Employee Survey, employees can have a say in the Nuon organisation and, hence, in their own future within our organisation. Among other things, they can indicate to what extent they think that:

• The organisation is customer-minded
• Their conditions of employment, work-life balance and working conditions are satisfactory
• They have opportunities for personal growth and development   

In 2007 71.65% of the employees took part in the survey. The results in November 2007 showed that employee involvement had improved further to 8.0. 
 
Comparisons of survey results with those of other organisations or sector averages are becoming increasingly important. The first-ever international comparative survey was carried out by Towers-Perrin ISR in 2007, giving us our first opportunity to compare our results. Nuon emerged with excellent scores, outperforming both national companies and international energy companies in virtually all areas. Nuon also compares favourably with leading Dutch and global corporations: our employees rate their employer more highly than the employees of leading global corporations in various fields, particularly in relation to mutual cooperation, customer focus, HRM and social responsibility. Against this, Nuon employees stated that they feel poorly informed about the ambitions of Nuon and the manner in which Nuon is seeking to fulfil these ambitions. They also indicated that the physical working conditions are open for further improvement.