Building tomorrow’s workforce, today  

As we deliver the energy transition, we’re developing and upskilling more colleagues than ever before.  

We also undertake strategic workforce planning, analysing the future skills and capabilities we need for the longer term and putting in place plans to achieve our projections. This will ensure we have the people and leadership needed for a clean energy future.  

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Attracting the best new talent

Our employer branding “Superpowered” marks National Grid as a leader for sustainable energy and an employer of choice. It leverages our brilliant internal people stories to attract a wide pool of candidates.

The attraction strategy is now tailored to the needs of the business using data insights to understand where to find the right people and leveraging the correct avenues to promote our roles - whether through job boards, social media, panel events or career fairs to attract those people, using our Superpowered branding.  

Retaining the best people

We depend on our colleagues to deliver success for the business and our stakeholders, and we seek to retain the best people by striving to be recognised as an employer of choice.  

Investment in training

Attracting, developing and retaining a qualified and competent workforce requires training programmes that are robust, comprehensive and in line with local regulations. Our training programmes create a career path built on safety and competence. Group Technical Training programmes are delivered across nine training centres in the UK and US and in operational environments, local to the point of work. 

Graduate Scheme    

Our UK graduate scheme introduces three distinct pathways aimed at enhancing graduates' capabilities while emphasising leadership development for future leaders. Following a competitive tender, we also introduced a new market leading supplier, Cappfinity, to lead the development of our graduates to meet the needs of our graduate population.  

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We’ve also introduced a new coaching mechanism, called EZRA Focus, to support graduates as they complete their development programmes and make the key career transition into their first role. This is part of our culture to retain and progress our early careers talent pipeline. 

In the US, we continue to have a strong internship programme, welcoming 171 “Gridterns” in summer 2023.

Development solutions for colleagues

• BetterUp  - digital coaching that supports intentional behavioural and mindset shifts aligned to their development goals
• LinkedIn Learning  - a digital-first development platform with on-demand courses available, including topics of leadership and management
• MindGym  - an external learning provider that specialises in psychology and behavioural science to transform how people think, feel and behave
• Team Effectiveness  - sessions designed to foster cohesion and positive collaboration among teams

Identifying and developing future leaders

Our Future Leaders Programme continues to develop potential future leaders across both the US and UK. The aim of Future Leaders is to identify colleagues who display high potential talent in the early stages of their leadership career and to accelerate their development.  

First Line Leader is a training programme for new people leaders. Participants gain practical knowledge of our key processes, policies and technologies.

Enterprise Leadership Advantage  

The Enterprise Leadership Advantage Programme, launched in December 2023, is a group-level talent development programme aimed at experienced leaders. 

Next Generation  

Our executive potential programme ‘Next Generation’ is designed to ensure that our most senior leaders are equipped to deliver the future state of National Grid, and to support the acceleration of their development into Group Executive roles.