EDF is helping Britain achieve Net Zero by leading the transition to a cleaner, low emission electric future and tackling climate change. It is the UK’s largest producer of low-carbon electricity, meeting around one-fifth of the country’s demand and supplying millions of customers with electricity and gas.
It generates low carbon electricity from eight nuclear power stations, more than thirty onshore wind farms and two offshore wind farms, and operates one of Britain’s biggest battery storage units, one gas and one coal power station, EV charge-points, and combined heat and power plants.
EDF is part of EDF Group, the world’s biggest electricity generator. In the UK, the company employs around 13,000 people at locations across England and Scotland.
In 2019, the context in which EDF Energy in the UK operated was changing. Its place in the market was changing and it was also embedding a recent acquisition.
EDF UK identified a number of strategic imperatives which relied on great leadership across the business, as well as a number of different leadership skills and behaviours required to ensure future success.
A new EDF Group leadership framework was created with the plan to roll this out to different levels of leaders across the organisation via three core programmes targeted at improving individual, team and business performance.
If the business was going to remain successful in its new context, EDF needed its leaders to be open, engaged and authentic.
In 2019, EDF asked Lane4 to work with them on the Leading Leaders programme aimed at developing the skills, knowledge and behaviours of the mid-level leaders who were likely to have been leading for several years. The aim is to take ~250 senior leaders through the programme over the next 2-3 years.
The objectives of the programme were for leaders to:
In early March, Lane4 and the EDF people development team were mid-design with the programme. It was to be a 6/7 month blended learning journey including an immersive, face-to-face business simulation – something new and experimental for EDF UK. The training would be intimate, with small cohorts of 12 being taken through various touchpoints over approximately six months.
At this point, however, Covid-19 hit. The face-to-face components of the programme were immediately rendered impossible and the People Development team at EDF had to make some quick decisions about the best way to support their people through this incredibly difficult time.
Many EDF employees are key workers and so great leadership skills are critical to supporting them in times of crisis. This, in addition to the significant ongoing transformation across the business, led EDF to decide that the planned Leading Leaders programme should continue after being adapted to wholly virtual/digital delivery.
The objectives for Leading Leaders remained the same and Lane4 worked in close collaboration with EDF to ensure that the new version of the programme would still provide a great learner experience in a digital environment.
The first cohort of 12 leaders began the Leading Leaders programme in May 2020.
One of the most novel and exciting components of the Leading Leaders programme is the simulation. Originally intended to be done face-to-face, this activity involves actors and high-pressure scenarios similar to those facing EDF teams in real life. In light of the pandemic, the simulation was redesigned to involve virtualised role-playing and managed to effectively mirror the challenges of remote working.
Delegates are placed in project teams within a fictitious organisation with structural and operational parallels to EDF. Each delegate is assigned a distinct function, and the teams must handle challenges such as integration of a different culture, stakeholder management, difficult conversations, and fluctuating team dynamics against the clock.
This simulation creates a safe environment for failure and allows for continuous feedback throughout the day. This is a crucial part of nurturing growth mindsets in your people.
The Leading Leaders programme is ongoing with the first of many cohorts part way through the programme. Feedback so far has been overwhelmingly positive; delegates gave the programme 4.8 out of 5 for “The facilitators created a safe, trusting and open environment” and 4.6 out of 5 for “I’ve come away from the workshop with some useful learnings or realisations.”
The programme has been recognised, along with EDF’s other two core leadership programmes, as a finalist in the Learning Technologies Awards ‘Best digital transformation of a training programme in response to COVID-19’ category. This acknowledges the success of EDF’s shift to virtual learning in the face of the pandemic.
Whatever your goals, let’s discuss how we can help get you there
