Designing the employee experience at Edison

The energy transition is a challenge that calls for new competencies and new professionals with strong skills in analytics and data modelling (Energy Managers, Data Scientists, Data Engineers and Data Analysts, to name a few). Highly sought after in the energy sector are specialists in Big Data and new technologies; managers who can run projects for Smart Cities and efficiency enhancement for power plants; experts in predictive maintenance, electric mobility and biomethane – not to mention marketing and sales. As for digital, demand is growing for people who know their way around CyberSecurity, Machine Learning, Digital Design and the Internet of Things.

Against this backdrop, in 2018 the Human Resources Department together with the Internal Communication Office embarked on a project to define the corporate identity of Edison as an employer. In the initial two-month phase, opinions about the company were collected from both inside and outside of Edison to reveal the positioning and the perception of the company in the eyes of employees and potential recruits.

Three mixed focus groups were set up inside the company with around 20 employees including around 20 interviews with top management. In this listening phase, the most appealing characteristics of the company came to light:

• corporate reputation and image (prestige, market success, social responsibility, transparency, innovation);
• friendly, respectful work environment
• competitive pay and good references for future career moves
• interesting work
• customer care
• training
• safety in the workplace
• variety and flexibility

These findings were cross-referenced with the responses from 1,600 employees who were interviewed during the customary annual survey. What emerged is a high level of satisfaction (relative to perceived respect, pride in one’s work and the feeling of contributing to the company’s success).

External participants included students and recent university graduates, counting around 3,000 from the fields of Engineering and IT and 9,000 in Economics. These young people were asked to think about Edison as a potential employer, and then to come up with keywords to describe the company. The most common terms were: innovation, leadership, creativity, possibility, professional growth in engineering and IT, innovation, CSR, prestige, success, and welcoming.

The next step was an interactive workshop with 35 Edison employees who worked on the input from the initial phase (“Who are we today? What do our employees want?” “What do recruits want?”), in addition to strategic reflections from top management (“What does the leadership want?”).

The output of the project was Edison’s Employer Value Proposition (EVP), an ambitious promise that the company makes to its present and future employees. The purpose of the EVP is to disseminate the core corporate values throughout the organization to guide people’s daily behavior while shining a light on what makes Edison different from other companies.

Edison understands that the fiercer the competition, the greater the need to establish a relationship with employees anchored in empathy, in an attempt to get a clearer picture of their motivations, ambitions, and needs. This serves to ensure the best possible company-employee cultural fit.  

To sum up, we can list several key takeaways from the Edison case: 

• Be true to who you are. The employee experience must be authentic and anchored in the purpose and values of the company. 
• To stay authentic, don’t stop dreaming. The best employer brands are a mix of table stakes attributes (what the company must offer), legacy attributes (deeply rooted in company values and history), and forward-looking attributes (not yet achieved, work in progress). 
• Target your current employees as your primary audience, much more than potential employees. Re-recruit your employees daily, reminding them why they joined the company, strengthening their engagement and encouraging them to become your brand ambassadors. 
• Manage the employee experience and the customer experience. The more inter-functional the experience project is, the better. 

• Support your employees in understanding their work experience. Investing in employee experience initiatives is never enough. This point is about calibrating expectations, asking employees what they want, but also being clear on what the organization can and cannot deliver; personalizing individual experiences; relying on managers and creating a psychological safe space; shaping memories (whether good or bad).