How Stedin built a workforce ready for the biggest energy infrastructure challenge in decades

Certificates that told half the story

Stedin is a Dutch energy network operator at the center of the country’s energy transition, a program that will require billions in grid investment and a dramatic expansion of workforce capability. When Martijn Reijm, Department Head of Primary at Stedin, looked at what the company actually knew about its people, the picture was incomplete in a specific and important way.

“The certificates of the employees were already recorded and findable in a system,” Reijm said. “But certificates say little about what you are able to do: types of tasks, maintenance and projects. It is great that you are listed as competent in high-voltage installations, but does that allow you to do maintenance on an air pressure system? There was no database to show that information.”

Planners changed jobs frequently, and every time they did, the knowledge they carried about what people could actually do walked out the door with them.

The difference between what people have and what they’re missing

The shift AG5 created was less about storing more data, than it was about making the absence of skills as visible as their presence.

“Excel recorded what skills they had, but not what they did not have,” Reijm said. “The tool makes you aware of the skill gap. Are my people really equipped for the work they are expected to do?”

During onboarding, Reijm saw this directly. Setting up requirements for two employees he was supervising, he could immediately see two skills that were red in color, indicating things they should have learned but hadn’t.

That visibility didn’t exist before

Employees themselves were also found to know more than their records suggested. Skills from previous employers, experience that had never been formally captured, all of it was invisible until Stedin redesigned the system so employees could record their own history directly.

Team leaders did not always know exactly what all their employees could do. They could often do much more than was recorded.

Martijn Reijm

Department Head of Primary, Stedin

A career tool as well as a compliance tool

One of  AG5’s less obvious uses at Stedin has become one of the most valued. Employees can now see positions in other business units, understand exactly what skills they’d need to get there, and work toward that path from their current role, rather than switching jobs underprepared.

“In the ideal world, you want the employee to grow toward that learning path from his current position, and then switch when fully qualified and equipped for it,” Reijm said. “Team leaders now use AG5 to check the career path with that employee. They say to the staff four or five times a year, ‘Let’s take another look in AG5 to see where you stand now.’”

You can click on those two features and see the relevant gap analysis at a glance: the skills the employee still needs to learn for that position.

Martijn Reijm

Department Head of Primary, Stedin

Built for what’s coming

The energy transition is, by Reijm’s own description, the biggest rebuild of the Dutch energy system ever. The workforce demands it creates go beyond technical qualifications. Stedin is outsourcing more work at higher volumes, which means employees increasingly need to manage contractors, review designs, and perform quality checks rather than do the hands-on work themselves. That’s a different skill set, and it includes soft skills that were never formally tracked before.

“To each position we add in AG5, we also assign the required soft skills,” Reijm said. “If a new employee comes in as an apprentice and has no learning ability, then he should not stay with us, because they need to learn a lot, very quickly.  If you are a senior specialist and do not have the soft skill that you can teach young people easily, you will not be promoted to that position, either.”

The company is also creating positions specifically for the transition, each with their own skillsets entered into AG5 as they’re defined.

Knowing what employees can do and what they cannot yet do enables us to make an accurate workforce plan for the future.

Martijn Reijm

Department Head of Primary,  Stedin