CASE STUDY
Progression & Development - Talent Management, Rachael Disney, RWE Renewables
Our people are the heart of RWE Renewables. One of our core behaviours is “Develop ourselves and our colleagues” and focuses on learning and development opportunities for all our employees, globally. Alongside this we operate three global talent programs, each aiming to ensure there is transparency in our development programs. Their design and development were focused on people at different stages in their career and ensuring equality of access for all.
RWE Renewables has created this approach in order to be able to identify and select top talent, and has created offerings based not just on career level but also ambition. These changes were made to reduce affinity bias (the unconscious pull towards those who are similar to ourselves), decrease familiarity bias and avoid other stereotype biases. This has led to a rich diversity of colleagues taking part in our programs, with 11 nationalities represented across 3 continents and a 58 male:42 female gender split – which is an improvement on previous programs.
In order to achieve this, we made a number of key changes, notably: Self nomination – employees chose to apply with no line management nomination process. This was followed by a robust desk-based preselection against defined criteria where diversity outcomes were monitored. The assessment process itself was debiased as much as possible, including the use of external specialists and standardized materials. Interview and assessment panels were diverse in gender and specialty and, as much as possible, nationality and location, and each assessor went through a refresher on best practice assessment techniques with a challenge process before final selection.
We continue to learn and further develop our approach to ensure that we are removing hurdles for self-nomination and continuing to build in behavioral and systemic elements to remove bias from our processes.