Talents need to be actively developed, and each new skill level requires appropriate challenges. Our goal is to identify, acquire, develop, and retain high-potential individuals throughout the organization and across all levels of hierarchy. In a world where E.ON's activities will have an increasingly international focus, we plan to provide our best employees the opportunity to gain international experience by enabling them to work in a truly international environment. Our internationalization initiative is designed to motivate our employees to be more mobile and participate in exchanges in order to increase the share of E.ON’s workforce on international assignments. By 2012, we want to double the current number of E.ON employees on international assignments. We will start this journey by implementing several pilot initiatives, such as the expansion of the international graduate scheme and by introducing international employee exchanges within a job family.

In addition, our cross-Market-Unit staffing initiative will increase the number of internal cross-Market-Unit staffings for senior management by fostering Group-wide transparency. We will tie in with our existing global placement initiative and foster closer relationships among the HR departments of our Market Units.

Taken together, these initiatives will allow our talents to develop, and at the same time, they will provide us with internationally experienced talents who will help E.ON to improve and strengthen its market position.

Woman at E.ON

In order to make better use of the potential of women at E.ON, we will identify and promote women’s talents, both within E.ON and in the labor market.

For this reason, we will roll out our "Women@Energy" study Group-wide that we successfully conducted for E.ON Central Europe, E.ON Pan European Gas and the Corporate Center last year. The results of this study will help us to increase our employees’ and our leaders’ awareness of critical career steps and the special needs of women in senior management, which will enable us to capitalize on the full potential of female talents. Not only will this create an environment where talented women can be adequately promoted within E.ON; it will also increase E.ON’s attractiveness as a workplace externally. Both objectives will be achieved by implementing suitable measures based on the study, including for instance the coverage of gender-related topics in management training, actively communicating the topic – both internally and externally - in panel discussions, forums and presentations as well as up making available flexible child care. This initiative will provide E.ON with the female talents our company needs to improve its capabilities and to consolidate and improve its market position.