New approach to recruiting and training employees
But mentoring alone may not be sufficient to ensure adequate knowledge transfer. A recent white paper jointly produced by FirstEnergy’s Fossil Operation and Interliance LLC, a management consulting firm that specializes in workforce issues, focuses on how FirstEnergy was able to convert institutional knowledge into systems and processes that enable new employees to perform at a higher level more quickly. According to FirstEnergy’s Charlie Lasky, in 2006 executives at his utility realized that traditional methods of recruiting and training employees would no longer be sufficient. The utility hired Interliance to help develop a more effective approach.
“Recruiting is the first critical step to be successful in this process,” Lasky said. “Preemployment candidate qualification and minimum hiring requirements must be well-defined to allow the interviewers to properly evaluate job candidates. Evaluating and optimizing the screening process can save significant cost associated with training.”
Other areas that had to be improved included standardized employee profiles, curricula, tasks, and training. FirstEnergy executives decided to handle this through relationships with local colleges.
“We have focused on standardized practices and performance-based methods being taught and passed on, rather than in-the-field ad hoc coaching,” Lasky said. “This gets to the heart of the issue that many utilities face—that much of the ‘tribal knowledge’ of the existing generation of employees may need to be improved upon. Going through a comprehensive review of current training materials to ensure they are accurate and performance-driven is critical to the success of any new system for bringing on replacement employees.”
According to Lasky, there is no point in transferring knowledge until it has been “scrubbed” to ensure that it is the right knowledge. This is a departure from the traditional ad hoc coaching of new employees often done at many utilities.
“The methodology Interliance brought has created an overall implementation roadmap that identified every component required to fully implement the system,” Lasky said. “It included not only what was needed for development but also for the continuing administration of the system. It addressed the organizational changes and role and responsibility changes that the organization would have to make to ensure the program was successful. We have completed a full set of on-the-job training modules and evaluations and are in the process of customizing them for each plant location. We also created an automated assessment process that provides real-time results for each new employee that pinpoints individual development needs.”
FirstEnergy’s Fossil Operations department is now finalizing on-the-job training modules with the assistance of subject matter experts to capture critical knowledge and best practices that will be passed on to new employees.
Accentuate the positive
Many utilities are starting to take steps to deal with the pending loss of experienced older employees who are on the verge of retirement. Handled properly, this change can have the upside of training a whole new generation of workers to deal with unique challenges that the electric power industry is facing in the early 21st century.
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