The recent upsurge in baby boomer retirements is giving electric utility industry leaders high blood pressure. The number of power industry workers who were born between 1946 and 1964 and are queued up to exit the workplace in the next decade is startling (Figure 1).
1. Shifting curve. As this recent breakdown shows, the majority of workers at Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) are at least 45 years old; the average age is 46. Source: TVA
“In the late 1990s, we recognized that we faced a serious age demographics issue,” Charlie Lasky, FirstEnergy’s vice president of fossil operations, said recently. “We know that close to 74% of our fossil operations workforce will be eligible to retire in the next 10 years. We were very concerned about sustaining the years of skills and equipment knowledge that our employees have built up over the past 25 years.”
Van Ton-Quinlivan, director of workforce strategy and diversity with Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) is also concerned about a disappearing workforce. He told POWER in a May interview that PG&E’s “own outlook for the next five years shows 42% of its workforce becoming eligible for retirement.”
Similarly, in a recent interview with POWER, Paul Rosengren, director of communications with Public Service Enterprise Group (PSEG), said, “Our workforce planning shows that more than 25% of our employees will likely retire during the next five to seven years. Many of these are highly skilled workers in our electric and power generation businesses. Without action, we could experience a significant loss of technical skills, which could affect our company’s ability to provide safe, reliable, electric and gas service to the customers we serve.”
According to a report by the Center for Energy Workforce Development, the electric and natural gas utility industry will be facing retirement-related worker shortages earlier than most other segments of the economy. Reinforcing that view, the report “Workforce Trends in the Electric Industry,” which the U.S. Department of Energy published in 2006, states that “the percentage of electrical line worker workforce expected to retire within the next five to 10 years could approach 50% in some organizations” (Table 1).
Table 1. Fill in the blanks. This table compares the unique challenges that utilities face in replacing aging workers in two different power industry occupations. Source: DOE, “Workforce Trends in the Electric Utility Industry”
Building the pipeline
The obvious solution to this increasing problem is to create systematic approaches to recruiting younger workers into the electric power industry. And therein lies a possible tension. As is common during a changing of the guard, some elders may question the ability of the next generation to assume responsibility. For example, some baby boomers may look at Generation X (the term commonly used to describe those born between 1965 and 1982) and Generation Y (those born between 1983 and 1997) and dismiss members of these generations as pierced and tattooed “slackers” who are addicted to fancy coffee drinks and almost anything electronic, such as portable media players and cell phones. Yet, in order for the electric power industry to maintain an effective level of staffing in the face of the unprecedented number of retirements during the next decade, utility management will have to be flexible and look beyond generational stereotypes to attract and cultivate younger workers.
Throughout the U.S., utilities are experimenting with a variety of ways to find qualified young people to work at their facilities. For example, PG&E, which has its headquarters in San Francisco, has created a unique outreach program through which it provides training to young people in order to prepare them for careers in the electric power industry.
“Although a number of positions do not require a college degree, the skill sets that lead to a successful career still include competencies around reading comprehension, math, and soft skills, with some classifications requiring spatial reasoning and meeting the physical demands of the job,” said Ton-Quinlivan. “We built the PG&E PowerPathway™ program to more clearly articulate our hiring requirements and preferences to the community colleges and the workforce development system, and [we] collaborate to ensure the workers we need are there when we need them.”
PG&E launched the PowerPathway initiative in January 2008 with pilot programs in four locations in its service territory, according to Ton-Quinlivan. PowerPathway collaborates with community colleges, Workforce Investment Boards, community-based organizations such as Job Corps, and unions to reach, assess, train, and case manage candidates through the preemployment process. Candidates undergo a 12-week unpaid training program at the local community college, where they focus on reading comprehension, math, spatial reasoning, soft skills, physical conditioning, and industry-specific technical know-how.
“Over 4,300 people applied for the 100 PowerPathway training seats that are available in 2008. The goal is to train job-qualified candidates for PG&E to hire who come from the local community,” Ton-Quinlivan said (Figure 2).
2. Training goes to new heights. These PG&E apprentice linemen had to be flown in by helicopter in order to gain access to this transmission tower. The work being performed is cutting out the dead-end and putting the conductor into rollers. The lineman on the ladder is Hugo Madrigal. On the tower are Travis Williams (left) and Guillermo Rivas. Courtesy: PG&E
Applications were taken entirely through PowerPathway’s website (www.pge.com/careers/powerpathway). PG&E marketed the program through its partnership with the community colleges, Workforce Investment Boards, community-based organizations, and unions. The utility also sent out information through targeted media and by word of mouth through its employees. If recent traffic to the utility’s website is any indication, there is a lot of interest in preparing for these high-demand jobs that have competitive wages and excellent benefits.
“Our company has been the host to generations of family members, and many hires have come through the referrals of friends and families. As California’s demographics become more and more diverse (it is anticipated that California will be majority Latino in 2025), our company should have a workforce more reflective of the communities that we serve,” Ton-Quinlivan said. “The challenge we face is to outreach into communities, especially diverse and underserved ones, to build awareness for and interest in our employment opportunities.”
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