The industry will need to expand hiring and training programs simply to maintain the level of qualified workers required to operate existing facilities. However, industry surveys indicate that most utilities do not have a formal process for projecting future workforce needs based on their organization's strategic plan.
The coming wave of retirements and the skills and experience gap have been issues in the power and utilities industry for some time. Companies have usually addressed these issues through several traditional stop-gap methods. However, the recent economic downturn has added a level of complexity that has created new challenges and presented an urgent agenda for human resources transformation.
Companies are at different stages of planning strategies to mitigate these challenges and enable workforce change. This publication discusses several innovative strategies in developing a road map for dealing with these urgent workforce issues.