FEATURE: UTILITY INDUSTRY PLANNING NETWORK FORMED
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The utility industry faces a potentially critical shortage of skilled technical and craft workers in the next five years. Working with electric and natural gas companies and their association across the nation, UBEC has developed a strategy to address this need. This issues of Learning for the 21st Century is devoted to describing that broad-based industry initiative.
PERSPECTIVES
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CENTERS OF EXCELLENCE
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Almost 25 regional workforce development partnerships between utilities and community colleges have applied for designation as a Center of Excellence through an important new UBEC initiative.
PSEG PARTNERSHIP WITH COMMUNITY COLLEGES PAYS EMPLOYMENT DIVIDEND
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A nationally recognized best-practice partnerships between PSEG and New Jersey community colleges that seeks designation as a Center of Excellence has created a pipeline of skilled entry-level talent for the company.
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Utility Industry Unites to Address
Need for Skilled Workforce
Creates Utility Workforce Planning Network
Responding to the growing concern that utilities will face a severe shortage of skilled technical
workers in the very near future, UBEC has joined with the electric and natural gas industry to create
the Utility Workforce Planning Network. The Network was created to engage the industry
broadly in strategic, unified and results-oriented efforts to ensure a skilled workforce to meet future
industry needs.
The Network was launched October 19 in Atlanta at an organizational meeting co-sponsored by Southern
Company and UBEC. More than 50 key industry representatives agreed that a nationwide effort
was necessary to avert a potential staffing crisis that threatens industry operations by the end of
the decade.
Faced with a growing number of current employees nearing retirement age, greater and greater difficulty
in hiring qualified young adults, and a work environment that demands higher levels of academic
and technical skills, utility companies across the country are searching for innovative solutions to fill
critical jobs.
Electric and natural gas companies are already challenged to fill positions such as lineworkers,
power plant operators, HVAC technicians and information technology specialists. This challenge is
expected to escalate in the next five years.
 With the average age of its workforce almost 50, utilities nationwide are concerned that many skilled and craft labor employees are nearing eligibility
for retirement. For example, Dominion Resources found that more than a quarter of its workforce
would be eligible to retire by 2007, and almost half would be eligible by 2012. Duquesne Light
Company faces a similar challenge, with more than 50 percent of its current linemen reaching retirement
age in the next five years.
In a UBEC survey of industry CEOs, more than 90 percent of respondents reported that their company
faced a "growing problem" finding entry-level people to replace retirees. And, 85 percent of these
CEOs said that difficulties in finding adequately skilled workers in the future threaten their ability to
meet customer needs.
Research conducted by the American Public Power Association confirms that this workforce shortage
is a nationwide issue. Their study indicated that the positions that will experience the highest
rates of attrition over the next five years are those that are the most difficult to fill. The study also found that most utilities do
not have a formal plan to meet projected workforce needs through recruitment, hiring, retention, training and development.
The Utility Workforce Planning Network Executive Committee, chaired by Gulf
Power Company Vice President and Senior Production Officer Penny Manuel, has
developed a Network Charter and a strategic plan to assist industry effort to ensure a
future skilled workforce is available.
 The Network's strategic plan calls for the following key tasks:
- Develop Centers of Excellence model partnerships with community colleges, high schools and workforce investment boards to develop training programs for utility careers.
- Engage utility companies and educators in an effort to develop model curricula for utility training programs.
- Address basic academic and employability skills gaps in K-12 students, most notably in mathematics, science and communications skills.
- Develop a non-traditional worker recruitment initiative.
- Develop and implement a marketing/communications plan to support network outreach priorities and local company needs.
- Create and maintain a clearinghouse for best practice exchange.
- Built national partnerships with federal agencies, affiliated organizations, educators, support organizations, business groups and utility unions.
Almost 25 partnerships between utility companies, community colleges, universities, technical institutes and labor
unions have applied for consideration as a Centers of Excellence. These programs
will be designed to create self-sustaining local partnerships focused on employability
skill development and preparedness for a career in the utility field.
 Utilities and educational institutions will work together to identify skill and training
needs, recruit students into utility training programs and develop portfolios that
demonstrate abilities, skills and knowledge.
The Network plans to work with these local partnerships to develop a model
curriculum and standardized levels of achievement that would provide nationwide
transferability of credentials.
The Network also plans on launching a comprehensive communications campaign
to help brand the utility industry as a preferred career choice. The campaign
will be aimed at K-12 students, parents and educators and be designed to increase
awareness of and interest in various utility jobs.
National Data Supports Need for Utility Network
- The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates the United States faces
of shortage of 12 million qualified skilled workers by 2010. In the
utility industry, the need for lineworkers alone is expected to grow by
about nine percent each year, with 10,000 new jobs becoming
available annually.
- More than 1,000 new power plant operators are forecast to be
needed each year over the next decade.
- In a 2004 UBEC survey of utility CEOs, 97 percent of respondents
reported that their company needed entry-level employees to have
some postsecondary eduation and advanced technical skills.
- According to the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, it
takes four to six years to train a first class line worker at a cost of
more than $50,000.
- In a 2004 UBEC survey, almost 70 percent of industry CEOs reported
that more than half of applicants for skilled, entry-level positions
at their companies lacked the academic or basic skills required for
employment.
- Over the next 15 years, more than half of today's utility workforce
– about 300,000 workers – will have retired. Several utility companies
studies have shown that the average age of a utility company
employee is 48, several years older than the national average.
- The U.S. Department of Education reports that nearly a quarter of
the nation's 12th-graders read at a "below basic" level. Thirty-five
percent of 12th grade students score "below basic" in mathematics
and an astounding 47 percent of 12th-graders fall "below basic"
in science.
- In the recent report, Crisis at the Core: Preparing All Students for
College and Work, ACT concluded that only 22 percent of the 1.2
million high school graduates who took the ACT Assessment in 2004
were prepared for college in English, mathematics and science.
- Even students who successfully complete a postsecondary education
have shied away from technical fields. The number of bachelor's
degrees awarded in engineering and computer science has dropped
significantly since the 1980s, and 48 percent of Ph.D. graduates in
technical fields in the United States are foreign students.
- Only 70 percent of all students who attend public high schools
graduate. Only 51 percent of African-American students and
52 percent of Hispanic students graduate from high school, according
to the report Public High School Graduation and College Readiness
Rates in the United States prepared by the Manhattan Institute for
Policy Research. These drop-outs generally have not mastered
pre-high school core academic subjects and have limited educational
and career options.
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Utility Workforce Plannint Network Executive Committee Members
Penny Manuel, Vice President, Gulf Power
Company (Committee Chair)
Neal Alexander, Vice President, Human
Resources, Duke Power (Committee Vice Chair)
Steve Kussmann, Executive Director, UBEC
(Staff Executive and Secretary)
Governance and Management
Subcommittee
Debra Howell, Staffing Director, Southern
Company (Chair)
Steve Boettcher, Director, Recruitment and
Selection, Xcel Energy
Anne Naqi, Vice President, Human
Resources, Equitable Resources, Inc.
Mary Miller, Vice President, Edison Electric
Institute
Education and Training Subcommittee
Dana DeYoung, Director, Talent
Management, PSEG Services Corp. (Chair)
Carol Berrigan, Director, Industry Initiatives,
Nuclear Energy Institute
Kathy Hartman, Manager, Public Affairs, WPS
Resources Corp.
Larry Sparta, Supervisor, Community
Relations, PPL, Inc.
Marketing and Communications
Subcommittee
Joe Swope, Manager, Utility
Communications, UGI Utilities, Inc. (Chair)
Gary Moore, Employment and Recruitment
Manager, PNM
John Plunkett, Manager, Human Resources
Development, Cobb Energy
Molly Thompson, HR Director, TXU Power
National Partnerships Subcommittee
Chuck Kelly, Director, Industry Human
Resource Issues, Edison Electric Institute
(Chair)
Michael Purcell, Senior Manager, Employee
Technical Training, Tennessee Valley
authority
Jeff Tarbert, Senior Vice President, Member
Services, American Public Power
Association
List of Network Companies/Associations
Utilities
Alliant Energy Corp.
American Electric Power |
American Transmission Company
Ameren Corp.
Avista Corp.
Bonneville Power authority
CenterPoint Energy, Inc.
Cinergy
Cleco Corp.
Cobb Energy
Consumers Energy
Cross Country Energy
Dominion Resources
DPL, Inc.
DTE Energy
Duke Power
El Paso Electric
Empire District Electric Company
Energen, Inc.
Energy West, Inc.
Entergy Corp.
Equitable Resources, Inc.
Exelon
Florida Power & Light Company
FPL Group
Hawaiian Electric Company
Kansas City Power & Light
KeySpan
Laclede Gas Company
MidAmerican Energy
Montana Dakota Utilities Company
National Grid, USA
Nicor, Inc.
North Western Energy
Northeast Utilities
NSTAR
Okaloosa Gas District
Pacific Gas and Electric Company
Peoples Energy
PNM Resources Inc.
PPL, Inc.
Progress Energy Inc.
PSEG Services Corp.
Puget Energy
Southern Company
Tennessee Valley authority
TXU Power
UGI Utilities, Inc.
Vectren Corporation
Xcel Energy
Westar Energy
WPS Resources Corporation
Associations
American Gas Association
American Public Gas Association
American Public Power Association
Edison Electric Institute
Nuclear Energy Institute |
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