Energy and Utility Industry: Preparing for Rapidly Changing Workforce Demographics

PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) has issued a report on how power and utility companies can best address industry changes within their organizations as they struggle with the awareness that an aging workforce is a significant risk to their operations. In "Change is happening: Is your workforce ready?," PwC looks into four areas in which successful, innovative and forward-thinking power and utility companies are effectively addressing change: developing and retaining leaders, effectively leveraging performance measurement and technology, realigning the organizational structure, and ensuring that the Human Resources (HR) team plays a significant role in overall business strategy.

Among other things, the report (based on a May 2011 survey) states leaders must have the skills to maanage:

• a workforce soon to be challenged with large-scale turnover;
• a workforce, trimmed through retirements and reductions, that is increasingly being asked to accomplish more with resources that are spread thin;
• the interaction between workers in a multigenerational labor force.

According to the survey, more than 60% of respondents rated the task of developing new leaders as difficult. Internal politics and lack of management support remain the greatest obstacles in developing effective new leaders, according to more than 50% of the survey respondents.

Source: PwC Publication Announcement (January 18, 2012)