The 2,000 people that Atlanta-based Southern Co. sent to the Northeast to help restore electricity after Hurricane Sandy were like heroes in the eyes of the residents and businesses owners left power-less for days.
But what if Southern, or any of the other nation’s utilities, didn’t have those workers to spare?
Nearly 40 percent of the employees in the U.S. utility and energy sector is nearing retirement age. This includes hundreds of thousands of veteran power plant operators, engineers, mechanics and line workers, all of whom are essential to keeping electricity flowing to homes and businesses.
Because Southern is one of the nation’s largest utility companies, it is ripe to be the among the hardest hit with retirements. But the challenge of finding career-long utility workers isn’t just Southern’s.
“We consider this to be a national issue,” said Susan Story, president and chief executive of Southern Co. Services. “Electricity is so critical to the economy.”
Story is a veteran manager with Southern and its subsidiaries. She also is active in the national Center for Energy Workforce Development, started by Georgia Power’s chief executive officer Paul Bowers. The group’s goal, among other things, is to start getting kids and young adults interested in energy jobs to help build a pipeline to a career with utility companies.
Early recruiting reduces turnover and means less remedial training later, Story said.
The timing couldn’t be more critical. The average age of the energy sector’s workforce rose to 46 in 2010 from 45 just four years prior, according to data supplied by the company. The number of workers age 53 and older increased by 5 percent since 2006, according to that information, compiled for a November summit on the utility industry workforce.
The challenge goes beyond finding someone with good math and science skills and who wants steady work. When it comes to line workers, people have to be willing to work in the heat, cold and rain; travel to other parts of the country and work weeks at a time, missing family events or holidays.
Their mental and physical stamina is needed because during emergencies such as hurricanes, tornadoes or ice storms, “there’s no normalcy until the lights come on,” Story said.
The outreach for new employees is broad and includes women, military veterans and adults transitioning out of a career. Young adults and kids, especially ones in poorer areas, are another focus.
Southern’s utilities have started engineering and technical academies at community colleges and high schools, for example. The company partners with the Georgia Northwestern Technical College on its Instrumentation and Controls Academy, a hands-on laboratory to learn how to work control systems, generators and other devices.
Middle schoolers in low-income areas attend math and science bootcamps and visit the utility’s power plants. Women engineers visit with girls in the 5th through 8th grades to talk about stable jobs — as long as they stay in school and do well in math and science.
The idea is to get kids and young adults hooked on math and science early by telling them promising jobs in the energy industry are in their future.
“There was a time when it was chic for kids coming out of high school to go from job to job to job, and there was not anything sexy about working with your hands,” said Penny Manuel, a Southern executive and chairwoman of the executive council for the Center for Energy Workforce Development. “We’ve got good, stable jobs. And we do not want you to come and leave us after two years.”
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