Retirements outpacing new entrants to electricity industry
The Electricity Sector Council’s 2008 workforce planning report predicts an annual retirement rate of 6.2 per cent by 2012 and 28.8 per cent of the current electricity workforce is expected to retire within the next four years, a higher rate than predicted in the previous 2004 report.
This increased rate, and the fact that 3.2 per cent of positions were vacant in 2006 despite employers hiring 900 staff, means the industry is actually in worse shape than it was at the time of the last workforce planning report, said Catherine Cottingham, executive director and chief executive officer of the Electricity Sector Council in Ottawa.
“We were surprised the gap had not narrowed and in fact it had widened slightly,” she said.
Shortage will affect all industries
Canada is the third largest producer and sixth largest consumer of electricity. Without enough employees, almost every industry and sector will be affected, said Cottingham.
“We need to take more advanced action to prevent an impact on the power supply,” she said.
With the proportion of workers over the age of 45 increasing from 52 per cent in 2004 to 55 per cent in 2008, retirements are a main concern for the industry. To help, the sector council has developed a succession planning tool kit for employers that identifies best practices in Canada and around the world, and includes sector-specific online tools such as templates and tracking forms to help organizations prepare for the radical shift in the workforce.
Training is a key component of the electricity sector, with a high school diploma or a four-year apprenticeship being the absolute minimum educational requirements, said Cottingham.
“Over 70 per cent of the people in our business must have post-secondary training,” she said.
Therefore, to address the shortage the industry is facing over the next few years, action must be taken now to ensure there are enough people entering the right educational programs.
Enrolment in electrical engineering programs decreased by 10 per cent between 2003 and 2005, found the report, but enrolment in the electricity sector apprenticeship training programs increased by six per cent in that same time. But more needs to be done, said Cottingham.
There needs to be greater awareness in elementary and secondary schools about careers in the trades and what kinds of courses students need to take, such as advanced math and science, she said.
“Quite often people are interested in our trades but they don’t appreciate that they need (those courses),” said Cottingham.
They’re often also not aware of the different opportunities in the industry. A young person can enter the trade as a line worker, a construction electrician, a power station electrician or an engineer. From there, many grow into leadership roles.
“Somebody who starts as a line worker can end up being a director of occupational health and safety,” said Cottingham.
Industry approaching students, training own talent
To raise awareness about the industry among students, the sector council is taking Trade Up for Success, an educational program geared towards children and teenagers developed by the Power Workers’ Union in Ontario, national.
For some employers, the best answer is to train their own talent. Manitoba Hydro has always been a training utility, said Damon Rondeau, an HR planner in employment equity and recruitment at Manitoba Hydro in Winnipeg. About one-half of all the people the utility hires have only the basic educational requirements and are placed in a three- to seven-year training program, depending on the trade, said Rondeau.
“We’ve always had to do longer range planning because we’re in effect running a school at all times and trying to keep the school stocked with a sufficient number of trainees so we get the right number of journeymen coming out the other end at the right time,” he said.
But even with training its own workforce, the utility is running into some problems with the demographic shift.
“We’ve been starting to see some of the effects of a dwindling supply of labour,” said Rondeau. The number of applicants has decreased and the quality of those applicants has also declined, he said.
Another solution to fill the vacant jobs left by retirees is to turn to traditionally under-employed groups such as women, Aboriginals, immigrants and visible minorities, said Cottingham.
Manitoba Hydro focuses on Aboriginals
For the past 10 years, Manitoba Hydro has been focusing on the Aboriginal community as a source of talent. The utility instituted an Aboriginal pre-placement training initiative to bring people who lack the academic requirements for entry into trades programs into the company for pre-employment work experience and training. The utility’s “Building the Circle Camp” initiative also introduces girls in Northern Manitoba to opportunities in engineering, technology and trades.
“The whole idea was to introduce girls to the idea of trades as a career,” said Rondeau. “We know that it’s necessary to get going earlier.”
The utility will be using what it has learned from these initiatives to reach out to other under-employed groups, including women, people with disabilities, visible minorities and new Canadians, said Rondeau.
New Canadians are a growing pool of talent in Manitoba, with the government looking to increase annual immigration from about 12,000 to 20,000, he said. And this could be a boon to Manitoba Hydro, which is looking at going from hiring a maximum of 200 people a year to needing to hire at least 300 just to keep pace with retirements.
“Recruitment is the number one challenge,” said Rondeau.
Recruitment and talent management are challenges for the entire industry. The sector council is working with key members in the industry to develop a national HR strategy. But it can be difficult for HR to convince senior management to invest in talent management, said Cottingham.
“You can’t take it for granted. You have to invest time and money,” she said. “It’s all very well if we have shiny new equipment, but if we don’t have the people to run the equipment and maintain the equipment, it’s not going to happen.”
