Last month John Baker launched a great discussion on T&D World IdeaXchange: Attracting “NexGen” Utility People. John’s article quotes Mike Beehler astutely observing that:
“The ‘next-generation’ distribution system ...will require a next-generation distribution engineer… we need to cross train a whole new generation of young men and women to plan and design our next-generation distribution system. And, we need to start now.”
Paul Mauldin agreed: “About half of utility employees reach retirement age this decade. New graduates are looking less for career employment and benefits (the legacy utility attractions) than they are for interesting high-paying jobs. Like IT and other technical industries, we can expect to move towards the “gig economy,” where high-value professionals see all jobs as temporary moves toward something even more interesting and higher paying.”
Other members of IdeaXchange also jumped in with insights.
So what do you think? Are we heading towards a human resource squeeze in the area of the increasingly complex distribution arena?
Check out what the other IdeaXchange experts have to say in the article and then take the poll.
