Within the next 10 years, 35% of current utility
employees will be eligible to retire. Most of these retirees
are senior employees, with many years of experience and
a wealth of institutional and operational knowledge.
Concerned about this brain drain, the AWWA Research
Foundation and the Water Environment Research Foundation
co-funded a study titled Succession Planning for a
Vital Workforce in the Information Age.
The study analyzed demographic data from the US
Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics. These
data indicate that the US workforce is becoming older
and more diverse and that the number of available
workers is declining. Within the utility sector, water
and wastewater facilities will need even more workers
at a time when replacement personnel (particularly
engineers) will be in increasingly short supply.
One conclusion of the succession planning study was
that every utility should implement workforce planning
to properly manage transition. A 12-step workforce-planning
model was developed specifically for utilities
and their specific labor needs. The study also underlined
the importance of knowledge capture to ensure that
tacit (i.e., undocumented) knowledge is not lost during
this period of employee changeover. Includes 6 references, tables, figures.
| Edition : | Vol. 97 - No. 6 |
| File Size : | 1
file
, 210 KB |
| Note : | This product is unavailable in Ukraine, Russia, Belarus |
| Number of Pages : | 8 |
| Published : | 06/01/2005 |
