Utility Week

22 | 23rd - 29th September 2016 | UtILItY WeeK Operations & Assets Roundtable Utility Week HR Forum Birmingham, 13 September 2016 Diversity and recruitment for tomorrow's utilities Utilities need to provide a balanced and diverse working environ ment to attract, retain and make the most of their employee base. H R is a profession that struggles with a woolly image. Oen it is not seen as a strategic function, but rather an administrative one that processes payroll and issues employment contracts. If it was ever deserved, this image is now obsolete. HR professionals in utilities must enable their organisations, and the sector as a whole, to respond to the enormous chal- lenges of changing business models, trans- forming technology, escalating demand for infrastructure investment and ever increas- ing requirements for organisations to prove they offer ethical, inclusive employment environments. This means developing structured, data- led approaches to skills and resource plan- ning for increasingly complex roles. It means having the ability to ramp up resources at times of high demand, and have a plan for what happens to that resource when big projects are over. It means tackling difficult- to-grasp problems around inclusiveness and attractiveness to women and other workforce minority groups. With these challenges in mind, it was fit- ting that Utility Week's HR Forum opened with a scene-setting presentation from Energy & Utility Skills Group chief execu- tive Nick Ellins, who outlined the imperative for a collective sector approach to strategic workforce renewal. The well-worn issues around skills gaps and sparse engineering talent pools were central to Ellins' presentation, but they were framed in a new light. With 57 per cent of the government's multibillion-pound national infrastructure plan expected to be delivered by the energy and utilities sector, Ellins pointed out that there was no accompanying big picture strategy for delivering the "right people with the right skills in the right place at the right time at a sustainable price". Without such a plan, Ellins said, the realisa- tion of national social and economic aspira- tions are "unachievable and unaffordable". Acknowledging the ongoing work within individual organisations to promote careers and fill an increasing number of skills- related vacancies (these are higher in utili- ties than any other sector in the UK), Ellins argued that only through collective action can utilities hope to redress the imbalance between the current sector workforce profile and the demands of tomorrow. Stepping into the breach to facilitate col- lective action, Energy & Utility Skills is cre- ating the sector's first strategic workforce renewal document. Not just a skills strategy, it will be aimed at stakeholders in the sec- tor's regulators, Treasury, Cabinet Office and the Infrastructure and Projects Authority. The document is expected to be pub- lished by Christmas and Ellins urged the HR leaders gathered before him to take owner- ship of it and help transfer it from policy to practice in as short a time as possible, taking up their rightful role in strategic planning for their organisations and the sector. Delegates were responsive to this call and showed keen interest in other projects being supported by Energy & Utility Skills to neutralise the "war on talent" and share skills resources. One approach has been to establish a Talent Resource Network, which carries details – accessible to all employ- ers – of thousands of individuals who have expressed interest in entering the energy and utilities sector but may not yet be fully quali- fied to do so. Almost a thousand of these individuals are ex-military personnel with plenty of core competencies that chime closely with the Stem (science, engineering, technology and maths) capabilities utilities so sorely need. The scope for capitalising on ex-military skills seeking civilian reinvention was made clear in a later presentation delivered by Lt Col Richard Jones. Not only do military recruits oen have hard-to-secure technical training, but mili- tary approaches to teamwork, strategic thinking and leadership could be usefully applied to companies. New corporate devel- opment days from the Reserves service aim to prove this point. Jones' presentation offered an unusual twist on the usual tack of school engagement and vocational training, which most compa- nies follow in order to boost Stem capabili- ties. However, it's not just the skills of current and future employees that is challenging HR professionals. It's also their make-up. The difficulties faced by companies struggling to increase the diversity of their employee base was a key theme of many presentations and was the overriding talking point at the VIP dinner, held for speakers and select guests the evening before the Forum.

• Cover