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“We all have a responsibility to ensure future talent is aware of the career opportunities that exist in the utilities sector”
Readers are well versed in the sector’s skills shortages and the ever-changing landscape. The methods required by the utility sector to attract and recruit competent people are rapidly transforming as the environment we pluck talent from alters significantly.
Current skills activity in government departments, such as the new Apprenticeship Levy not yet being designed to complement the National Infrastructure Plan or other energy plans, isn’t helping workforce planning either. While juggling these challenges, businesses are also being driven by a commitment to improve diversity and range of talent within their ranks.
Increasingly, businesses feel they need to look beyond their current horizon to source their future workforce. The Energy & Utility Skills Group has been expanding the available support networks and talent pools sector employers can recruit from. Following the huge success of the Regional Youth Entrant Programmes, relationships for talent attraction programmes now include key associates such as the Department for Work and Pensions, Career Transition Partnership, and Association of Colleges.
As the UK economy continues to improve, the search for science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) based talent is growing and we find ourselves competing with the motor, aviation, rail and manufacturing industries, as well as emerging sectors. In response to this challenge, Eon introduced a customer service traineeship and apprenticeship, attracting young people to embark on a career in the energy industry. Dave Newborough, UK HR director at Eon, is keen to ensure his organisation is recruiting a diverse range of candidates from the communities in which it is based. He comments: “Not only is this a new recruitment strategy for us, helping to improve our services for our customers, but it will help the government’s youth unemployment agenda by providing real opportunities and real jobs for young people.”
Eon has successfully run eight cohorts of 15 young people and having realised the business benefits it has a target to recruit 250 apprentices this year.
Never before has the UK had the range of options or working flexibilities available as it has now. We all have a responsibility to look beyond our current engagement and recruitment processes to ensure future talent is aware of the credible, sustainable and essential career opportunities that exist in the utilities sector – some of the best available in the UK.
Aidan Brooks, talent engagement manager,
Energy & Utility Skills Group
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