Populating the Pathway: Why K-12 School Engagement Is a Workforce Development Solution

Strong job growth and talent retention have long been hallmarks of the public utilities sector. The market resilience and employment stability of these companies has proven advantageous, along with the competitive benefits packages offered to workers in all parts of these organizations. Even with the job losses experienced during the onset of the Covid pandemic and the “Great Resignation” that followed, these businesses fared better than other industries in term of regaining jobs and retaining their workforce. But there are challenges on the horizon. Utility companies are feeling the pressure and it requires workforce development solutions that can produced a long-term impact for a long-term problem.

The rapidly shifting talent landscape experienced throughout other industries is not something utilities can escape despite a history of job growth, retention and stability. With 50 percent of the utility’s workforce set to retire over the next decade, a wave is about to wipe out a field of well-trained and highly-experienced technicians, operators, engineers, managers, supervisors, clerical and administrative staff, along with a vast loss of critical knowledge. The wide variety of employee experience, education and specialized skills required to fill a wide range of positions within the industry makes it even more susceptible to the impacts of this shifting landscape. One that guarantees that existing workforce development models will fall short in overcoming.

For many decades, traditional workforce development has assumed that:

  • “Most” high school graduates go to college
  • College graduates find their work industry organically
  • On-the-job training occurs with ample senior staff with comparable bachelor’s degrees in STEM or many years of mastery/experience
  • Typical recruitment methods work in line with open positions as they occur

In more recent years as the emerging clean energy sector has gained footing, the workforce development model has also consisted of:

  • Training existing utility professionals in the new methodology developed to service heat pumps, grid work, EV infrastructure and renewable technologies
  • Piloting internship and training programs for young adults and college grads where many have reported small returns on high expense pilot programs

Why Are These Models Falling Short?

Declining College Enrollment

The assumption by traditional workforce development models that most high school graduates are going to college does not play out in the numbers. While the percentage of young adults with a high school diploma has reached 94% and has stayed there since 2004, college enrollment has been declining. According to an August 2024 report by the Education Data Initiative, enrollment since 2010 has declined 9.8%. The immediate college enrollment rate of high school graduates was flat, right around 70% from 2000 to 2018, before dipping in 2019 and 2020 as the job market heated up for less-skilled, lower-wage jobs. It was only 60% in 2022 and 61% in 2023.

College Graduates Find Their Work Industry Organically

This assumption leaves employment recruitment for the utility industry flatfooted. As education and outreach providers for utilities for many decades, the team at NTC can tell you how the answer to the question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” has changed dramatically over the last decade. For students across the nation, the new answer is, “I want to be a YouTuber.” It’s an incredibly popular answer that, in their mind, promises fame and wealth with no additional skills, training or professional networking needed.

While it’s easy to laugh it off, the truth of the matter is, students want to be YouTubers because they feel they know a lot of Youtubers. They like them. They trust them. So, they want to be them. It is not much different than the 77% of high school graduates who do not go on to college and enter either the retail or restaurant industries and stick with those industries for decades, as reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It’s visible to them. They know restaurants. They know shopping. They believe they can do it.

Why would high school or college graduates find the utility industry organically, if the industry does not actively put themselves in front of this potential pool when they are making career pathway decisions? Decisions that are usually made long before utility companies think of getting in front of them, effectively conceding these potential employees to other industries.

The trick for successful workforce development is to become visible, which investment in career pathways and awareness programs makes possible. With strong recruitment strategies that raise awareness of the career opportunities utilities have and clear pathways on how to access them, utilities can be the one young people know, like and trust. And the industry where they want to be.

On-the-job Training with Ample Senior Staff

The Silver Tsunami is upon us. The term coined across multiple studies and reported by Power Magazine specifically for the utility industry in finding that 50% of the utility workforce is retiring in the next decade. This drain of highly skilled workers is happening faster than these workers can be replaced by those entering the field. The upcoming workforce is not ready to backfill these vacancies. This simple math of more leaving than entering makes for certain that a wealth of legacy information is being left behind. On-the-job training with ample senior staff is a thing of the past.

Additionally, there is a real culture shock between generations in the workplace that’s adding to the displacement of so many emerging professionals. Many of the piloted internship programs have reported low completion rates, conflict between the training approach of senior talent and the sensibilities of the younger participants, and a lack of connection or comprehension of each other in a multi-generational workplace. People don’t stay where they don’t feel they belong, putting a real strain on training and retention.

One to One Recruitment with Open Positions

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that employment of electricians, plumbers, pipefitters, and steamfitters will grow 10 percent from 2020 to 2030, much faster than the average for all occupations. Yet, the US birth rate has been on a dramatic decline in the US since the 2007 recession.

Additionally, as stated, the pool of qualified candidates is not keeping pace with number of openings. There is a wide variety of utility occupations that require significant science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) knowledge and expertise, yet the STEM career college track only represented 23% of the total U.S. enrollment in 2019, as reported by the Harvard Gazette. Perhaps more alarming though is that the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center reports that only 62% of college students complete their degree.

The lower birth rate and the low numbers of students prepared for STEM careers compounds the problem of both growing employment opportunities and the wave of retirements set to hit.

This is a problem that is not going away anytime soon. The business of college and the workforce is always a two-decade problem; therefore, we can confirm the pool is smaller and is going to be smaller for at least 20 years. This, again, calls for a long-term solution to a long-term problem.

All and all, none of this adds up to one-to-one recruitment with open positions being a successful workforce development model. The solution to this math problem is a robust workforce development system that includes populating the pathway from a young age.

Shifting Priorities to Fill the Gap: Early Investment in Career Pathways

Seeing the funnel of viable candidates shrink as the industry expands alongside inadequate recruitment and training, raises questions on how to make the math work in favor of filling positions with qualified workers. These questions can start to outline an essential shift in workforce development priorities.

As we consider the statistics and trends, a new scope of talent development has become more important: Career Pathways. Yet, outreach and awareness of career pathways is needed far before high school or college graduation, where most resources are currently being invested.

Career pathways is about the coordination of people and resources. Within education, this includes aligning our country’s K–12 and postsecondary education population with the career and technical education services required. Workforce development, broadly defined, is an interrelated set of solutions designed to meet employment needs. Career pathways, however, supports students in acquiring the academic, employability, and technical skills that employers demand as well as providing outreach and recruitment in making these populations aware of career potential. Workforce development promotes employment using a reciprocal approach of addressing the needs of both job seekers and employers while career pathways prepare future generations to have the awareness and capacity to actively aim towards their future career.

Without career pathways recruitment models are building a workforce development system that does not provide for ways to populate that system. K-12 school engagement is a workforce development solution because it populates the pathway within the system.

A Long-Term Problem Needs a Long-Term Investment Solution

Career pathways support students in acquiring the academic, employability, and technical skills that employers demand as well as providing outreach and recruitment in making these populations aware of career potential. Students cannot take a path that they do not know exists. Awareness is truly the first step in filling the pipeline. Investment in awareness is an investment in filling that employment pipeline long term. When leveraged well, utilities can utilize career pathways implementors to do much of the heavy lifting in creating the know/like/ trust factor for youth looking for a direction to aim their professional pursuits. The earlier that aim is directed to the opportunities presented by the utilities industry the better. By shifting workforce development priorities to include career pathways a more viable, long-term solution to a long-term problem becomes clearer.

Contact NTC about how to build a customized career pathways program to foster your work workforce development solutions.

 

Populating the Pathway: Why K-12 School Engagement Is a Workforce Development Solution