Prospect launches pamphlet on energy workforce resilience
Prospect reps and officers speak at a webinar to launch a new pamphlet from the union, ‘A workforce investment plan for our energy networks’.
Prospect reps, full-time officers and an industry expert spoke at a webinar to launch the union’s new pamphlet ‘A workforce investment plan for our energy networks’, which addresses the growing concerns on workforce resilience in the sector.
As the energy sector faces a transformative and crucial period as the backbone of efforts to reach Net Zero, Prospect’s document includes proposals in four key areas that would help to protect and maintain the sector’s workforce for the future.
The webinar was chaired by Richard Clatworthy, the president of Prospect’s energy sector, who spoke about the dramatic changes that have occurred in the 33 years he has worked for Western Power Distribution.
The rate of transformation was only going to accelerate he warned, as the way electricity is generated, and the greater demands for it, continues to grow.
“Any of the organisations that we work for, their biggest resource are the staff, as well their biggest cost. From Prospect’s perspective, and we would like to think from the businesses’ perspective, the staff are worth investing in,” said Richard.
Prospect research officer Nick Kardahji offered further substance to the growing problems facing energy sector workforce, particular in electricity transmission and distribution networks.
He presented the results of a survey carried out by Prospect in late 2020, which suggest there are serious issues of understaffing, a lack of training and a culture of long hours.
Nick’s presentation of the survey results to the webinar can be downloaded here.
Operational issues
Northern Powergrid rep Chris Dougall, a protection engineer, shared some of his experiences on problems that are occurring from an operational point of view.
He started by saying as the network become ‘smarter’ it also becomes more “complicated and difficult to keep running, which means more technical people are needed. So those pressures on workforce renewal are quite high.”
While he praised Northern Powergrid for running a good workforce renewal scheme, Chris said that there were too many trainees coming in and not enough experienced engineers to actually help them.
“I think the industry has to take a good look at the training and development of those engineers. We need to get them on the systems as competently as possible, not as quickly as possible.”
“Currently, we’re taking on graduates and placing them straight into control. When I started in the 80s you needed to be an SAP [Senior Authorised Persons] for 10 years before you could apply to control. Now we’re getting people in with no industry knowledge and putting them straight into a control position.”
However, Chris did praise Northern Powergrid for taking positive steps to tackle fatigue.
“The company said you will not work more than 16 hours in a day, full-stop. If you are out on a high voltage fault you just stop and somebody else will take over. That’s a massive cultural change in the last 12-18 months. Previously, people just worked until the lights came back on.”
Despite the current issues facing the energy sector, Chris finished by saying it remained a great industry to work in and said it needed to do more to attract a younger and more diverse workforce.
Fatigue
Picking up on the issue of fatigue, Prospect health and safety officer Chris Warburton, told the webinar about some new guidance on fatigue that has been launched on the Prospect website.
“We’ve seen that fatigue has become a growing problem and, probably along with stress, it has become the main health and safety issue in the electricity industry in recent years,” he said.
Chris added: “There needs to be proper planning around fatigue. Employers need to think through in advance how it’s going to be managed and mitigated. There must be a risk-based approach where the management of the risks is incorporated into the existing health and safety system.”
The guidance to fatigue in the energy sector can be downloaded here.
Chris’ PowerPoint presentation that he gave to the webinar is also available here.
‘Deliverability comes from the workforce’
Pamela Taylor, an executive coach and leadership trainer, sits on WPD’s consumer engagement panel and she shared her personal perspectives on workforce resilience.
First, she explained the role of a consumer engagement panel, as experts with a variety of experience, who are appointed by the network companies to scrutinise and challenge their business plans.
The panels write a report that is sent to Ofgem, which uses them to look at where it might want to test and challenge the companies on their business plans.
“Workforce resilience has very much been the poor relation in the business planning process,” admitted Pamela.
“It’s one of the few areas in fact, perhaps the only area, where there are no expectations. Ofgem hasn’t set any targets and it doesn’t say what it expects, other than what’s already required in law.”
However, Pamela made the point that the business plan has to be deliverable, and that’s where workforce resilience becomes highly relevant because “deliverability is going to come, in many cases, from the workforce.”
“We know that we’re facing huge challenges as a sector, indeed as an economy, in achieving Net Zero. Having the right skilled and resilient workforce is fundamental to that,” Pamela told the webinar.
“Also, it’s just the right thing to do. Companies these days cannot position themselves as socially responsible, that younger generations are going to be motivated to join, if there isn’t, firstly, a clear sense of purpose and, secondly, a real commitment to its people.”
Finally, Pamela added that perhaps the culture of the energy networks prized stability and control over innovation, and this would need to change as new skills are needed such as data scientists.
“They also need to better at creating diverse and inclusive cultures that reflect the communities and customers that the network companies serve.”
A resilient, safe and healthy workforce
Prospect senior deputy general secretary Sue Ferns closed the webinar by saying Prospect’s work on workforce resilience was being done against the background of Ofgem new network price control review, RIIO-ED2.
She added that Prospect had been engaging extensively with the energy regulator and warned “this is likely to be a tough settlement, and what that might mean for staffing levels in the future.”
Prospect’s new pamphlet ‘A workforce investment plan for our energy networks‘ calls on Ofgem and the network companies to take a bold approach to workforce resilience, and includes four pragmatic steps that could be taken to measure and improve it.
- Measure workforce satisfaction on an annual basis
- Create a workforce development and renewal funding pot
- Take steps to increase workforce diversity and equality
- New targets and reports for health and safety
Prospect’s pamphlet ‘A workforce investment plan for our energy networks’ can be downloaded from the Prospect Library.
“There isn’t a dichotomy of interest between workers and customers. It’s in everybody’s interest that we have a resilient, safe and healthy workforce,” said Sue.
“But nobody should be working without adequate staffing or feeling overwhelmed or stressed out from work on a repeated basis.”
Prospect has produced a video animation to highlight the issue of workforce resilience in the energy sector.
