MIDWEST REGIONAL MEETING MAY 16, 2011 Mark Lindgren, VP Human Resources at Ameren Services welcomed the group to St. Louis. We all share a culture that is geared to getting things done that is why this group is here; as an industry we have identified a very important issue that we have decided to figure out solutions; collaborative approach to reaching solutions. Mark acknowledged Betsy Miller who has made a tremendous effort to work with workforce planning and CEWD. Welcome and thanks for being here Ameren is pleased to host this event. Ameren s mission is to Lead the way to a secure energy future working on pipelines of talent that won t show up for several years. When we think about the purpose of being here exchanging ideas, learning more about what s happening, innovating diverse opinions in the room one ingredient that is required Meeting Starters tie to a theme, bring up the energy in the room, make the room smaller. 1 walk up to someone you haven t met and introduce yourself. 2 explain why you are engaged in this process. 3 thank them and move on to someone else. Point is to get to know others and start the innovation process. Ameren is going through a culture change; we like to talk about our moods and how to bring energy into the culture. Keep the introductions throughout the day. Excited with what is happening with CEWD and what it is doing; 75% of the natural gas and electric utilities represented by their members; introduce kids to our jobs. Here for a great purpose; I am very passionate about this effort. Wish you well; Betsy Miller thanks for everyone to come here and I look forward to learning from you on things that you are doing and things we can think about together to move workforce planning efforts forward. Thank you for being here and welcome. Ann Randazzo thank you Mark and Betsy for hosting us. Welcome to the 4 th Midwest regional meeting. CEWD has been around for 5 years now; the time has gone very quickly. Only members and their educational partners are invited agenda but most of the time is so we can talk among ourselves. As we go through the day and you have a question, bring it up and we ll talk about it. Want you to walk away today with some new ideas that you can implement. CEWD needs to work to help your day job is easier by providing tools, resources, solutions. If you see something that doesn t look like it will be helpful to you, please let us know. Our Summit will be held in November in Alexandria where we will bring in external speakers, but the regional meetings are to have smaller, focused conversations. KCP&L/IBEW standardizing curriculum to support technical crafts Get Into Energy Career Pathways project started in 2009 looking at everything CEWD does and how does it all work together. Got questions on the workforce development process look like, how do you ensure that the educational programs are right; how does career awareness work. CEWD started the Career Pathways project which laid out the process from career awareness, through recruitment, training and hiring. Gates Foundation was focused on low income 16 26 year olds to increase the number of post secondary credentials they receive that have value in the marketplace. CEWD started to look at the process and apply it to the low income young adults. This model also applies to other demographics. Eight states are piloting the implementation of the career pathways project. This is a state wide effort where we are using the state energy consortia as the lead. Every state is different
including their education system, workforce development system, pipeline organization each state is looking at how this model can work in their state. CEWD has been working with organizations that have already been actively involved with this demographic audience. We will initially start with 5000 young people touched and hire 500 at the end of the process. Process how will we get the low income young adults prepared to begin the process. We have found that a key to their success is career coaching one on one focused attention on what they want to do and how to help them succeed. Kuder has a system that is focused on adults that will help track the adults progress, offers a career interest survey to determine if energy is of interest, identifies extra support needs such as child care, transportation, tuition support. Created this career coaching system that supports the student from the time they are identified through six months of employment addressing issue of persistence. Process needed to make sure that the students had the right assessments to be successful in whatever training they decided to go into. Started with the competency model and found the National Career Readiness Certificate measures math, reading and finding, locating and using information, Skills USA has a set of assessments that track personal effectiveness skills which includes teamwork or interpersonal skills. First three tiers of competency model have the ability to be trained. Found that there were a lot of bits and pieces on the energy industry specific skills (Tiers 4 5) but nothing that pulled all of the pieces together. CEWD went to CORD who has taken the framework of the energy fundamentals program designed by Florida to build an Energy Industry Fundamentals curriculum. The University of Missouri is now taking that curriculum and making it an online offering which will be available in January. CEWD wanted a credential for this program that has value in the industry. ANSI is going to be reviewing the Energy Industry Fundamentals curriculum to enable offering of a credential for students who complete/pass the course. Industry is the only one that can define portability so that a credential/certificate is recognized by all utilities. Florida and California will be teaching the course in the high schools; other states are teaching it as part of a preapprenticeship program and others that will teach it as a prerequisite to an existing or new program. First three credentials support Tiers 1 5 of the Energy Competency Model. CEWD focuses on five critical jobs line workers, plant operators, generation technicians, natural gas technicians and electric T&D technicians. CEWD is working with ACE to have them review the apprenticeship program and recommend college credits for the program. College credit is critical so that the credentials and credits are stackable. There are five different career paths and educational programs that students can follow. How much does all of this cost? WorkKeys (NCRC) is free in some states, but in those that don t it is $30 a student. There is training available for students that don t pass. For the Energy Employability assessment, the cost is $20 per student. For Energy Industry Fundamentals, the cost for the curriculum will be free. Career coaches are available through the workforce system in a number of states; in other states high schools and community colleges provide the coaches. There are a lot of technical training programs available now so curriculum doesn t have to be re developed. The bottom line focus for CEWD is that whatever is developed for the GIECP process is available to all CEWD members and that the process is sustainable. We are assessing what parts work and what parts will need to be improved. Update from GIECP pilot states Kyle Ault MN have a project manager who has been very involved in the process. One area of difficulty is getting the coaching piece set up, MN has great educational programs in place Who might be able to help could reach out to retirees or teachers. There are options out there if the workforce system can t help.
Joe Cisneros OH all of the utilities are involved in the program; piloting process in four areas of the state; there are templates available on how to run the initial getting started meetings in your state with the utilities, workforce system and education. Discussions are being held on including contractors into the process. IN has a state wide education network Bill Miller University of MO scenario based online training, a process of putting together in a situation and then give them the information they need to solve the problem. Career Coaching training is that online? There is a handbook, there is an online portion, there is a recording; it is comprised of 4 two hour sessions. It can be packaged so anyone can use it. For NCRC, we have mapped them to the energy competencies. Silver is the requirement for all jobs except nuclear, which is gold How will Energy Industry Fundamentals credential be awarded? A school has to apply to teach the program, the students have to pass the assessment and then the school issues the certificate. Ann gave an update on CEWD s 2011 goals and the progress that has been made to date (see attachment). Balance supply and demand need to better forecast and communicate between industry and education. Have to get better at hiring in a staggered fashion; what weight do you apply to the experienced employee This raises the question on what skills do we need to have the students come in with because this will change what we need educators to do. Work at national level on apprenticeship programs and what credit students can get after being hired with an associate degree or another credential; companies in the state need to determine what are the basic requirements that a student needs to have so the programs can be developed accordingly JobStart 101 scenario planning program for employability skills Learning to Learn one week boot camp for students who have dropped out teaches them how to learn, understand their own motivation Troops to Energy Jobs took the pathways model and applied it to the military. Needed to check on what type of coaching is needed; what credit they can get for military training, what jobs are they suited for University of MO mapping competency model to work going on in community colleges; thrust is sustainable energy but with the competency model needing some basic skills. Asked partners to look at their energy curriculum and match it to the model there was a struggle. Take a look at the curricula across the state to see what was in common and where we had gaps and to look at current curriculum in light of the model to see if they had some holes; looking at data to see what it is telling us. Once a college is invested in a curriculum it is hard to change.
The programs that were set up to go into a 4 year program had less of the technical skills than the terminal degrees. The tools that are coming out so CEWD can put together so the members can use them singly or with your state consortium. State of the Energy Industry workforce report is ready to be published; it is a document that can be shared with your educational partners so they can better understand what has been going on in the industry; it can also be used as a resource for members to look up information about what is going on in different areas. What makes your workforce planning process effective? DTE Forecasts attrition pretty accurately; leads to a good recruitment plan; identifies critical jobs; tracking metrics that the operating managers actually own; Ameren tool that is sophisticated that can predict turnover involuntary and retirements; goal to develop pipeline strategies for critical jobs; Workforce planning not just the numbers, but how are you going to get to those numbers, which might be different for each job. AEP has metrics in place, projects attrition, has a complement management system to identify vacancies that can be filled; difficult to forecast past 2 years because of the economic conditions DTE Workforce Planning process what type of communication plan is behind the scenes so business understand the metrics, the analytics behind the recommendations; how to look at staffing from a strategic perspective 1. Board presentations awareness on analytics 2. Partnered with controller organization to tie headcounts to budget process 3. Established teams in operating units and asked to develop a workforce flow and overlay the pipelines shows the flow in one slide If you look at turnover approximately 6 7% including retirement; still haven t seen the mass exodus of potential retirements; because of that senior management is reluctant to believe there is a real concern Should show not only what could happen, but what you are currently doing to mitigate that Anybody done work to determine the type of replacement are they all 1:1; what is the productivity impact? Consortia Updates Michigan FOA grant money coming soon. Training and development activities in six areas. Ann mentioned getting all of the Smart Grid grantees together to compare notes on what is being done. Ohio Focusing on the GIE Career Pathways Project
Missouri Working on military outreach and career awareness. Attending career fairs and developed one pager on energy careers. Planning on holding a 3 day energy camp in Kansas City, MO featuring energy industry fundamentals. Note to CEWD: A glossary of energy terms would be very helpful especially for sharing with educators. Energy Industry Fundamentals there is a glossary at the end of every module. Kansas Planning for first meeting which will be held at Westar in Topeka, Kansas on June 27. Discussion ofameren s high school program working with two schools. Mentoring is a key component of this program. One school has a 79% pass rate for the POSS/MASS tests because of tutoring provided by teacher to individual students. Note to CEWD: this program is missing from the newsletter Best Practices spotlight chart in the notebook. Discussion of CEWD demand survey. Contractor data is not included in CEWD survey numbers. NECA may have workforce numbers for contactors.