Sector is staring at a quarter of a million vacancies over the next decade

More than a quarter of the workforce will retire in the next decade, leaving the utility sector to recruit or retrain 48% of the current workforce which represents 277,000 vacancies over the next ten years.

The figures came from the Energy & Utilities Skills Partnership – a collaboration of 30 major organisations in the sector – which last week updated its inaugural sector skills strategy it published in 2017 in light of achievements over the past three years, a changed context, and policy development.

The partnership highlighted the impact of Covid 19, net zero carbon targets, exiting the European Union, increased competition for skills with other high-profile sectors and the divergent skills policy across the four nations as among the factors making the sector’s skills challenge “very real and urgent”.

It maintained its commitment to the three key strategies of:

• Sector attractiveness, recruitment and workforce diversity

• Maximising investment in skills

• Targeted action – to address anticipated skills gaps and shortages.

But distilled its ten priorities to six in light of the changed circumstances.

• Last week, the Energy & Utilities Skills Partnership hosted a virtual awards ceremony to honour the 46 energy, utility and supply chain companies that successfully passed audits to win Procurement Skills Accord Awards for 2019/2020.