In the new digital insights report created in partnership with Raconteur I discuss the enormous challenge that lies ahead of us in the renewable energy sector – how to overcome the talent shortage that will hit organisations in the next few years and beyond. 

Insights are shared by representatives from the Renewable Energy Institute, Solar Power Europe, Vattenfall, the Energy Transition Institute at Robert Gordon University, RenewableUK, and some of my talented colleagues in AMS.

Some of the topics covered include the extent to which employment levels in the renewable energy sector are set to rise exponentially, the necessity of looking to other channels, skills and experience to meet demand, the importance of ensuring the renewable energy sector is as attractive as possible in a competitive market for talent, and the need for increased collaboration between government, business and education.

As a passionate advocate of securing a sustainable future for the generations to come, I don’t think there can be many more important problems to solve for talent acquisition professionals. 

At AMS we aim to be part of the solution to this problem by providing products and services that allow organisations to scale at pace, cost effectively, with minimum risk, enabled by leading technology and quality people. So, if you find yourself facing these challenges, please do contact me or use our form through the website Contact Us – AMS (weareams.com). We hope you enjoy the read!

McKinsey forecasts that global solar and wind power capacity will quadruple between 2021 and 2030 as nations reduce their reliance on fossil fuels. It says a “staggering” additional 1.1 million blue-collar workers will be needed to develop and build these plants, along with 1.7 million extra workers to operate and maintain them.

https://insights.raconteur.net/overcoming-the-talent-shortage-in-renewable-energy

Over the last decade in the tech market, we have all witnessed these accentuating themes; a widening global tech skills gap, rapidly increasing contract rates and more recently a growing emphasis on DE&I and Social Mobility in hiring agendas.

We have seen companies caught in a feedback loop, forced to address their short-term needs by paying higher and higher contract rates each year. Whilst paying the higher rates solves the immediate problem, it isn’t a long-term solution and does little to address the bigger skills gap issue.

Myth 3 of the AMS tech whitepaper discusses the Recruit Train Deploy (RTD) model as a solution. It looks at how AMS’s Tech Skilling team are helping organisations overcome the skills gap by taking a mid to long term approach to building and retaining future talent pipelines.

The RTD model is designed to address niche skills shortages in the economy by investing in future talent from diverse backgrounds. The applicants are selected on their aptitude and future potential as opposed to their academic credentials, following the lead of many companies in the big tech world by removing degree requirements. They are then trained with sought after tech skills before being deploying into long term assignments with the aim of converting into permanent employment. AMS’s Tech Skilling team also offer a reskilling service; helping companies to retrain their existing workforces to keep their skills relevant for future needs, reducing the need for redundancies and increasing talent retention.

We have recently introduced a new “Recruit Train Deploy” service line on the Public Sector Resourcing (PSR) Framework,  managed by AMS.  It’s a privilege to have recently joined the RTD team which is supporting government departments to not only establish a longer-term solution to addressing their skills gap but at the same time opening the doors to often underrepresented talent and making a positive change by increasing diverse representation across their workforces.

If a department believes they will struggle to hire a skillset through traditional methods, they now have an alternative route to take, an option that allows them to grow and design their own tech workforce from the ground up.

According to a new study by CWJobs, over two thirds (67%) of young adults are considering a career in tech, which highlights the potential we have for narrowing the tech skills gap in this country. I truly believe that this is a real positive, long term and sustainable solution to improving the tech talent marketplace for both employers and employees of the future.

If a department believes they will struggle to hire a skillset through traditional methods, they now have an alternative route to take, an option that allows them to grow and design their own tech workforce from the ground up.

https://www.weareams.com/stories/myth-3-todays-workforce-is-more-tech-enabled/

I would like to start 2023 with a recommendation. ‘Net Positive: How courageous companies thrive by giving more than they take’ by Paul Polman (the former inspirational CEO of Unilever) and Andrew Winston (published by Harvard Business Review Press), is a book that asks the question ‘Is the world better off because your company is in it?’.

As more and more employees seek purpose in their lives, more and more jobseekers around the world will be asking themselves a similar question when considering their next move……. ‘Which companies make the world a better place?’. 

I’m very keen as I set my goals for 2023 to ensure AMS and our clients are on this list. Those companies that think very carefully as to how they address this question and put in place a vision to act on it will attract the talent they need, and those that don’t, will not.

The authors of this book see 5 critical traits that help a ‘net positive’ leader and I will embrace these throughout 2023 and beyond;

– A sense of purpose, duty and service

– Empathy: a high level of compassion, humility,  and humanity

– More courage

– The ability to inspire and show moral leadership

– Seeking transformative partnerships 

I look forward to 2023 and helping AMS and our clients make the world a better place (this is an example of me showing more courage already!). 

Is the world better off because your company is in it?

https://hbr.org/2021/09/the-net-positive-manifesto

Post-pandemic, most organisations are on a recruitment drive. However, the war for talent is fierce and businesses are having to get creative and look beyond salary to attract the right people. If your company is looking to hire more Gen Z talent, there are several things you’ll need to consider.

In preparation for the LEAP TA Life Sciences conference next week in Boston, we have been conducting some analysis on the scarce talent trends that many, including myself, have been talking about extensively for the last year.  Our analysis makes for compelling reading. 

There are c. 1.2m roles within the US Life Sciences sector and 85,000 open roles today suggesting that we already have a deficit of c. 7%.  With attrition in the sector running at an average of 20.6% and with 54% of those leavers leaving the sector completely, it’s clear that the deficit, left unchecked, will continue to rise.  

The good news is that numbers of new graduates with Life Sciences skills are helping to offset those leaving the sector.  The US should see c.165,000 graduates with Life Sciences skills this year of which we should expect c.70% choose to join our sector.  That means we’re losing 124,000 workers through attrition and gaining 115,000 through new graduates and early careers hiring.  All of which means that our current worker deficit of 7% will be 8% by the end of this year.

But our sector continues to grow, with analysts estimating year on year growth of between 5% and 12%.  Let’s assume a conservative growth rate of 5% and let’s assume that our graduate populations also grow each year.  The 8% deficit of workers which we will see at the end of this year will rise to 13% by the end of 2023 and will continue to increase year on year to a 35% deficit of workers by 2030.    That would mean more than 1 in 3 roles vacant.

That’s a pretty alarming projection but it’s a projection that assumes that companies continue with the same talent practices as today.  To avoid these huge talent shortages we need to do things differently. We need to treasure our existing talent and invest in developing, upskilling and reskilling our talent to reduce employee turnover and reduce the need to hire externally.  When hiring externally we need to reduce our reliance on job-ready talent and instead hire for skills and hire for potential

Whilst many global economies are slowing or entering recession it feels unlikely that we’re going to see an immediate jump in unemployment and a drop in employee turnover.  Talent leaders need now to be considering new strategies to tackle the growing deficit of talent. 

I’ve linked below my new article in Outsourced Pharma which details 6 best practice approaches that companies should consider adopting.

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These challenges can no longer be denied. To address talent scarcity in the field, business leaders need to acknowledge the need for a large-scale strategic transformation and commit to bold changes in their hiring and retention practices.

https://www.outsourcedpharma.com/doc/best-practices-for-biopharma-talent-management-in-0001

Finding a purpose in work can sometimes be quite tricky, but for those who work in the Renewable Energy sector that must be a little easier……here is my view on why. 

The Energy industry has a key role to play in sustaining our planet and amongst the sustainability challenges within the industry are:

The Energy industry, and our use of energy, results in nearly three-quarters of all greenhouse gas emissions globally (Ourworldindata.org) primarily due to the burning of fossil fuels and the International Energy Agency (IEA) state that a transformation of the energy system that underpins our economies is needed (iea.org) for us to achieve our climate ambitions. The energy transition has to happen to protect our world and it needs to happen very quickly to keep us on the path defined by the Paris Agreement from 2015.

Those who choose to join the Renewable Energy Sector are directly involved in accelerating the energy transition and the whitepaper referenced in this post explains some of the ways in which talent acquisitions teams can help support in accelerating the energy transition. 

The Renewable Energy sector is certainly a very attractive career destination and I’m sure that to be part of the solution must be very inspiring!

Recruiting for the Renewable Energy Sector How the talent acquisition community can help accelerate the energy transition

https://www.weareams.com/whitepapers/recruiting-for-the-renewable-energy-sector/

There has been a theme emerging from recent discussions with EMEA clients. They have not yet seen the US level of ‘Great Resignation’ attrition across their organisations, but they are starting to see an unwelcome increase in the number of Gen Z/late Millennial leavers. The image above is from a drone video of my son and his friend crossing Crib Goch on Snowdon, which they described as totally awe-inspiring and terrifying at the same time! They perfectly personify late millennials in their desire for adventure, travel and independence,

and a warning to us all….

as Covid lifts and freedoms are resinstated, we should be aware that this group of GenZers are all about “striking off on their own, pursuing their own individual paths” (GenZInsights). They’re highly self-reliant and independent. It makes complete sense then that a ‘one size fits all’ employer brand strategy is not going to work for this group. It will however be critical that GenZ managers really understand and embrace an individual’s motivations and aspirations and clear the way to them achieving their personal career goals whilst giving them the space and flexibility to pursue their personal adventures.

Gen Zers are all about striking off on their own, individual paths and succeeding by their own, personal metrics and definitions. They’re entrepreneurial. They’re highly self-reliant.

https://www.passle.net/passlebutton?href=https%3a%2f%2fwww.bing.com%2fsearch%3fq%3dpew%2bresearch%2bcenter%26form%3dANNH02%26refig%3d4c24b4e8097b45078d9c21ca273dc6a2%26sp%3d1%26qs%3dAS%26pq%3dpew%2bresear%26sk%3dPRES1%26sc%3d8-10%26cvid%3d4c24b4e8097b45078d9c21ca273dc6a2&bookmarkSource=ChromeExtensionv1_14&selectedText=

According to a report by Adobe, 51 percent of enterprise employees would like to have complete flexibility when it comes to their schedule, in contrast to only 16 percent of respondents who said their ideal work week would have no flexibility at all, but rather “start and end work according to a set work schedule.” 

Interestingly, respondents in Germany were the most keen to embrace flexible working hours and 56% of workers surveyed reported working higher hours now, than before the Pandemic started. 

Younger workers spoke the loudest, with 73% of Millennials responding that they would switch jobs to another with greater flexibility if their salary and job description stayed the same, according to the report.   

Employee dissatisfaction presents a serious risk to business- more than a third of the workforce plans to switch jobs in the next year.

https://www.adobe.com/content/dam/dx-dc/us/en/pdfs/the-future-of-time.pdf

As businesses feel the pinch of the Great Resignation there are three benefits to using upskilling and reskilling as tools in the toolbox of retention:

  1. It truly allows a business to widen the pool of talent they hire from. 
  2. It is brilliant for supporting DE&I aspirations.
  3. It allows businesses to retain loyal talent needing a change in career direction. 

With effective programmes as well as opportunities to have career conversations in place, employees don’t need to move companies to attain their career goals.  

Nearly half (45%) of Brits are taking additional steps to upskill in the hope of changing career. Whilst high amongst those aged 25 to 44, the report also found one in five workers over the age of 55 are considering a career change too, showing the scale of the resignation isn’t just impacting the young.

https://www.hrreview.co.uk/hr-news/upskilling-is-helping-to-combat-the-great-resignation/141931?gator_td=J1Xia7BtXJ6x3SybKL58Ga0e5h4BgngZutRrnuRP0cSj14OShDuFSq2L15Xdu7%2bJez8KxCy9YcFVTEP4Wg8l9WWY5HYE05UD8KC5qNO4B2Tc5axgt2gwzC8YOWt9CrBicZg8SLIWOmjFtWZgMpFYgWNB367l9h%2fXlxh2SRXF9ao%3d

We know that to achieve net zero greenhouse gases by 2050, decarbonising electricity generation whilst producing more of it is critical. Different countries are setting out their renewable energy ambitions and some are in enviable positions already: 

This type of vision and purpose is deeply appealing to millennial talent who increasingly seek careers with ‘purpose’-driven organisations. This can only favour those energy organisations who place technological innovation and net zero targets at the core of their strategy.

bp has announced new plans to invest £1 billion in electric vehicle charging in the UK, supercharging the roll-out of fast, convenient charging across the country.

https://ethicalmarketingnews.com/bp-to-invest-1-billion-in-uk-ev-charging-infrastructure