At least half of those leaving are engineers, but information-technology employees are also being lured away with salaries that are often 30% to 50% higher than pay at the grid, she said. Most employees who left for other jobs have remained local.
All seven of the state and regional grid operators on the continental US said they faced similar challenges. At Midcontinent Independent System Operator, which serves 42 million people in states including Indiana, Iowa and Michigan, highly trained engineers and other staff are being poached by rival grids, utilities and renewable power developers.
As a result, grid operators are beginning to allow some employees to work from home, raising wages and encouraging people with different experience levels to apply for roles they might not have considered before. Southwest Power Pool has even hired three fully-remote employees who live in other parts of the state and country — something that was unheard of for grid operators before the pandemic.
Nationwide, local businesses are getting creative. Paul McDonald, senior executive director at the staffing agency Robert Half, said that many smaller companies are leaning into hiring candidates that may not have all of the technical skills needed and then training them.
Benjamin Jones, chief executive of Mobile reCell, an IT company based in Fishers, Indiana, has employed a similar strategy: “We’ve focused on the philosophy of giving people opportunities from a young age.”
Sugg, the Southwest Power Pool CEO, emphasized the need to adapt to the new world.
“The reality is people in Arkansas can work anywhere now,” she said. “The world around us has just changed on a dime and we need to change with it.”
--With assistance from Alex Tribou.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.