How can utilities recruit and retain the best young professionals?

Do utility and service managers really understand the career paths and aspirations of young professionals entering and working in the sector?

Do any of us? Do we know about all the new digital skills young people bring, how they want to work with utilities and their overall mindset and approach to work?

At the GWOPA Congress next week, AquaFed is holding a session with utility managers to discuss these questions.

Why are we doing this? We’ve launched a project based on assumptions from extensive feedback from young professionals and surveys. Their messages are that young people:

·????????want to move around between organisations more easily within related sectors eg water, health, environment, and climate change, rather than stay in one organisation or sector

·????????don’t want to be known as just water professionals and see themselves with wider roles on climate change and sustainability

·????????have new skills and ways of working that are not easily recognised or understood by employers, but which are much more transferrable than employers acknowledge

·????????can be encouraged and incentivised not just financially but through the opportunities of experiences, networks and more formal recognition of their contributions.

We need to listen to this and act on it. The obvious but very important point is that young people are the future. We will only have sustainable and resilient ‘utilities of the future’ if we make them as a place of opportunity and progression for young people.?

As a result, we have launched our Career Pathways Guidance project, which aims to recognise the messages above from young professionals and produce guidance for utility and service provision managers. The guidance is meant to provide new and innovative ideas for managers on how to manage their young workforce– ideas that are practical and easy to implement. The session at GWOPA is part of the current research phase of the project.

Funding for the project is from the Netherlands Government’s Valuing Water Initiative Youth Journey. I am delighted that we have finally managed to partner with the Rural Water Supply Network, which is carrying out the research.

I am also delighted that Eleanor Treadwell from Afr'Eau will facilitate the discussion at the GWOPA Congress. For those of you attending, it is in the Bonn Room at 3pm on Tuesday, 23 May.?You can also watch it online and you will be able to comment on the questions that we will be asking.