The energy and utility industry is faced with a lot of change: renewables, microgrids, IIoT, and automation. Climate change is driving unpredictable service outages; digital transformation adds complexity and capability in communicating with stakeholders, enabling data-driven decisions, while maintaining aging infrastructure, technologies, and systems is straining budgets.
Compounded by a national labor shortage, particularly in mid-level skills, and a wave of retirement, employees are challenged to embrace change and do more with fewer resources.
The industry is faced with unprecedented change—in both opportunities and challenges:
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C-level executives are prioritizing culture change to empower employees, improve productivity, and improve their ability to hire and retain top talent, recognizing that they must move beyond a traditional mindset to meet community and stakeholders’ changing expectations.
To meet affordability and reliability needs, these top strategies all demand change management:
- Digital transformation
- Automation and AI/ML, IIoT for intelligent routing and maintenance
- Move from waterfall to agile development
- Cross-functional strategic involvement—changing paradigms and skillset demands in IT, HR, marketing, accounting, and legal
Trying to support your employees through a major change plan, re-organize, or change the customer experience?
We are happy to partner with you where needed. Let's explore!
Lessons Learned from Utility Industry Peers
Launch Team has helped to prepare people for change in several recent energy and utility industry change plans. Here are the programs some of your peers are taking on.
- CIO at a US energy company. 2023 Initiatives: intelligent routing and ERP roll-out to support digital transformation. Recognizing the need for change management: far-reaching implications in daily workflows for employees across divisions. Lagging and costly adoption of previous implementations.
- VP EHS, US utility company. 2023 initiatives: reorganization that changed reporting structure and success measures, to broaden the mission to include Sustainability across existing divisions, to make far-reaching changes that will enable the organization to meet aggressive emissions goals. Recognizing the need for change management: People, processes, and technology changes in a long-tenured workforce with significant change fatigue.
- CIO, US utility company. 2023 initiatives: increased adoption and upskilling in AI/ML, changes to requirements process and demand management to position IT in a more proactive, strategic role in the business. Recognizing the need for change management: Understaffed with a high rate of turnover, distrust due to past RIFs, and poor organizational health ratings led leaders to believe that culture change was needed hand in hand with major initiatives.
