By Amanda Durish Cook
CARMEL, Ind. — MISO’s human resources staff is looking for more ways to hire women and young people to diversify a workforce dominated by Generation X men.
The RTO’s annual workforce diversity results were presented during a June 15 conference call of the Human Resources Committee of the Board of Directors.
MISO is faring a bit better at overcoming its gender gap than the electric industry average: The RTO currently employs a 31% female workforce, while the average electric industry workforce average is 21% female. MISO said 36% of 2016 hires were female. The total U.S. workforce is about 47% female.
CEO John Bear said the RTO will continue to seek female representation in its workforce.
“The number of women receiving STEM [science, technology, engineering and mathematics] degrees is incredibly low. … It just means we have to fish from a smaller pond,” Bear said.
“We’re going to have to be super-focused on this to climb the dial forward,” Director Baljit Dail agreed.
MISO staff are also focusing on attracting millennials to close the generational gap across its employees. Generation Xers (ages 35 to 55) account for 62% of MISO’s employees. Baby boomers (55+) make up 13% of the MISO workforce and millennials (18-35) represent 25%. Electric industry employees in the U.S. are 50% Generation X, 26% baby boomers and 24% millennials.
Vice President of Human Resources Greg Powell said the age of MISO’s employees corresponds with its hiring boom after its was formed in 2001. He added that the “electric power generation, transmission and distribution workforce is aging much faster than the overall U.S. workforce and having great difficulty attracting millennials.”
Some directors expressed surprise that MISO’s workforce consisted of so few baby boomers.
Dail asked if there are any “hot spots” of baby boomers in any division that could be vulnerable to losing institutional knowledge through retirement.
“We don’t have critical positions that have an influx of people getting ready to retire,” Powell replied.
MISO is turning to its summer intern program to attract more millennials, Powell said. The RTO has hired 41 summer interns across its four locations this summer, up from 32 last summer. Powell said about 20% are women and 10 to 12% are minorities.
Bear said MISO is looking to increase the number of interns to about 50 in the next year.
“The interns are one of the best advertisements we have. We’re not a retail business, so as they go back into their academic communities … they’ll spread the word,” Bear said.
Powell said it’s MISO’s goal to hire about 50% of its interns on a permanent basis; it currently hires about 30%. “The challenge is these folks are pretty sought after,” Bear said.
