Powering the energy transition: Helping an energy provider define and shape its future workforce

The energy transition is requiring energy businesses to transform their operations to meet complex and shifting policy, regulatory and customer needs. This transformation will rely heavily on people with the right skills in the right roles at all stages of the transition. 

A large-scale energy provider and leading regional employer had renewed its corporate strategy to guide it through the next phase of the energy transition. It sought to build clarity and evidence around the scale of change to its workforce that would be required to deliver this strategy. 

The business engaged Nous to work in partnership on this challenge. Leveraging our experience in the energy transition and strategic workforce planning expertise, we brought insight on the drivers of change and workforce implications, advanced workforce modelling skills, and expert advice on contemporary workforce strategies. This complemented the client’s insight on its business, operating environment and regional context. 

“Strategic workforce planning is especially crucial in an environment of disruption,” says Principal Anita Sarris. “It provides organisations with a basis for long-term workforce development and transition to ensure the right capabilities at the right scale over time.” 

The first phase sought to build a shared understanding of the current context and the pressures shaping future workforce needs. This involved a PESTEL scan, a review of key strategic and operational plans, and interviews with business leaders. These conversations provided a rounded view of the future workforce both internally and externally.  

Nous documented a core set of workforce drivers, themes that will influence the workforce for this business over the next 10-years. These themes spanned a range of areas including:

• Net zero policy and associated regulatory changes 
• Environmental impacts of climate change on the network
• Technological changes including digital technology 
• Shifting workforce demographics and preferences

The strategic drivers provided a frame against which to analyse future workforce needs, including capabilities and skills, demand across different role types and functions, and external pressures on the labour pool. 

With a clear picture of the operating environment, we worked with technical and operational experts inside the organisation to forecast future internal workforce demand. A modelling tool was developed to project staffing needs across six segments, taking account of projected asset growth, changing work practices, technology uptake, and evolving regulatory requirements.

“Our approach recognised the dynamic nature of workforce planning,” says Sarris. “Rather than creating a static report, we partnered with business leaders and subject matter experts to agree demand assumptions and used these to create a tool with which they could adjust those assumptions.”

This work centred on the segments of the workforce deemed most critical, which is to say those with the greatest potential strategic or operational impact or risk. We conducted detailed workforce modelling, external labour market analysis, and qualitative deep dives, for each critical segment and associated roles, to determine:

• The demand profile. How many people are needed in these roles over time?
• The supply profile. What is the expected availability of people with the required skills and qualifications to fulfill these roles within the region?
• Key shifts. How might the skills and capabilities of people in these roles need to shift? 

We explored these questions across multiple scenarios, recognising the dynamic and uncertain nature of the next 10 years. 

This analysis generated a detailed profile of the future workforce, and a heatmap of potential gaps and risks to be addressed. We delivered this in the form of a labour modelling tool, allowing the client to refresh and update the model and its assumptions and associated projections as the landscape shifts. 

”These outputs gave our client a solid basis to inform and prioritise investment and action,” says Sarris, “to target the areas of greatest risk.”

To turn these insights into action, we facilitated a strategy workshop with key representatives from across the business. The session focused on crafting clear, targeted strategies to address each identified workforce pressure point.

These strategies drew on a balanced mix of “build, buy, borrow, and bind” approaches. They ranged from expanding internal career pathways and enhancing technical training programs to targeted recruitment strategies, new partnerships with regional education providers, and strengthened retention initiatives for hard-to-source capabilities.

The resulting roadmap provided both organisation-wide strategies and tailored actions for each of the six critical segments. It set out responsibilities, indicative timelines, and dependencies, providing a practical guide for implementation.

The final phase involved consolidating all insights, analyses, models, and strategic recommendations into a comprehensive planning report and action plan. These documents were designed to support ongoing workforce planning, providing a clear narrative supported by robust evidence. The forecasting tools and their accompanying guidance materials were handed over to the internal workforce team, enabling seamless continuation of modelling and strategy refinement.

The organisation’s leadership responded enthusiastically to the strategic workforce planning work and the clarity it brought. The new demand model and the integrated forecasting tool have become central components of its workforce planning processes, offering a dynamic and evidence-based foundation for decision-making. Crucially, the evidence generated throughout our engagement provided the organisation with a strong foundation for building a compelling business case for long-term workforce investment. It equips executive leaders with clear, data-driven insights they can use to secure funding for both current and future workforce needs.

“We know that workforce is a critical enabler and significant potential barrier to the energy transition,” says Sarris. “Predicted workforce shortages are well-documented. While we can’t predict the future, we can build a robust and evidence-based view of what the need is, so organisations can plan for how they will meet this challenge.”