Dealing with a changing workforce
The change in the age demographics of the entire country is affecting the makeup of tomorrow's transportation workforce. Because there are fewer young people looking to start careers in transportation, many positions opening in the next few years will not be filled. These facts were presented by Brad Brown of Populus during a conference session focusing on preparing the transportation workforce for a changing and depleting supply of trained professionals.
Between 1981 and 1995, the number of students graduating from four-year schools in all engineering fields remained steady. The number of professionals in civil engineering remained constant due to an increase in the number of women and foreign-born persons offsetting the loss of traditional graduates to electrical and computer engineering. However, even with more women and minorities entering the civil engineering field, the future workforce will not meet projected needs, Brown said. (Ed. note: future issues of the Exchange will have news about a Minnesota workforce task force.)
Given this outlook, Ann Johnson from Professional Engineering Services spoke about how to find and keep good employees. To attract students 14 years old and younger to transportation, companies should use outreach programs to promote math and science in schools. For people ages 15 to 25, promoting transportation careers can be done through internships, job shadowing, and encouraging student participation in professional associations. Employees between the ages of 25 and 34 need job development in the form of job training, continuing education, and career planning. To retain employees between the ages of 35 and 54, companies need to focus on job satisfaction and helping employees balance work and family life. Retired professionals can be called upon to reinvest in transportation education by helping to recruit new employees.
Cameron Kruse of Braun Intertec spoke on how automation and new technology can help current and upcoming transportation professionals do more work or work more quickly by increasing productivity and quality. He suggested that the focus now should be finding out how to do the same amount of work with fewer people.
Kruse mentioned that the barriers to implementation of such automation would be lack of financial resources, lack of knowledge about the technology, or distrust of the new technology.
—Erin Streff