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Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Utility Workforce Manager

💰 $ - $

UtilityOperationsWorkforce Management

🎯 Role Definition

The Utility Workforce Manager is a hands-on, strategic leader responsible for planning, deploying, scheduling, and optimizing line crews, field technicians, and contract resources to meet operational objectives across normal work and emergency restoration events. This role blends workforce planning, outage and storm management, contractor administration, safety and compliance oversight, labor forecasting, and continuous improvement. The ideal candidate drives data-driven labor decisions, reduces response times during outages, ensures compliance with collective bargaining agreements, and partners with operations, asset management, and HR to sustain a high-performing field organization.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • Field Operations Supervisor / Crew Leader
  • Workforce Planner / Resource Scheduler
  • Outage Coordinator or Restoration Specialist

Advancement To:

  • Director of Field Operations / Director of Workforce Management
  • Senior Manager, Distribution Operations
  • Head of Emergency Response & Resiliency

Lateral Moves:

  • Outage & Storm Manager
  • Asset Management or Maintenance Manager
  • Safety & Compliance Manager

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Develop and maintain an integrated workforce plan that aligns crew scheduling, field resources, overtime budgets, and contractor usage with short-term operational needs and long-term capital/maintenance programs; use historical demand, weather models and reliability metrics to forecast staffing requirements.
  • Own outage workforce strategy and restoration playbooks: lead pre-event staging, crew dispatch priorities, mutual-aid coordination, and post-event demobilization to restore service safely and efficiently while minimizing customer minutes interrupted (CMI).
  • Manage day-to-day crew assignments for multiple disciplines (distribution linemen, cable splicers, technicians, tree crews, meter technicians) ensuring compliance with skills matrices, certifications, and work-rest policies.
  • Implement and optimize workforce management systems (WFM) and outage management systems (OMS) integrations—drive configuration, rules, and dashboards for real-time visibility of crew status, work orders, and estimated restoration times (ETR).
  • Lead labor forecasting and budgeting for operations: produce weekly and monthly forecasts for regular hours, overtime, contractor spend, and mutual aid costs; identify variance drivers and recommend corrective actions.
  • Supervise contractor and vendor management for supplemental staffing: develop scopes of work, evaluate bids, negotiate rates, manage contract performance, and ensure safety and quality standards are met.
  • Partner with HR and union representatives to administer collective bargaining agreements (CBAs), resolve workforce disputes, apply overtime rules fairly, and ensure labor practices are legally compliant.
  • Build and maintain incident command and emergency response capabilities for major events: staff the emergency operations center (EOC), define roles for field command, and ensure clear communication channels between dispatch, crews, and leadership.
  • Establish KPIs and performance scorecards (SAIDI, SAIFI, crew productivity, first-time-fix rates, response time, overtime hours) and report to senior leadership with trend analysis and actionable recommendations.
  • Design and run workforce optimization initiatives—right-sizing crews, route optimization, first call resolution improvements, and productivity programs—leveraging GIS, routing tools, and historical workforce data.
  • Oversee workforce training, certification, and competency tracking: coordinate apprenticeship programs, technical training, safety refreshers, and cross-training to maintain a multi-skilled and resilient field workforce.
  • Ensure field safety and regulatory compliance by enforcing procedures, leading incident investigations, tracking corrective actions, and collaborating with the safety team to reduce recordable incidents and lost-time events.
  • Own staffing plans for preventative maintenance and planned outages, coordinating closely with asset management, project managers and operations planners to ensure resource availability without degrading emergency response capability.
  • Manage crew scheduling technologies (Kronos, ClickSoftware, Workday, SAP Fieldglass, or similar) to support timekeeping, availability, leave management, and overtime assignments with an emphasis on accuracy and auditability.
  • Lead workforce analytics and reporting initiatives: build dashboards, run root-cause analyses on workforce-related outages, and translate findings into hiring plans, training needs, and process improvements.
  • Coordinate with dispatch and system operations to prioritize restoration assignments during complex outages, balancing safety, regulatory restoration requirements (e.g., critical customers), and resource constraints.
  • Design incentive programs, retention strategies, and workforce engagement initiatives tailored to front-line technicians to reduce turnover and attract skilled trades talent.
  • Drive continuous improvement and standard work for crew mobilization: reduce call-to-crew times, improve staging efficiency, and standardize checklists and tools to accelerate safe restoration.
  • Implement succession planning and career path development for field roles—identify high-potential employees, create development plans, and ensure bench depth for leadership continuity.
  • Maintain strong cross-functional relationships with engineering, asset management, procurement, finance, and IT to synchronize workforce capacity with capital and maintenance plans and to support system upgrades and outage coordination.
  • Oversee timekeeping accuracy and payroll interfaces to prevent labor cost leakage; reconcile overtime, back-fill shifts, and ensure proper coding of work for capital vs. expense accounting.
  • Lead post-event after-action reviews (AARs), document lessons learned, and implement changes to restore plans, workforce rules, and mutual-aid agreements based on empirical data.
  • Manage regulatory and reporting obligations related to workforce operations, contractor usage, and emergency response; prepare documentation required for commissions, auditors, and insurance claims.
  • Drive diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives within field hiring and promotion practices to broaden candidate pipelines and foster an inclusive culture in operations.
  • Evaluate and pilot new workforce technologies (mobile field apps, AI-driven scheduling, predictive staffing models) to increase crew utilization, safety, and response accuracy.

Secondary Functions

  • Support ad-hoc data requests and exploratory data analysis.
  • Contribute to the organization's data strategy and roadmap.
  • Collaborate with business units to translate data needs into engineering requirements.
  • Participate in sprint planning and agile ceremonies within the data engineering team.
  • Assist procurement and legal teams in drafting terms and service-level agreements for supplemental workforce contracts.
  • Provide subject-matter expertise and input to IT for prioritizing WFM and OMS integration projects.
  • Serve as a subject matter expert in stakeholder presentations, regulatory hearings, and community outreach sessions regarding restoration priorities and field operations.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • Workforce planning and resource allocation for utilities (crew scheduling, overtime modeling, surge staffing).
  • Outage management and restoration processes, including ETR calculation and mutual-aid coordination.
  • Experience with Outage Management Systems (OMS), Workforce Management Systems (e.g., Kronos, ClickSoftware, Workday) and mobile crew dispatch tools.
  • Labor forecasting, budgeting and variance analysis with experience preparing forecasts for operations and project work.
  • Strong Excel skills (pivot tables, Power Query, advanced formulas) and experience with analytics tools (Power BI, Tableau) for KPI dashboards and reporting.
  • Knowledge of GIS and routing optimization for crew dispatch and field work planning.
  • Familiarity with SAP/Maximo/CMMS for work order integration, time capture and capital/expense coding.
  • Contractor/vendor management experience: RFPs, contract negotiation, SOW development and performance metrics.
  • Regulatory and CBA compliance knowledge specific to electric, gas or water utility operations.
  • Incident command, emergency response coordination and mutual-aid management experience.
  • Basic programming or scripting (Python, SQL) for data extraction, automation of reports and workforce optimization models.
  • Experience implementing continuous improvement methodologies (Lean, Six Sigma) in field operations.
  • Understanding of safety management systems and ability to lead investigations and corrective actions.

Soft Skills

  • Strong leadership and people management skills — ability to lead, mentor and motivate frontline supervisors and crews.
  • Excellent verbal and written communication — able to translate technical Workforce data into executive-level narratives.
  • Stakeholder management — adept at building cross-functional partnerships with HR, unions, engineering and finance.
  • Decision-making under pressure — proven ability to prioritize during complex outage events.
  • Analytical mindset with problem-solving orientation and attention to operational detail.
  • Change management experience — guide adoption of new systems, policies and operational models.
  • Conflict resolution and negotiation skills — comfortable working within unionized environments.
  • Customer-centric focus — prioritizes safe, rapid restoration and clear customer communications.
  • High emotional intelligence and resilience during prolonged emergency response periods.
  • Coaching and talent development — committed to building bench strength in the field workforce.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

  • Bachelor's degree in Business, Engineering, Public Administration, Human Resources, or related technical field; equivalent experience considered.

Preferred Education:

  • Bachelor's or Master’s degree in Electrical/Civil Engineering, Business Administration (MBA), Operations Management or related field; professional certifications in workforce planning or project management (PMP, Lean/Six Sigma) are a plus.

Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Electrical Engineering
  • Civil/Mechanical Engineering
  • Business Administration / Operations Management
  • Human Resources / Labor Relations
  • Supply Chain / Logistics

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range: 7–15 years of progressive experience in utility operations, workforce planning, or outage management.

Preferred:

  • 10+ years in the electric, gas or water utility sector with at least 3–5 years in a leadership role overseeing workforce scheduling, outage restoration or contractor management.
  • Demonstrated experience managing unionized workforces, emergency responses and large-scale mutual-aid deployments.
  • Proven track record implementing WFM/OMS integrations, labor forecasting models, and productivity improvement initiatives that delivered measurable reductions in overtime and restoration time.
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