by Joe Wilhelm Jr.
Staff Writer
In the ocean of the world of business, the JEA is trying to stay afloat in the face of a possible “tsunami” of retiring employees.
The JEA board of directors was updated on the company’s work force readiness plan and risk mitigation efforts after its monthly board meeting Tuesday.
“It’s important that you understand and have confidence in what we’ve done in spending the money appropriately to get real mitigation in place,” said Robert Mack, JEA manager of organizational development.
“As you can see, the tsunami hasn’t hit us yet. We are treading water, but the tsunami is still growing. It’s going to happen. It’s just a question of when,” he said.
Of its nearly 2,000 employees, JEA considers about 630 as having the opportunity for retirement and the remaining 1,400 as possible “flight” risks, depending on their level of investment in the pension plan.
Those with 1-10 years of service at JEA, about 900, were considered the highest “flight” risk because they are not bound by the pension plan and could leave for better compensation or job opportunities.
“If we look at our work environment survey, which we use to gauge our employee satisfaction level, it’s not the best at this point relative to where we were a couple of years ago,” said Susan Hughes, JEA chief human resources officer.
“Frankly, I think it’s the compensation situation that we’ve been in with the recent salary freezes. We’ve had two years of freezes, and because of budgetary constraints we’ve had very limited training and development opportunities,” she said.
Despite the survey results, Hughes said that people understood JEA still is a good employer.
“That said, most people that are here understand that if they want to stay in Jacksonville, this is a very good place to work,” said Hughes.
Though the numbers appear daunting for JEA’s human resources staff, the utility is gaining ground on the problem.
“The good news is, with all these mitigation steps, in addressing the top 48 highest mitigation risks, we’ve addressed all but 16 of those risks that we have identified,” said Mack.
The biggest risk by job classification included professional engineers and operations managers. There are 26 professional engineers at risk of “flight” or retirement, which is 57.8 percent of the job classification.
For operations managers, 16 are at risk, which is 33.3 percent.
“Getting people here is only the first step. Until they get oriented and properly trained and productive, they are not going to be fully productive for us as an organization,” said Bruce Dugan, JEA director of organizational performance improvement.
“We are pouring a lot of money (for recruitment and training) into our engineering group in particular because we have a lot of young engineers,” he said.
Dugan said those employees are recently college graduates and are working on their professional licenses.
“They need a lot of training and that takes dollars to make that go,” he said.
JEA also has begun a mentorship program with University of North Florida engineering students to help prepare them for the job market.
JEA Managing Director and CEO Jim Dickenson will look outside for suggestions on how to improve operations at the utility.
“My initiative is, as we work throughout this year, we want to go out and get a consultant to take a look at some of things we are doing and recommend some things that we could do better and help us understand the market better from an independent standpoint,” said Dickenson.
Those results and continued risk mitigation efforts will be report to the same executive committee for another year because the board extended its term.
Officers are Chair Ron Townsend, Vice Chair Ashton Hudson, Secretary Jim Gilmore and Assistant Secretary Mike Hightower.
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