Workforce

The ‘Silver Tsunami’: Surging Retirements Stoke Workplace Challenges for U.S. Water Utilities

Transformative digital technologies have long been recognized as a solution to the U.S. water industry’s pressing workforce challenges, increasing efficiency and mitigating problems created by what has become known as the “silver tsunami.” That’s the tide of veteran, aging workers launching into retirement, taking their deep operational knowledge with them.

It’s a growing headache for the sector, as Black & Veatch’s 2024 Water Report makes clear: Nearly half — 47 percent — of the nearly 630 U.S. water industry stakeholders who responded to the report’s survey cited the aging workforce and hiring of qualified staff their top challenge. That’s second only to aging water and wastewater infrastructure — a chronic issue for decades.

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Putting a finer point on the matter, eight in 10 respondents report that their utility is experiencing “an increase of retirements or people leaving,” consistent with the responses from the past two years. The transitory nature of some roles today requires utility leadership to engage in how digital technology can make the onboarding and staff transitions much easier.

While an aging workforce has remained a consistent challenge over time, this year’s survey revealed changes to which job categories are most affected. Eighty-six percent of respondents cited management or supervisors as the most impacted job category, up 9 percentage points over last year in overtaking last year’s No. 1 answer — operators, at 82 percent. It seems in 2024, therefore, that water utilities are experiencing the most impact when it comes to the retirements or departures of their management or supervisory staff.

Another pain point was engineers. Sixty percent of respondents stated that engineer job functions are most impacted by retirements or people leaving, compared to 53 percent in 2023. This tracks with another survey question, in which six of 10 respondents said they are outsourcing engineering or technical work, with outsourcing of information technology (IT) staff a distant second at 28 percent.

So, with utilities increasingly outsourcing engineering staff, will digital tools bridge the gap? The answer is yes, but for these tools to be useful to users, change management must improve with new ways of working with digital technology support. Half of the respondents said that they have experienced resistance to technology adoption from their staff, an answer consistent with 2023’s 49 percent and 2022’s 51 percent.

It remains clear, therefore, that as digital solutions offer exciting new transformative abilities and efficiencies, water utilities will continue to have to tend to the “human” side of things as well through training and change management.