-We cannot keep young engineers to save our lives. Most move on after 1-3 years for employers with better pay, benefits, work/life balance, and/or remote work policies. Our workforce is gradually aging as a result, with little planning for knowledge transfer.
-Hyperfocus on fleet processes and procedures. Sites in regulated vs unregulated markets and northern climates vs southern climates have different needs; Corporate in FL cannot see past their own backyard and constantly question why all the sites are not exactly the same.
-NEE cares far more about appearing profitable to shareholders than about taking care of its employees. One week they’ll announce record profits, while the next they’ll cut benefit plans due to high costs of plan administration. There is no way anyone who makes decisions on our healthcare plans is actually subjected to the same poor, high deductible coverage (currently for a single person $2500 out of pocket before BCBS will pay a cent toward ANYTHING other than an annual physical that’s coded correctly in the billing system).
-The Safety department will actively discourage you from talking to OSHA, even about safety issues that violate our own procedures and have been in an unacceptable condition for over a year.
-One manager has been shuffled between departments for years, moving on for “development” or whatever euphemism they choose for that particular change, and decimate the budget of the new department they get shuffled to. The result is that when someone in their new department leaves we cannot rehire the position because of budget limitations. The remaining employees in that department are stuck trying to cover another person’s work with no plan for additional resources.
-Every few years Corporate comes out with a fleet wide cost-cutting project. Occasionally it reduces unnecessary work, but for the most part it’s an attempt to figure out what jobs we can eliminate or what we can stop paying a vendor for and add to responsibilities workers already have.
-Total lack of foresight for employee attrition. Many positions take 1-2 years for an employee to be qualified to do independent work. Crews in multiple departments are short-staffed because we will only hire the bare minimum to bring us up to their desired minimum staffing levels. By the time new employees are qualified, we’ve lost more people and are back where we started.
-Lack of Chance Management Planning. While reducing employees in one technical department, another department must pick up the work the original can no longer support. The new department gets barely any training and the organization can’t seem to understand why we end up behind schedule or suddenly get differing surveillance results with new people collecting field data.
