With demand exceeding the supply of trained and qualified installers and technicians, the ICT industry is experiencing a significant workforce shortage that is impeding the adoption of technology and resulting in significant delays or even cancellations of projects across all sectors. The shortage is primarily due to the number of qualified workers retiring far outpacing those entering the industry. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and the National Electrical Contractors Association (NECA), for every 10,000 electricians that retire each year from the trade, only 7,000 join the field.
Labor analysts also point to the fact that even when candidates do apply, they are often unqualified or underqualified for the job. Industry associations and training providers must get creative and collaborate to cultivate the necessary skill set for the next generation of ICT installers and technicians. But they also need potential candidates to enter into training programs to begin with.
Getting them in the door
Drawing younger Millennials (born between 1980 and 1994) and Zoomers (born between 1995 and 2014) to enter into ICT training programs is proving difficult for industry associations and training providers. The perception that all trades are menial, physically demanding, repetitive, and unrewarding prevent many young people from considering the role of ICT installer or technician. While some of this stems from previous generations placing a stigma on trade careers, it’s also triggered by the demise of vocational education at the high school level, too few students being encouraged to pursue the trades, and an overall lack of awareness.
“Training is constantly evolving, but you to need to get them in the door first. That essentially requires that we ‘rebrand’ the trades,” says Jeff Beavers, RCDD, OSP, executive director of network integration and services for NECA. “Changing the culture is certainly a challenge, and we need high schools and their guidance counselors to look at the skilled trades as a potential career for students.”
Sean Kelly, RCDD, technical director for Light Brigade that delivers fiber-optic knowledge and skills training globally, agrees that educators play a key role. “While some of it comes from parents, and the overall adult community pushing kids to go to college, guidance counselors and teachers tend to tell students what they’re suited for based only on their scores,” he says. “I myself was discouraged from going into a technical field because someone didn’t think I was technical enough. But look where I am today.”
To help attract people to the trade, NECA is leveraging its multiple chapters around the country to participate in career fairs, events, and mentoring programs, as well as expanding their outreach efforts through promotional videos and social media campaigns designed to appeal to Millennials and Zoomers. Beavers points out that the ICT industry is well positioned to attract young people compared to other trades by the nature of being focused on the technology these individuals have been accustomed to all their lives. He says, “Young people today don’t really care about plumbing and potholes, but they always want to know the WiFi password. All they’ve ever known is internet connectivity, and now the low-voltage industry is about IoT, integrated intelligent buildings, and sustainability that are improving lives and the world. That’s exciting stuff, and we need to increase the awareness that there are careers associated with that.”
Another misconception is that most young people believe the trades to be low paying with little opportunity for growth. NECA has the advantage of offering paid apprenticeships for students to make money on the job while undergoing training. While that includes the 5-year NECA-IBEW electrical Apprenticeship Training Program toward becoming a Journeyman and eventually a Master Electrician, they also offer a 3 ½-year paid apprenticeship through the Limited Energy Technician Joint Apprenticeship and Training Committee (JATC) that focuses on low-voltage voice, data, intercom, nurse call, fire alarm, security, paging, audiovisual, and control systems. Technicians earn from more than $20 per hour to about $40 per hour as they advance through the program.
One area of the ICT industry that is seeing high demand and more lucrative earning is fusion splicing. Technicians are often paid depending on demand and where they’re located, ranging from $50 to $120 per hour with experienced splicers making an annual salary up to $195K. “If you can fusion splice fiber, you’ll have a job tomorrow,” says Kelly. “You can make a lot of money, but the cost per burn is pretty disparate—where cost of living and demand is high, there is the potential to make much more.”
Changing delivery and requirements
While getting Millennials and Zoomers to consider the skilled ICT trades is the first hurdle, industry associations and training providers also need to shift to training methodologies that appeal to the younger generation and succeed in developing the skills they need.
“Millennials and Zoomers function differently than we do—they tend to jump back and forth between multiple tasks, and they want training to be affordable, accessible, and quick. Even formalized training has to be fun because many of these young people don’t want to be there in the first place. Death by PowerPoint simply doesn’t work,” says Kelly. “A lot of these younger people are gamers, so we’re migrating our training to be very graphical and colorful and have shifted to electronic surveys and credentials.”
One way that Light Brigade is working to engage younger students is to use newer game-based learning platforms like Kahoot, through which each student completes review questions in a game form on their smartphone, playing along and competing against other classmates to earn points based on the fastest and most correct-answers that allows them to win prizes. The questions are also presented using more graphical elements, and the smartphone apps offers engaging study modes. “With Kahoot, we’re seeing that by chapter 2, it’s an all-out competition among students with friendly trash-talking. The result is that students are now paying closer attention to the content so they know the answers and can compete, and we’re seeing far better results on final exams,” says Kelly.
Light Brigade is also looking at solutions that use green screens for instructors to better demonstrate content, shorter interactive and self-paced training snippets, and even virtual reality (VR) for hands-on learning. A platform being considered and used by Light Brigade’s sister company is the Oculus VR System that allows students to put on VR headsets and dive into specific tasks with experts guiding them through various scenarios. While Kelly says it’s part of a longer five-year plan, the goal is for Light Brigade to eventually offer asynchronous hands-on learning where students use their own splicers, microscopes, and testers while using VR technology that simulates them actually being in the field.
Other industry associations and training providers are also starting to change the way they look at the actual skills required. “Automation in our industry is doing away with many of the routine tasks—like what TurboTax did for taxes. Younger people are used to those types of advanced automated tools, and that makes the job itself more appealing,” says Beavers. “While math has always been a requirement for installers and technicians, automation tools also allow us to do away with the old-school approach of eliminating students who don’t have a high aptitude in more advanced complex algebra and calculus.” NECA has also integrated more soft skills into their training, like email and client-facing communication to improve people skills, which Beavers points out is a requirement for any job.
Collaborating for the common good
Aside from enrolling in technical college, there are several other associations and training providers throughout the ICT industry—from NECA and BICSI, to Light Brigade, the Fiber Broadband Association (FBA), the Fiber Optic Association (FOA), ETA International, and more. Kelly emphasizes that the skills gap and workforce shortages impact the industry as a whole and despite many of these organizations previously in competition with each other, they now need to work together.
Thankfully, we are starting to see collaboration. ETA International adopted Light Brigade’s hands-on fiber training curriculum as part of their Fiber Optics Technician/Installer (FOT/FOI) certifications, and Kelly recently teamed up with the FBA’s vice president of research and workforce development Deborah Kish to present at the 2022 Broadband Communities Summit on the very topic of training the fiber workforce. BICSI and NECA also recently held their first-ever joint summit to address the growing needs of the low voltage and technology communities. “Many BICSI Authorized Training Facilities (ATFs) are also NECA training centers where those enrolled in NECA-IBEW Limited Energy Technician training are receiving BICSI training. We had a great BICSI-NECA event, and we’ll be doing more together,” says Beavers.
Kelly advocates for cabling and connectivity manufacturers to get on board with requiring their installers be properly trained on the fundamentals, rather than just teaching them about their specific products. He also calls attention to the fact that industry certifications and credentials as a whole need to be elevated and required. “If certifications don’t mean anything, no one is going to get one. But we can’t have individuals who were painting parking spot lines last year come in and win a fiber project based on YouTube videos only—that’s a problem and creates a liability,” he says. “We need a grand industry-wide movement of organizations working together to ensure proper, consistent, and required training.”
