Engaging the future workforce: technological disruption and the changing face of transit’s future By Garrett Vandendries, Senior Manager – Management Consulting, Gannett Fleming, Inc.; Brian Alberts, Director of Safety, American Public Transportation Association (APTA); Pamela Alexander, Office Leader – Atlanta, LTK Engineering Services; Charles Frazier, Executive Director, Rock Region Metro; and Michael Yang, Chief Financial and Administrative Officer, Roaring Fork Transportation Authority Abstract The transit industry has a few problems: An aging workforce, difficulties with knowledge transfer during an era of retirements, and funding challenges that ever-complicate the core charge of delivering bus and rail service for 10 billion rides per year,1 just to name a few. Yet perhaps the greatest task at hand is addressing the incredible volume and velocity of technological disruption impacting its workforce and work processes. While this disruption is not unique to the transit industry, it does provide a range of challenges and opportunities that the industry must face, particularly regarding how current and future workforce generations are embraced, engaged, and incorporated. This study explores the current state of transit industry labor force, how it’s being influenced by rapid technological disruption, and the strategies transit can leverage to build and sustain a technologically-progressive workforce. Where Is Transit Today? The public transit industry cannot sustain its future workforce needs relying solely on its existing employees, and thus must look outside the industry and outside traditional methodologies to fill the gaps. This comes as no surprise to many in the transit family; however, familiarity doesn’t necessarily make identifying a solution any easier. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data from 2017 indicated the Bus Service and Urban Transit sector had a medium employee age of 51.3 years,2 placing it as one of the oldest industries in America. Ongoing and impending retirement of the Baby Boomer generation is complicating matters and forcing the industry to rethink its approach to employment. The TechForce foundation has taken a closer look at the attrition, predicting that actual shortages of vehicle technicians – a key sector of the transit workforce – will be three times higher for year 2016-2026 than previous 2014-2024 BLS projections had indicated. This all paints a challenging transit workforce picture moving forward. Enter disruptive technologies. While technology has impacted the cadence of workforces, workplaces, and industries as a whole for many centuries, the context of that disruption has evolved. Today, the mere existence of disruption is largely subordinate to the incredible pace at which it occurs. In transit, an industry that has historically operated on institutional structure, process, and knowledge, many leaders and advocates recognize that nimbleness has never been the sector’s forte and that many agencies have been a bit behind the technological disruption eight ball in recent years. Public transit must be looking to shape the future, not react to it, and that largely begins with a workforce – and, thus, technology – introspection. Paradigm Shifts “The complexity of what lies ahead can make many business leaders feel as if they are navigating whitewater rapids rather than charting predictable courses of action.”3 Deloitte Insights had this to say in The Evolution of Work – New Realities Facing Today’s Leaders, as their research shows that leaders everywhere see the future of work as dynamic, fluid, and

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largely unknown. The team, with the help of crowdsourcing platform WikiStrat, uncovered what they call the “seven new realities” of future work. While we won’t go into each of those items individually, what’s noteworthy is how they’re largely centered around technological disruption, lifelong reinvention, nimbleness, and innovation, as well as the ways these concepts related to people performing work. They illustrate the expanded commingling of workforces and technologies, of change as a binding mainstay. Public transit entities have been feeling the mounting pressure from technological disruption. Industry leaders realize that innovative approaches from Transportation Network Companies (TNCs) – Lyft, Uber, and the like – as well as a highly competitive career entry programs mean transit must rethink its approach to not only bus and rail service, but also to recruiting. More broadly, workforces on the whole, not just in transit, are quickly changing. Advanced technology and business analysis skills are no longer outliers, but norms. The National Center for Education Statistics notes from 2010 through 2016 a roughly 50% increase in computer and information science Bachelor’s degrees, and a more than 105% increase in Master’s degrees from the same concentration.4 In the year 2016 alone, 40,128 of such Master’s degrees were issued, compared to just fewer than 37,000 for the entire five-year period from 1986-1990. Similar trends can be observed across traditional Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) subjects, far outpacing overall trends across all fields of study. This influx of tech-focused and data-driven talent is helping guide markets to and through the aforementioned paradigm shifts in the concept of work. Public transit agencies are feeling the effects of this wave, and are starting to see broader gaps between its current workforce and what they need to be recruiting for – and preparing to integrate – in the immediate future to account for changing work and institutional knowledge gaps. Who, then, are they to be recruiting? Enter Generation Z. While Millennials have captured the minds of Human Resources departments for the past several years, it’s time to begin accounting for this post-Millennial generation’s entry into the workforce. After all, Generation Z is estimated to account for 32% of the world population in 2019, larger than any other generation.5 In a high school careers study conducted by Millennial Branding and internships.com, 72% of high school students and 64% of college student want to start a business someday. This is a substantial increase from Millennials and indicates a shifting mindset towards when and what our future workforce is considering for career prospects. Further, is suggests that connecting to this generation earlier than ever is essential to showing that careers in transit are both available and viable. It’s a generation in America that’s always existed with the internet, that’s highly socially conscious, that’s keener than ever before on topics such as diversity and inclusion. In fact, the youngest of Generation Z in America, those born in 2007 or later and who some dub Generation “Z-Plus”, will be our first minority white generation ever.6 These individuals bring with them a wealth of opportunity, a more adaptable and open mind than ever before, and a drive to succeed in unprecedented ways. Public Transit’s Response Public transit industry leadership is starting to realize that it must act earlier than ever to capture the attention of this new workforce, and through contextually sensitive and meaningful methods of communication and engagement. The industry realizes Generation Z will be a critical factor as large swaths of its labor workforce begin to use less wrenches and more computers to perform traditional maintenance tasks. This sector of transit also sees the technological opportunities to build advanced computer science applications that help better analyze and deliver the future of urban and regional transit service. In the face of ever-increasing funding gaps, technological developments led by this next generation workforce

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may be the key to finding new and more efficient methods of operating, of customer communication, of subsistence. Fortunately, though perhaps a bit behind the curve, transit is starting to act. With nearly 30% of its workforce eligible for retirement in the next few years, LA Metro has partnered with Los Angeles County on building a transportation school to help train its next generation workforce with Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics (STEAM) skills – adding the facet of creative skills beyond traditional STEM curriculum - needed to carry the industry into the future.7 In Chicago, the Chicago Transit Authority participates in the regional One Summer Chicago program, which has helped them host roughly 90 high school students per year for summer internships which place them in meaningful, engaging work experiences in the agency. This has exposed the students to a career opportunity that they may not otherwise have known was available, and let’s them see first hand how it works and how they can contribute, to see that working in transit goes beyond simply bus and train operators and also includes lawyers, engineers, project managers, business analysts, accounts, and the like. Programs of this nature also introduce prospective future employees to the rewarding, socially-conscious, and breathtakingly diverse culture that exist within the transit sector. The public transit industry also recognizes the need to revisit traditional hard and soft benefits packages and identify ways to create offerings that work for employees from all walks of life instead of simply taking a “one size fits all” approach. Many industries, with the tech sector at perhaps the forefront, have long embraced concepts such as flexible schedules and broad-scale wellness programs, dynamic and collaborative workspaces, and technologically integrated environments, all of which offer more meaningful appeal prospective employees. Realizing this tech-focused workforce future will be no small feat for the public transit industry. It requires an industry-level approach to:

• Focus on a constant evolution of relationships with technology. • Ensure transit understands and appeals to the values of its future workforce. • Make Generation Z aware of careers in transportation and industry values early on.

For an industry that has long recognized the importance of evaluating its relationships with the riding public, transit is now beginning to re-evaluate its relationship with future employees and technology, for this will be the only way the industry can stay on track. References

1. Federal Transit Administration (2016). The Annual National Transit Summaries and Trends (NTST) Report for NTD Report Year 2016.

2. Bureau of Labor Statistics (2017). Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population – 18b. Employed Persons by Detailed Industry and Age. www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat18b.htm

3. Stockton, H., et al. “The Evolution of Work – New Realities Facing Today’s Leaders.“ Deloitte Insights, Deloitte, 30 January 2018, www2.deloitte.com/insights/us/en/focus/technology-and-the-future-of-work/evolution-of-work-seven-new-realities.html

4. National Center for Education Studies (2017). Digest of Education Statistics, US Department of Education. Accessed August 2018, nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/2017menu_tables.asp

5. Miller, L J and Lu, W. “Gen Z Is Set to Outnumber Millennials Within a Year.” Bloomberg Economics, Bloomberg Finance, LLP. 20 August 2018,

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https://www.bloomberg.com/news /articles/2018-08-20/gen-z-to-outnumber-millennials-within-a-year-demographic-trends

6. Frey, W. H. “US white population declines, and Generation ‘Z-plus’ is minority white, census shows.” The Avenue, Brookings Institution, 22 June 2018, www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2018/06/21/us-white-population-declines-and-generation-z-plus-is-minority-white-census-shows/

7. Ubaldo, J. “Metro and L.A. County partner on Transportation School to create the next generation of workers.” June 18, 2018. www.masstransitmag.com/press_release/12417524/metro-and-los-angeles-county-partner-on-transportation-school-to-create-the-next-generation-of-workers

Suggested Citation Vanendries, G.; Alberts, B.; Alexander, P. Frazier, C.; and Yang, M. Engaging the future workforce: technological disruption and the changing face of transit’s future. Journal of Interprofessional Workforce Research and Development. Volume 2:Issue 2, 2019.