DTE Energy aspires to be an irresistible organization that accelerates our progress toward becoming the best in the world and the best for the world. Through our work, we improve lives with our energy – not only serving our customers by providing safe, affordable, clean and reliable energy, but also by creating jobs, helping to strengthen the middle class and improving the quality of life for people who live in the communities where we live and serve. At DTE, we lead, serve and transform with our energy.
Widely viewed as an “employer of choice” in the region, DTE’s historic and successful approach to recruiting the right talent at the right time was focused on attracting the best qualified talent, screening and testing to achieve job and cultural fit, and targeted outreach strategies to ensure that compliance-related goals were met.
Today, DTE’s approach to talent acquisition has changed. Our work to lead with our purpose, create a culture of service, and build a diverse and inclusive workforce, has influenced our hiring strategy. We’re also looking for skills and expertise – in engineering, technology and skilled trades – that are in high demand and critical to our industry, while the labor market is tightening and shrinking.
Energy companies across the United States, including DTE, are managing a historic turnover in workforce as the baby boomer generation retires. DTE projects that approximately 35% of our employees will be eligible to retire during the next ten years – a period during which we will continue transforming our energy generation and distribution infrastructure.
DTE’s strategic talent acquisition objectives include:
- Develop a deep, diverse, and inclusive workforce and talent pool
- Attract and retain the best talent to execute our aspiration and purpose
- Focus on building a culture of service excellence for both internal and external customers
- Deepen our safety and wellbeing culture through training, technology and communications
- Deliver a world-class technical training and development experience
- Continue to shape and implement a total rewards strategy for employees
- Adopt technology to facilitate growth and streamline processes
To ensure we are effective in meeting these strategic objectives, we have put in place a comprehensive governance structure that includes Board of Directors, CEO and senior executive oversight of talent planning decisions in addition to executive- and director-level committees that focus specifically on ensuring diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) is baked into our talent pipeline.
DTE’s work is being recognized
- DTE has been named a Gallup Great Place to Work winner for 9 consecutive years
- Named Metro Detroit’s Best and Brightest Companies to Work for the past 15 years
- Named a Gold-Level Veteran-Friendly employer three years in a row by the Michigan Veterans Affairs Agency
- Earned a top spot on the nation’s Disability Equality Index Best Places to Work for Disability Inclusion the past two years
- Named a 2019 Leading Disability Employer from the National Organization on Disability
- And, since 2016, DTE has been on Diversity Inc.’s list of top five utility companies for diversity.
DTE’s approach to human capital management can be organized by the following phases of our talent pipeline – from building career awareness to retention. Our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion applies to every step of this process, as demonstrated in the following sections.
Career Awareness, Exploration & Recruitment
With the wave of workforce change approaching, one of our key talent goals is to position DTE as a “destination employer” for top-qualified, diverse and talented people, and a place where employees become best practice leaders. Attracting the best people for all positions has become more difficult in recent years due to an improving economy, an influx of new start-ups and a revitalized manufacturing industry. These dynamics are accompanied by a new demographic of job seekers who have very different expectations about how they engage in the job hunt and interact with potential employers. As a result, leading organizations nationally are investing in more proactive recruiting (i.e., a combination of sourcing and “high touch” with potential applicants), technology and in their people to counter the market forces impacting both new employee attraction and retention.
DTE Energy and the DTE Foundation have been decade-long supporters of FIRST of Michigan, which encourages students to explore the world of STEM-essential fields in the energy industry. DTE sponsors 25 high school (FIRST Robotics Competition) and 25 middle school (FIRST Tech Challenge) teams, focusing our support on teams with challenged backgrounds and barriers to success. We’re building relationships with youth early in their development and exposing them to the benefits of pursuing careers in energy and with DTE.
DTE Energy is a top employer of youth in Michigan and understands that meaningful work experience enables young people to find a career they are passionate about and also gain entry into that career.
More than 850 college and high school students participate in our summer and year-round employment programs each year, designed to prepare students for future careers. DTE provides students with exposure to a variety of career options, technical skills and leadership coaching. Our company works with 250 students who have barriers to employment, such as challenges related to transportation, income and academic readiness. These students are provided mentors and services like resume writing, interview skills, financial literacy and transportation.
DTE is the only business to host Project Search students in Detroit, a program that helps students with disabilities gain meaningful employability skills as they transition out of the public school system.
We’ve been actively recruiting from diverse universities and organizations for decades, but in 2020 we accelerated our recruiting efforts by building new partnerships with Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Black fraternities and sororities, Women in Skilled Trades, Blacks in Energy, National Association of Black Women in Construction, Electrical Workers Minority Caucus, Veterans associations and many other organizations.
DTE’s relationships with professional development organizations is key to our recruitment strategy and aligns with our diversity, equity and inclusion goals. DTE cultivates relationships with national and local chapters of groups like the Society of Women Engineers (SWE), National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) and the National Black MBA Association (NBMBAA) by providing support and active participation at key events. These organizations serve as long-term partners and key pipelines to top diverse engineering, finance, accounting and operations talent. Recognizing the importance and focus on recruiting talent to Michigan, the Women of Color STEM conference and the Engineering Society of Detroit (ESD) are also important partners committed to growing and supporting regional talent development.
One example of DTE actively seeking out diverse candidates is the relationship we developed with the University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez Campus. Our connection started when hundreds of employees volunteered to go to Puerto Rico in 2017 to help restoration efforts following Hurricane Maria, and it has grown into 64 students applying for DTE positions in 2020.
Career Preparation & Pre-employment Training
WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT
Workforce Development is complex, with many different facets, stakeholders, funding streams, activities and desired outcomes. As a result, DTE is focused on working with industry and community partners to improve educational outcomes for students and create employment pipelines to good-paying jobs that support economic vitality in the communities where we live and serve.
Our traditional workforce development activities leverage our industry partners, are primarily funded through corporate dollars and focused on building talent pipelines for DTE. DTE is also partnering with Career and Technical Centers in Detroit, including Randolph, Breithaupt, and Southeastern, as well as technical schools around Michigan, to update their programs, add new equipment, and rebuild their infrastructure to help prepare young people for a career in skilled trades.
However, DTE’s aspiration to be a force for growth propels us to do more – to have a positive impact on communities, with an emphasis on responding to the needs of at-risk and under-represented populations. Here DTE strives to be the “rising tide that lifts all ships.” We’re working to improve the educational outcomes of students in Detroit and other struggling communities and create employment pipelines to family-sustaining jobs at DTE for at-risk, minority, differently-abled, veterans and returning citizens populations.
Our non-traditional workforce development activities are funded primarily through the DTE Foundation, developed for DTE and all of Michigan, and are heavily focused on community partnerships. Our work targets at-risk communities in Detroit and across Michigan. While we’re building our talent pipeline, we’re also developing our workforce through training and education.
Hiring individuals with barriers to employment
As the Co-chair of the Michigan Energy Workforce Development Consortium (MEWDC), DTE is identifying and acting on workforce issues crucial to building and sustaining Michigan’s energy industry.
- The MEWDC completed critical work in February 2016 by establishing a 17th “career cluster” focused on energy for career and technical education (CTE). The MEWDC established standards for a pre-apprenticeship program addressing specific energy job roles where high school students enrolled in the Energy Industry Fundamentals (EIF) in CTE high schools became eligible for “dual college credit” at partnering higher educational institutions.
- The program today exists in five districts in the state and is also delivered in select community colleges with a primary focus on two job roles – electric line worker and gas technicians. The pre-apprentice program serves as a feeder into registered apprenticeships for electric line apprentice and currently non-registered gas technicians.
In 2017, DTE partnered with Henry Ford College to help launch its Power and Trades Pathways Program that provides certificate and associate degree programs and supports multiple career pathways in skilled trades, such as electric operations, gas operations, construction and engineering. Ten participants from the pilot group completed the Power and Trades Pathway Program in 2018; 100% are now employed. By the end of 2019, Henry Ford College had 15 students complete and receive pre-apprentice certificates in Natural Gas Distribution and Transmission and Overhead Line worker programs. Additional information can be found at Discover Skill Trades.
DTE depends on 1,300 skilled tree trimmers to keep trees away from power lines, but Michigan continues to face a critical shortage of qualified people. In 2021, the first cohort of students graduated from DTE’s Tree Trim Academy in Detroit. The academy is a great example of a business like DTE partnering with government, nonprofit and labor leaders to provide opportunities for people looking for careers. Located adjacent to a 1,500 acre park in Detroit, the Tree Trim Academy will enable more than 60 people in 2021 – and more than 200 by 2024 – to join the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 17 as apprentices working full time for tree trim companies while progressing toward journeyman status.
At the same time, people coming out of prison have an unemployment rate of 60% – more than 15 times the overall state rate – and without stable employment, up to one-half will reoffend. In 2018, to close DTE Energy’s employment gap and provide job opportunities to returning citizens, DTE began working closely with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 17 and the Michigan Department of Corrections (MDOC) to design a tree trimming training program, install a climbing structure and provide a fully-equipped tool crib to Parnall Correctional Facility’s Vocational Village. In June 2019, DTE launched the first in the nation program. Twenty-five people have enrolled to date and twelve are currently placed in positions with our tree trimming contractors with two starting their own tree trimming companies. None of the program graduates have been reincarcerated. MDOC plans for 20 people to graduate from the program annually.
As a leader in employing people from challenged backgrounds, such as differently abled, veterans, and returning citizens, DTE’s additional efforts include:
- Partnering with the Autism Alliance of Michigan (AAoM) to recruit and place people with autism into employment opportunities at DTE, which include student internships and temporary and full-time positions.
- Among nine employers certified as a Gold Level Veteran Friendly Employer, which places DTE in the top four percent of veteran hiring programs in Michigan
- DTE is part of a pilot program with the Michigan Veteran’s Affairs Agency called GRIP – Guard-Reserve Interview Promise program – which helps attract and hire people in the Guard and Reserves
- DTE participates in the Military Leave Program for full and part-time employees called to active or emergency military duty. To ensure our vet’s financial health during this time, the program pays employees the difference between their military pay and their DTE pay for the duration of their active duty or annual reservist training, per the terms of the program
- In the fall of 2017, DTE removed a small but significant barrier to employment on our job application form by eliminating the standard question asking if the applicant had a criminal record. Removing this question allows recruiters and hiring managers to focus on a candidate’s job qualifications. Employees were overwhelmingly supportive of the program, expressing that “a criminal record shouldn’t be a life sentence of unemployment.”
Onboarding
At DTE Energy, we’re focused on building a safe environment where all employees feel welcome and a sense of belonging. DTE’s caring and purpose-driven culture is what makes us unique. We recognize our employees for being safe, caring and providing exceptional service to each other and our customers. We also live our purpose: “We serve with our energy, the lifeblood of communities and the engine of progress.” We establish and reinforce these values and behaviors to employees from the moment they’re hired through onboarding and subsequent training, communication and engagement activities to ensure our employees actively contribute to a more diverse, equitable and inclusive culture.
In honor of Celebrate Diversity Month in April, we recognized employees across the company through videos and storytelling for contributing their unique skills, backgrounds and experiences to help innovate and problem solve to help our company and the community during the pandemic. We also provided examples of how teams creatively stayed connected virtually.
In September, we launched an enterprise-wide employee training called ‘Exploring Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at DTE.’ Ninety-five percent of our workforce has competed the training in 2020.
In October 2020, DTE launched a week-long campaign, called “Welcome Week”, that engaged leaders and employees across the company in conversations about the important of social connection during this disconnected time. We distributed 2,200 leader toolkits and held a “Let’s talk about…connection” event with renowned speaker Steve Robbins who led a panel discussion with company leaders about why connection and inclusion matter. The event was broadcast live via Microsoft Teams to all 10,000 employees.
Our annual internal communications campaign resulted in more than 160 DEI related communications, ranging from stories about employees and leaders helping to build a more inclusive workplace and support diverse communities, to promoting DEI– related– events, to editorials from our company’s DEI leaders responding to national tragedies.
Employee Resource Groups
DTE’s employee resource groups, which we call Energy Groups, are another way we’re building a culture of inclusion. In 2020, a group of DTE employees launched our company’s ninth employee resource group – DTE’s Family Energy Group. Our active and engaged employee Energy Groups build a safe and welcoming environment and offer professional development, education, networking, mentoring and support.
Groups held virtual events to build awareness and education, volunteered and supported nonprofit organizations and mentored coworkers, young professionals and youth. The DTE Energy Foundation also provided a $10,000 grant to each Energy Group to donate to a nonprofit organization that makes a positive impact in their community.
Career Coaching
TALENT PLANNING
We have worked to simplify our performance management and development planning processes, launching simplified forms in 2021 that encourage employees to reflect on what they are learning and what support they need to continue to learn and grow. Leaders are guided through a similar process and then discuss with each employee at least three times throughout the year. In addition, an annual development plan enables each employee and leader to discuss career goals and link to learning opportunities.
DTE has also continued its commitment to internal talent and succession planning. A Talent Planning Committee comprised of the CEO and key senior leaders meet throughout the year to understand and discuss each business unit’s talent, accomplishments over the past year, in-flight actions to continue to drive a deeper and more diverse talent pool within their organization, along with their efforts to promote equity and inclusion. An enterprise talent planning session is held at the end of the year with the CEO and all senior leaders to align on key organizational talent and develop rotational plans to ensure our director population is receiving the pertinent development and expertise to assume higher-level roles in the larger organization. Additional tenets of the Talent Planning Committee discussions include centralized decision-making for nominees identified for the Executive Fellowship (Graduate) program, community-based learning platforms such as Leadership Detroit, as well as non-profit board participation. Talent planning sessions occur throughout the enterprise as well for manager, supervisor, and individual contributor levels.
Upskilling
DEVELOPING OUR TALENT
At DTE Energy, we know that continuous learning impacts employee performance and engagement. Employees can learn more about opportunities to pursue their learning and development and access training courses and resources on our intranet site and learning platform.
Since March 2020, approximately half of DTE’s employees have been working from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Our entire learning organization has shifted to accommodate employees working in new ways due to the pandemic, implementing safety best practices to ensure learning that must occur in person can continue and evolving other classroom offerings to a virtual format. This has enabled employees to continue to learn and grow during this challenging time, and in some instances has even increased their access to training.
Employees can register for 200 free instructor-led and online courses through our learning platform, and they also have access to additional learning through partnerships with organizations such as our Virgin Pulse wellness platform, the NeuroLeadership Institute, Udemy, and Percipio. Additionally, our employee resource groups frequently offer learning-focused events with expert guest speakers on diverse topics.
DTE Energy offers leadership development curricula as well. Aim2Lead is our custom-built training program designed for individual contributors who are inspired to become future leaders at our company. Leading with Energy is a comprehensive development program for front-line leaders new to their leadership role. Leaders gain insight, feedback and personal growth, while learning about our company’s competencies and foundational capabilities that are critical to exceptional leadership and achieving our company’s aspiration. We recently expanded our support for front-line leaders by introducing a front-line leader program to further support our supervisor level leaders in the gas and electric utility operations, integrating the Leading with Energy curriculum into a robust onboarding process. Our manager program is currently undergoing an extensive revamp and is expected to provide targeted development opportunities based on the manager’s needs, which could include further training on cultural elements unique to DTE, building leadership skills, and gaining developmental insight through assessment and 360 feedback. Our Directors and Vice Presidents participate in leadership development sessions three times a year at our triannual leader meetings. These meetings dive deep into cultural elements of our company and provide leaders and opportunity to learn, reflect, and engage in key ideas on how to cascade key learning within their organizations.
All active, full-time employees DTE Electric, DTE Gas and DTE Corporate Staff are eligible for tuition reimbursement up to $5,250 per year for undergraduate degrees, certificate programs and individual coursework and $7,500 per year for graduate degrees. Active part-time employees are eligible for tuition reimbursement at 50% of the full-time employee maximums. In addition, we created a partnership with Davenport University to offer employees corporate education scholarships; DTE Energy employees can enroll in a Davenport undergraduate or graduate business or technology program and receive a four-year scholarship, in addition to reimbursement provided by DTE Energy.
DTE continues to improve in the preparation and sustainment of technical skills and safe practices. Recent advances in simulator and hands on experiential activities focus on safe driving of both CDL and non-CDL drivers in the company. These enhancements continue to engage and challenge our skilled trades, while reducing vehicle accidents of all those who enter a DTE vehicle.
Role-based curricula are now dynamically applied, via our Learning Management System, to all our electric distribution roles (and soon across the enterprise) to clearly articulate the training requirements. This transparency ensures everyone is prepared with the skills to perform their role safely and effectively.
New reporting and metric systems help our business units measure learning and compliance as a key component of business unit scorecards and developmental improvement plans. These automated processes provide our leaders with near real-time information to support learning, safety, and productivity in the field.
Competency-based curricula and micro-learning elements are now commonplace in many business units, and we continue to work to engage the learner and increase the speed to competency and safety across our enterprise.
Retention
Ratio of basic salary and remuneration of women to men
DTE Energy is committed to offering compensation that is competitive, market-driven and internally equitable. To ensure this, DTE conducts an annual review of compensation practices as part of its affirmative action programs. Approximately half of DTE Energy’s employees are represented by unions, where pay is uniformly determined through contracts regardless of an employee’s gender. For non-represented employees, DTE’s Human Resources professionals establish pay ranges for each job classification, and then work with hiring leaders to make competitive offers within the range to candidates based on objective factors like years of experience and strength of skills relevant to the job.
CARING FOR OUR DTE FAMILY
At DTE, serving people is at the center of our business, and that includes serving employees. We have 11,000 people working to serve customers, communities and each other with safe, affordable, reliable and clean energy. And we know that if each of us is healthy and well, we will be able to give our best personal energy to our work, our families and our communities.
We are the safest company in our peer group, and although we have a long history of supporting the health of employees, we have embarked on a journey to become the healthiest and most wellbeing supportive organization. Strengthening our culture of health and wellbeing, and further investing in our employees, is essential to us achieving our overall business goals. It’s also simply the right thing to do because we care deeply about everyone in our DTE family. The research is clear that this effort will:
- Improve the health, wellbeing and vitality of our employees at work, at home and at play
- Activate the linkage between care for employees and care for customers
- Increase employee satisfaction and engagement
- Improve safety and reduce injuries
- Attract and retain the best employees
- Improve productivity and reduce absenteeism
- Improve organizational performance
- Enhance brand positioning and company profile
Leadership Commitment to Health & Wellbeing
For years we have witnessed an outstanding level of executive support and concern for employee health and wellbeing. Our Wellbeing Executive Leadership Committee, composed of leaders from various DTE locations and business units helps set the course and navigate our journey to becoming a benchmark Culture of Health & Wellbeing.
Our Philosophy
We are focused on supporting the DTE family holistically, including physical health, emotional wellbeing, social connectivity and financial fitness with the mission: “Empower employees and their families to live with positive energy, good health and a passion for life by fostering a lifetime commitment to total wellbeing.”
DTE Energy provides competitive, customizable benefits for all regular full-time and regular part-time (and, in the case of health care, temporary) employees and is committed to providing employees with the resources they need to lead healthier lifestyles, including an onsite clinic and fitness center. DTE Energy offers a Healthy Behavior Incentive Program, which rewards employees in terms of reduced medical premiums for biometric screenings, completion of a Health Risk Assessment and participation in health education on disease management programs. DTE Energy offers Consumer Driven Health Plans (CDHPs) in addition to regular programs. CDHPs provide benefits that help consumers maintain and improve their health. CDHPs offer a full array of products giving employers and their employees more options. They provide customized transitional products and integrated Health Savings Accounts with the same typical benefits of a PPO plan plus a chance to earn dollars by taking steps that can help you achieve your health potential.
DTE Energy is committed to supporting employees who are experiencing the life-changing journey of expanding their families, whether through birth, adoption, fostering or guardianship. In 2018, DTE Energy implemented a Parental Leave Program which is designed to provide paid-time off to eligible employees for these events and is intended to be a supplement to the Non-Represented Time Off Program. This program is for regular full-time and regular part-time non-represented employees of DTE Energy Company and its subsidiaries. Eligible employees receive up to four weeks of company-paid child-bonding leave that can be taken all at once or intermittently, on a schedule agreed upon in advance between an employee and their leader, as a supplement to the non-represented employees time off program.
For additional benefits for full-time employees, please refer to the Benefits page. For additional health and wellness benefits for all employees, please see our 2020 Culture of Health & Wellbeing Annual Report. To learn more about our employee engagement, and how we measure the success of our employee engagement, please see our brief on Stakeholder Engagement.
Measuring our Success
DTE continues to work toward building a skilled, sustainable and diverse workforce, with a focus on women, minorities, veterans and people with disabilities. We measure and track our progress for employees in many ways:
- Employee retention / turnover
- Technical and compliance training
- Diverse candidates
- Workforce representation of females, minorities , veterans, and employees with disabilities
- Diversity of leadership promotions and hires
- Diverse hires
- Diversity of top high potential talent
- Diversity of governance bodies
- Employee engagement (Gallup)
- Number of DEI related communications and employee interaction with DEI communications
- Ranking and scores from DEI surveys
Publicly available metrics can be found in our ESG Key Performance Data Table.