Kenya Power to hire 3,000 new staff in three years to hit 13,400 target

Utility firm Kenya Power is set to hire nearly 3,000 more employees over the next three years, going against earlier plans to cut its workforce.

Faced with an ageing workforce resulting in a high number of annual retirements, coupled with a growing customer base demanding additional personnel to maintain service quality, the power distributor  said it now requires more talent.

The company is also buoyed by improved prospects after recovering from losses. Kenya Power said to replace the people retiring and effectively service its growing customer base, it would hire 2,982 people over the next three years.

The firm is one of the largest in the country in terms of staff numbers, having had a head count of 10,437 as of June this year. This has been on a gradual decline from a high of 11,295 in 2017.

Kenya Power said the current staffing level is against an optimal establishment of 13,419. “Over the last five years, 2,234 number of staff have exited the company due to natural attrition, with projected 488 retirements over the next two years. For this reason, the company is implementing a three-year manpower development plan that will address staffing gaps and succession planning while prioritising critical skills,” said the company in its annual reports to June 2024.

“Under this plan, the company hired 846 employees to fill resource gaps in key customer-facing functions towards bridging the current staffing deficit of 2,981 employees.”

“To continuously support business operations in various functions based on the optimal staff establishment, the company implemented several initiatives including development of a three-year manpower plan which outlines optimal staff rationalisation and redeployment, reskilling, and hiring of additional workforce.”

The average age of Kenya Power employees  was 42 years as of June, a drop from 46 years in 2022. At the time, there was a concern of an impending crisis as many of these employees approached retirement.

While the average age has dropped, the firm is still not out of the woods yet, with two out of every 10 employees or 20 per cent of its people aged over 50 years. 

The bulk of its workforce is aged between 35 and 44 years. According to a report that the electricity retailer submitted to the Senate in April, out of the 10,500 employees at Kenya Power, about 40 percent of them are aged between 35 and 44 years.

Another 40 per cent were aged between 45 and 64 years. 

Business continuity

The firm appears to be lagging behind in onboarding young talent, with employees aged between 18 and 35 years only accounting for slightly over 20 per cent of the employees.

“Cognisant of this, the company is implementing deliberate initiatives to ensure effective succession planning for business continuity. In light of this, we recruited 836 employees during the year, most of them being youth,” said Kenya Power in its report to shareholders.

Kenya Power had three years ago embarked on a transformation strategy as it sought to get out of loss-making. One of the strategy’s prongs was, according to the firm at the time, a “phased reduction in workforce to ensure KPLC remains competitive and provides the right levels of service, and bring this into line with best benchmarks in Sub-Saharan Africa.” 

At the time, the firm had planned to shed some of the employees through the Voluntary Early Retirement (VER) but also said it would need to recruit new key staff, mostly in the technical areas.

It had projected to spend Sh5.3 billion on the exercise in which 1,962 employees would be sent home. It however expected the move to reduce payroll costs by Sh1.54 billion per year.

The firm however appears to have overcome the challenges it was facing three years ago with plans to hire more people. Aside from the high number of staff that are expected to require in the coming years, the reversal of plans to lay off could also be on account of optimism, with the firm appearing to be getting out of financial difficulties. 

Over the year to June, Kenya Power recorded a Sh30.8 billion profit after tax from a loss of Sh3.2 billion in the same period last year. The profit is largely due to strengthening of the Kenyan shilling.

It is however still in a negative working capital, which has been the case for the last eight years. It however said it had registered consistent improvement and reduced the net liability position from a low of negative Sh74.85 billion as at June 2020, the position has improved by 63 per cent to negative Sh27.44 billion at the end of the year under review. 

Over the year to June 2024, the firm’s spend on salaries and other benefits increased to Sh19.9 billion from Sh16 billion in 2023. The higher spend was on account of growth in the number of employees by 4.2 per cent to 10,437 in 2024 from 10,018 in 2023.

Higher employee costs partly played a role in pushing up the firm’s operating expenses to Sh46.3 billion from Sh37.3 billion.

The firm noted that this was due to “higher staff costs driven by onboarding of additional technical staff, a new collective bargaining agreement as well as impacts of the 2023 Finance Act on statutory deductions, which primarily impacted employee costs.”