For the energy and utility sector, managing employee leave of absence and job accommodations has become a workforce continuity and compliance challenge that touches operational reliability, safety, and emergency response at every stage.
In utilities, leave of absence and job accommodations are becoming harder to manage because workforce availability is now more tightly linked to service reliability, safety, and emergency response Utility operations depend on skilled employees in field, plant, line, gas, water, and system-control roles that are difficult to backfill quickly, especially during storms, outage restoration, peak demand periods, and other continuity events. Public power and DOE materials continue to emphasize the sector’s pressure to modernize infrastructure, strengthen resilience, and maintain reliable critical services, all of which increase the operational consequences of employee absences.
There is also evidence that utilities face meaningful underlying drivers of leave volume because so much of the work is physically demanding, safety-sensitive, and operationally critical. Field, plant, line, gas, water, and system-control roles often require employees to work in demanding environments where absences, restrictions, and return-to-work issues can have an immediate effect on staffing and service continuity. More broadly, SHRM reported in 2025 that 57% of employers saw an increase in employee leave requests in 2024, and among those seeing increases, 53% reported increases of 21% or more. While that survey is cross-industry rather than utility-specific, it supports the broader conclusion that leave demand is rising at the same time utilities are managing the workforce strain that comes with operationally critical work.
What makes utilities distinct is the complexity of managing these cases in a reliability-driven environment. HR is not just handling absences It is often balancing FMLA, ADA, PWFA, state leave rules, safety-sensitive job requirements, collective bargaining realities in some organizations, overtime pressure, crew coverage, and emergency response readiness. In utilities, an accommodation or intermittent leave request can affect shift rotations, field deployment, outage response, control room staffing, or compliance with safety rules in ways that are harder to absorb than in a typical office environment. Public power and DOE materials also reinforce that utilities are operating through infrastructure transition, digital transformation, and workforce development pressure at the same time, which makes specialized labor harder to replace quickly.
This is why leave of absence and accommodations software solutions are becoming more compelling for utility HR leaders. The most relevant capabilities include centralized leave and accommodations case management, workflow tools for notices and deadlines, document tracking, intermittent leave tracking, return-to-work and restricted-duty workflows, employee and manager self-service, and integrations with HRIS, payroll, timekeeping, and scheduling systems. In utilities, the business case is less about convenience and more about protecting compliance while giving HR and operations better control over workforce readiness.