Your GIS team is stuck in a cycle: hire someone, train them up, watch them gain experience, then start over when they leave for the next opportunity. Meanwhile, your as-built backlog grows, data quality slips during transitions, and strategic projects get pushed aside.

The problem isn’t that your people aren’t good enough. The problem is that utility GIS work has become a stepping stone instead of a destination, especially for younger professionals who move between employers every few years.

You can’t change the broader employment landscape. But you can build a GIS program that delivers consistent value regardless of who’s coming or going.

This guide shows you how forward-thinking utilities are rethinking their GIS operations to handle the new reality of workforce turnover. You’ll learn:

• Which GIS work should stay internal and which should be outsourced (hint: processing as-builts doesn’t need to tie up your best people)
• How to position GIS as strategic infrastructure instead of just “the mapping department that’s always behind”
• What modern platforms like Esri Utility Network can actually do beyond making maps (and why this matters for retention)
• How to build flexible capacity that scales so you’re not constantly in crisis-hire mode

The utilities that figure this out aren’t fighting turnover. They’re building operations where critical data work happens on schedule, strategic projects move forward, and the whole program isn’t dependent on any single person staying forever.

Download the guide to see the four patterns that make this possible.