Eaton adding jobs in Triangle, including many to be based at revamped Raleigh office

Date Published:

Eaton is expanding its presence in the Triangle, with plans to add more than 170 jobs in the region. And many of those will call the company’s renovated Raleigh office their workplace.

North Carolina is already home to the company’s largest U.S. employee base with nearly 3,000 North Carolina workers in 20 facilities.T

The firm’s office along Six Forks Road is the base for 650 employees and as many as 170 new roles will be added in the region, a company executive confirmed to WRAL TechWire today.  A January 2022 report from WRAL TechWire noted about 750 company employees across five Triangle-area facilities.

Chris Butler, the president of the critical power and digital infrastructure division at Eaton, which is headquartered in the Raleigh facility, told WRAL TechWire that contrary to other companies who are announcing slowdowns in hiring or even layoffs, Eaton plans to continue to hire.

“During COVID, a lot of us were concerned about how a market slowdown might impact our business,” said Butler.  “But it did the exact opposite.”

Following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, said Butler, demand for the company’s products actually increased, as demands on the power grid due to data centers drove significant demand.

Now, said Butler, the company isn’t observing any slowdown in the trendlines of data center construction and power usage.

“We don’t see an industry slowdown, at least not on the near horizon,” said Butler.  “We’re focusing on a broader topic, and that’s the energy transition.”

But that’s not to say that the company isn’t making some changes to how its workforce is structured or how the company operates.

A new ‘Hub’ for Eaton in Raleigh

“Before COVID, we didn’t have the most collaborative office environment,” said Butler.  “We would come into the office at times and be doing conference calls from their own individual offices even though they sat in the same building.”

The company identified this as a potential issue that could affect retention prior to COVID, said Butler.  And following the transition of some, but notably not all, of the firm’s North Carolina-based employees, it was important to Butler to attract employees back to the office.

While workers want flexibility, not all roles in the company offer that, said Butler. He pointed out that the company did not stop production of its products for a single day during the prior two-plus years of operations during the COVID-19 pandemic and expressing gratitude to its production workers.  Still, said Butler, the company sought to update its facilities such that its workers needs were being met.

So they made some changes.  Chief among the changes to the facility is moving from about 10% of space structured for collaborative work to nearly half of the company’s footprint geared toward it now.

Going forward, the facility will be known as “The Hub @ Raleigh,” and will continue to be the business headquarters for the company’s Critical Power and Digital Infrastructure division.

The company’s careers website currently lists 76 open roles based within 25-miles of Raleigh.

Original Article Source: WRAL TechWire