The right people, doing the right jobs the right way breeds success.

Seventy percent of Fortune 1000 companies reported that the lack of trained personnel is their largest barrier to sustained growth, according to an August 2003 white paper by the American Society of Training and Development (ASTD).

To find the right people in a shrinking workforce, transfer to them the knowledge held by currently exiting workers, train them how to apply that knowledge in the digital oilfield and to keep them around long enough to use it consistently are just several of the most difficult challenges facing most global and regional energy-industry companies today. If you do get this part of managing your company right, and you ensure that work critical to your company's objectives gets done, you are also rewarded with a safer, more efficient workforce and the opportunity to create greater shareholder wealth.

Challenge

Accurately deciding what you want people to do (and how you want them to do the work) is at the core of this challenge. This information enables you to choose the best people from the available talent pool and to hypothesize what training they need to get the job done. Not knowing how work gets done safely and effectively means you are uncertain about what to expect from employees.

Let's look at an example of what happens when you get people doing the right things for the right reasons. The safety performance of the energy industry over the past 14 years, as behavior-based safety programs began to take root, has improved substantially.

In 1989, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (incidence rates of non-fatal occupational injuries and illnesses by industry and case types) 7.6 out of every 100 full-time workers had a recordable injury or illness annually and 3.8 of those resulted in at least one day away from work. By 2002, our industry had reduced those recordable cases to 3.4 workers and those involving days away from work to 1.5 days. Those figures were even lower in the crude, petroleum and natural gas sector with only 1.6 recordable cases and .6 involving days away from work.

The safety performance of our industry is looking a lot more like that of the finance, insurance and real estate sectors and a lot less like high-risk industries such as construction and agriculture that were once our statistical peers. Those industries showed improvement as well, but the energy industry has left the neighborhood.

Behavior

Added government regulation, corresponding increases in fines and penalties for noncompliance, higher insurance costs and increased awareness through the media and the Internet have contributed to this dramatic improvement. Safety and human resource professionals, at least in the energy industry, are in full agreement that those accident and illness rates declined year after year because workers started doing more and more of the right things - their behavior changed and improved to better follow an established model. Where traditional safety programs focus on improvements to equipment and facilities, behavior-based programs focus on identifying how workers need to complete complex tasks successfully while avoiding getting hurt or sick. Training them to do the work and learning how to better motivate them to act safely was a major strategy change. Management teams shifted attention from things to people - with results.

It's important to note that, even though creating the culture necessary for effective behavioral-based work processes requires a significant commitment, the focus on people remains a continuing trend. Management teams sometimes try new things. In the corporate realm, where companies that do not produce profits eventually cease to exist, leadership only continues a trend as long as measurable results find their way to the bottom line.

Companies know, at least intellectually, that "safety pays" through lower insurance rates, less time lost to absent and recovering workers, fewer fines and penalties and better relationships with workers and the public. What smarter companies learn is that the time spent learning what people need to know to work safely, what training they need to do it and how to create a culture that supports those activities also helps people work independently. And, purposeful actions mean people spend less time getting the right things done. Ultimately, this is the best use of assets - human and financial.

Job descriptions

Energy executives and their operating units have generally depended on job descriptions to define "work." Once created, these documents find their way into numerous other performance processes. Many of those descriptions, maybe even most, fall short of providing a full, accurate and time-sensitive description of the knowledge and skills required for specific roles or jobs. This happens because the descriptions were poorly developed or have not been kept current. Recruitment, training and assessment need to be aligned and adaptive for people to work effectively, especially in our rapidly changing digital workplace.

To manage this challenge, you need to tap your best and most experienced workers and involve them in a process that describes what exemplary performance looks like for their jobs, as well as what knowledge and skills workers doing those jobs need to perform at a high level. With a valid competency model in hand, you are able to hire and train workers who know what you expect from them and you will know what they need to meet or exceed those expectations.

Culture

If mastering what you want people to do is the heart of the productivity challenge, creating a culture that motivates people is the soul. Regardless of the industry, safety professionals assert that attempting to change what people do through legislation and enforcement, governmental or corporate, either fails or falls miserably short of expectations. This is a consistent outcome no matter how detailed the procedures, thorough the training, meticulous the enforcement or noble the intentions. And, their human resources colleagues also tell you that what does work is to make qualified and trained people part of a process of constant, results-driven improvement.

Creating a culture of employee involvement is very hard work. It requires an imprecise combination of science and art. If your company makes anything less than a genuine commitment, people see through it and they will limit its success.

In spite of these and other obstacles, management teams that push through the resistance and commit a significant amount of time and money to a process that involves the people who are doing the work - and today that includes partners, contractors and suppliers - in deciding how that work gets done, find that they are growing a company culture based on human beings working together toward specific goals instead of a corporate hierarchy, whatever it may represent, telling people what to do.

People

The people connection is vital because every company in the industry is either now or will very soon be up against tough competition in recruiting smart and able performers. Referred to by some as the "kinder, gentler oilfield," this thinking does seem unusual in an industry that still conjures public imagery of oil-soaked roughnecks in the minds of people outside the industry. But good people working together in a supportive, cooperative environment always respond positively and when, in addition, they know what to do and how to do it they can and will accomplish a lot.

Good people are essential so be sure you are putting the right effort into finding them. It's not smart to be lulled by the temporary conditions of our immediate economy. The US talent pool may look well stocked today but if you are sniffing the cheese you better be braced for a hard impact. That same white paper mentioned earlier cited projections that the US will have 2.3 million unfilled jobs in 2004 and 4.6 million by 2008. A similar warning that "by 2006 two workers will exit the workforce for every one entering" was sounded in the article "Generational Shift," published in the November - December 2003 issue of the American Staffing Association's Staffing Success magazine.

Also consider that it generally takes 5 to 7 years to get a new employee up to speed. Department of Labor statistics show that average employment tenure has dropped to 3.6 years. It is clear that investment in human capital has moved from commendable to critical.

Change

Our industry, as a whole, needs to change to attract the right people. Compensation and benefits are always a big consideration but they will not secure the attention of the new generation of workers who are beginning to gain power in the workforce. Top items on the list of things they want from an employer are training, responsibility, feedback and ethics. Companies that manage to hire the right people find it difficult to keep better employees in the organization unless they are paying attention to an individual's priorities.

Partnerships between public institutions and private industry are an option and an opportunity. And, they are taking a big step in the right direction of attracting and training people. Last year, the Center for Advancement of Process Technology (CAPT) created a new career path for workers interested in entering our industry by introducing an oil and gas production training program to member colleges and technical schools. For CAPT institutions to claim success, graduates will need to seek and find jobs in the industry. Companies that hire them need to find them to be a good fit into their workforce and their culture. The pressure is on the energy industry to adapt to new realities in the workforce because knowledgeable and skilled workers have more choices than their parents.

Corporate and operational executives continue to see an experienced workforce vaporize. Those who have the vision to create an effective culture, recruit like it really matters and to invest in tools such as competency modeling, learning management systems, performance evaluation systems, and critical task management systems will have workers they need. These valuable new employees know what is expected of them, have the knowledge and skills to perform, and incentives to keep doing it. These decisions, processes and actions deliver exemplary safety performance to our industry and they allow us to compete for the talent we need and to deliver the value shareholders demand.




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