The search is on

But, in addition to the technical and operational challenges associated with this growth, oil and gas companies face a number of human resource issues. Dale Wunder, Vice President of Human Resources, Shell E&P, and Chris Clark, Manager Talent, Resourcing and Learning report.

The current industry climate follows a relatively long period of very low prices, starting in the mid-1980s, prices that did not support major business expansion or significant hiring of staff. As the industry now ramps up its expansion efforts, it is doing so with a workforce that is rapidly reaching retirement age and tapping a talent market that has shrunk over the past 20 years. The most immediate needs are for technical professionals with EP skills in such disciplines as petroleum engineering and geosciences. Business success is heavily dependent upon ability to recruit, develop and retain this talent.

Recruitment
From a recruitment standpoint, the industry is focused on both new campus graduates and experienced professionals. With regard to the former, we began to increase our presence and hiring on campuses in 1996-97 in anticipation of what we refer to as ‘the big crew change’ – the impending retirement of a large number of employees. While the oil price crash of 1998 led to a slowdown in hiring, most companies quickly resumed full pace. Not only has this paid off but we also built on this effort when the market heated up to further increase campus hiring.

Once viewed as a ‘mature’ industry, we are now in a climate of new challenges born of exploring for oil and gas in increasingly difficult locations around the world, with increasingly sophisticated technology. We find that students are excited about the prospects of being part of these challenges. Our commitment to sustainable development and investment in alternative energy sources is reflective of a broader change long under way in our industry, which also appeals to students.

As noted, the most often cited areas of talent shortage are petroleum engineering and geosciences. Although petroleum engineers can be trained from other academic disciplines, this takes time. Conversely, geoscientists need to be hired from campus or from the experienced ranks. Given the complexity of the technical work, for both petroleum engineering and geosciences, it takes many years to develop new graduate hires. Consequently, we also have significant effort under way to bring in experienced professionals from within the industry.

Experienced recruitment brings its own challenges, given the high demand for talent, and especially where such skills are already scarce. To tap this market, we are heavily engaged in local, regional and global recruitment campaigns, appealing to candidates with both the technical challenges available and the opportunity to work in a global environment.

Development
A common linkage between campus and experienced hires is professional development. Our first job is developing and transferring knowledge and skills from the existing generation to the new graduates, as well as creating the environment for experienced professionals to quickly contribute in a new organization. This requires strong development and coaching programs, suitable and sufficient work to enable new graduates to gain skills and experience, and sophisticated training capabilities to develop graduates of all academic disciplines.

The challenges particular to experienced hiring are assimilation, development and retention. The first of these relates to the experienced hire becoming a part of the new company ‘family’, switching from previous affiliations to the new company. The second involves providing professional development to help the individual become knowledgeable of new processes, tools and technology. This is critical for exploration and production, an industry where there is great value in technical experience, especially for subsurface disciplines.

Leading industry companies have comprehensive onboarding and development programs for both graduate and experienced hires. For new graduates this often takes the form of a personal ‘buddy’ – a coach, formal and informal learning experiences, rotational assignments, competence assessments, and regular performance and development reviews. These multi-year programs serve to transition the graduate from the university to becoming a skilled professional.

Leading companies have similar programs for experienced hires, which are designed to help them become seamlessly assimilated into the new company. Typically, this will involve integration and networking steps, company orientations to foster organizational synchronization, help in connecting to learning to create work products, and advice and counsel to help them manage their new career.

Another important component to experienced onboarding and affiliation is to formally learn from and benefit from the experience that can be gained from external hires. In most cases, internal knowledge and experience is insufficient in itself to allow any single organization to remain a leader. We seek to improve our own performance and enhance the company’s DNA by attracting and integrating external talent.

Retention
We have spoken about the high value of experienced exploration and production professional staff, and the keys to retaining this group of employees are the same as for any other industry. Studies by the Corporate Leadership Council help us to fully understand the dynamics of employee retention. It is about employee commitment, quality of leadership, co-worker relationships, pay and benefits, work environment, opportunities for personal and career development, and business success. Significant efforts are being made to enhance career opportunities, provide rapid advancement, and interesting business challenges. The evidence this is occurring is in the marketplace as people change jobs.

In a world of high oil prices, retention is also about keeping highly experienced professionals who have the option to retire. Defined benefit pensions allow people to retire at a certain age; the question is … ‘how to motivate people to want to stay?’ This is a future challenge for all US industry.

The future
The answer to workforce challenges is therefore an integrated suite of solutions … robust campus hiring, a strong new professional development program with coaching, rigorous training and rotational assignments, balanced experienced hiring to fill organizational and skills gaps and bring in alternative experience, a program which fosters company affiliation, comprehensive mature employee development programs, and a career proposition that encourages high retention.