As the Great Crew Change looms, and a squeeze on oil demand pressurises the industry, Amanda Kelleher, Programme Director at City & Guilds examines the need to dynamically train the upstream workforce
Sanctions against the oil industries of Iran and Syria, and the resultant geo-political situation in the Middle East, is affecting the oil and gas industry in many ways. In the upstream sector, employees at national oil companies have felt the squeeze on oil supply to make up for the shortfall in regional production.
How does pressure caused by an increase in production, filter down the pyramid to the field workers who are already operating under constrained conditions to meet rising demand?
People first
In a traditional sense the responsibility lies within the HR department, which is charged with ensuring workers are motivated, performing well and rewarded accordingly.
But working under extreme conditions and coping with a change in the market environment can mean that routine is adapted, perhaps short-cuts are taken and safety is ultimately compromised.
That’s why it is imperative for HR to have an influential role in an oil and gas company and have a voice in the board room, thereby ensuring that its operations are aligned with and add to the constantly changing business priorities.
The case for prioritisation of training and HR liaison can be a hard one to make against the need to deliver shareholder profit. But the reality is the Middle East, whilst meeting increased demand for its oil, is also facing a shortage of engineers.
The American Petroleum Institute estimates that the global oil and gas industry would face a 38% shortage of engineers and geoscientists at the close of the last decade – it does not bode well for the region.
IHS Cera estimates that over 50% of engineers, whose current average age is above 50, will have retired by 2015, leading to the “Great Crew Change”. Companies must respond to this brain drain by investing in their most important asset – people!
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Getting trained
Suitable investment should include a scheme for continual learning that allows the workforce to understand and adapt to company requirements that are forever changing. In turn, this requires a training programme that is integrated with the business objectives rather than a generic programme that becomes so formulaic, workers are simply ticking boxes to maintain safety accreditation.
City & Guilds works with companies to implement a customised training programme that benefits the bottom line by being tailored to the business need at the time and the facilities available.
Qualifications are shaped to customer demand and reflect business-specific tasks and challenges for which its employees must be prepared. An entirely new qualification can be created by City & Guilds, aligned with industry standards.
The skills deficit must also be met at a grass-roots level. Upstream companies cannot rely on universities or sector bodies to produce and train capable engineers – especially in an age in which technology and IT are preferred sectors.
According to PetroFed, only 56% of students in the petro-technical education programmes in India go on to join oil and gas companies and only about 8% of American engineering graduates became petroleum engineers.
Nuturing talent
Deloitte has proposed a strategy for getting more engineers qualified by proposing a ‘Develop, Deploy & Connect’ framework whereby companies can develop engineers by providing them with vocational training, deploy them by designing effective organizational environments, and connect them to wider infrastructure to foster collaboration.
The strategy should not be seen as a tactic to produce quick fixes, but something to embed into their organisational culture.
This means continual investmant in training, for new recruits & graduates through to industry veterans, because when technologies, drilling geographies and operational procedures are constantly changing, even experienced staff must adapt and update their qualifications against occupational standards.
Again this means working with industry associations to understand minimum standards, and then working with vocational experts such as City & Guilds to implement appropriate training and qualification programmes that have greater relevance to a company’s business objective.
Resisting investment in people is a luxury the industry cannot afford right now. History suggests that producers will face growing difficulty in meeting schedules because of the shortage in skilled engineers and the lack of investment in vocational training.
This means that oil and gas companies, and even countries, will only be able to weather the winds of economic and political development with the right crew on board.
