Successful business organizations are those that understand that to win over the marketplace, it is first important to win over their workforce. Along with world-class infrastructure, businesses also need a happy and satisfied workforce. A well-trained and well-cared-for workforce will translate into high performance, leading to satisfied and repeat customers, eventually enabling companies to rule the market. The role of a highly trained and satisfied workforce becomes all the more crucial in the oil and gas industry, which is highly volatile and fraught with hazards. Most oil and gas employees work on remote sites, unlike other corporations, which offer a more comfortable environment. Here, in this article, we look at how oil and gas companies can retain and engage talent in the oil and gas industry.
Since most oilfields and wells are found in far-off areas, as an oil and gas company service provider, your crew will mostly be working in remote areas, disconnected from their families and loved ones. Therefore, they need effective communication systems to connect with you 24x7x365. This will allow them to share their problems and issues as they arise and seek redress. Therefore, as an oil and gas industry service provider, you may wish to consider implementing a crew relationship management team that is exclusively dedicated to actively listening to and appropriately responding to issues as and when they arise.
It may be that you are recruiting staff to undertake oil and gas jobs in countries such as Kuwait, the UAE, Oman, or any other country. Now, you will need to send the crew to these locations, implying that you will have to take care of their travel and accommodation expenses, among others. To get the best return on your investment, you need to ensure that you first recruit the best talent for the job. For this, you must first collate all their information, such as their work history, any work-related incidents, and other communication notes. Emerging technologies can help you analyse information and glean the necessary insights, which your HR team can use in their decision-making. For instance, for oil and gas jobs in Kuwait, you may wish to recruit people who have past experience working in the country and are familiar with their geography and regulations.
As part of their hitch cycles, oil and gas crew members have to be 24×7 in their region of work. While they do get some time off during the hitch cycle, this extended period of 24×7 work can greatly impact their physical, mental, and emotional well-being. If you are sending your crew to geographically diverse locations, it may be a good idea to offer them relocation opportunities so that they can break the monotony and benefit from the new experience of working in different places.
In an era of constantly evolving knowledge and technologies, it is important to constantly train your oil and gas personnel so that they can build on their learning curve and also perform well in the constantly changing business environment. However, with your crew working on remote sites for extended periods of time, providing traditional training via the classroom would be a challenge. Therefore, the way forward is to offer your crew remote training via the Internet and the cloud. You may also make the virtual trainings more effective and interesting, for instance, by using the gamification approach, which allows learners to learn remotely and on their hand-held devices.
As said above, the oil and gas industry is among the most hazardous industries in the world, requiring people to work for extended periods 24×7 in remote and often hostile terrain. Apart from being away from their families, the people also have to deal with the dangers of gas leaks, dangerous machinery, and extreme weather conditions. It is little wonder that the crew members prefer to switch jobs for better monetary prospects or more attractive roles. To retain and engage talent, you can provide reskilling opportunities to broaden their skills so that they remain with your organization.
In the era of cutthroat competition, it becomes all the more imperative to retain and engage your talent, especially since you have invested so much in training them over the years. While developing your crew management strategy, it is important to keep in mind the realities of the oil and gas industry. For one, it is filled with work hazards. Second, oil rigs are usually found in geographically diverse, remote locations that require crew members to work for extended periods of time. These reasons alone can take a toll on their physical and emotional well-being. As a responsible player in the field, you can retain and engage talent in the oil and gas industry by addressing these concerns and investing in their well-being while also providing them opportunities to reskill and upskill and grow their careers within the organization.
Also Read: Importance of global expansion for Oil & Gas Companies
