OEEC: New O&G reality calls for business transformation through human capital

The Transformation through your Human Capital session at Offshore Energy Exhibition & Conference, organized in cooperation with Deloitte, on Wednesday presented views on navigating industry dynamics by optimizing and harmonizing organization structure and making organizations more agile and flexible.

Oil and gas industry is facing a new reality with stressed balance sheets, cuts in capex, bankruptcies and layoffs. On top of that, industry dynamics caused by digitalization and innovation are challenging the existing business models. This new reality creates the ultimate momentum to transform the business through human capital.

Moderators of this sessions were: Paola Overmars, Director Consulting at Deloitte and Marco Hoogerwaard, Director Organisation & Change at Deloitte.

Speakers of the session were: Sjoerd Meijer, Business Unit Manager Subsea Development / Offshore Cable, DEME group; Alexander van Noort, global director, Fugro and Adrian Cretoiu, Managing Director, Schlumberger.

After Paola Overmars opened the session and gave introduction to the speakers, Marco Hoogerwaard took over and gave insights in Deloitte’s Human Capital Research 2017:

·       Results based on over 10.000 business leaders

·       51% large companies (>1000 employees; 22%> 10.000 employees)

·       Across 140 countries

·       63% HR professionals

·       30% respondents C-level

Which resulted in an overview of the Human Capital trends. And here are the 2017 trends by importance:

1.     Organization of the future

2.     Careers an learning

3.     Talent acqusition

4.     Employee experience

5.     Performance management

6.     Leadership

7.     Digital HR

8.     People analytics

9.     Diversity and inclusion

10.  The augmented workforce

11.  Robotics, cognitive computing and AI

Marco Hoogerwaard concluded his intro by saying: “Performance management needs to be much more real-time, needs to be digital, frequent, on-spot. In many organizations, performance review takes place one time in a year if you’re lucky.”

Performance management: Playing a winning hand

As companies operate as a network of teams, and companies are shifting from “jobs to work” in their operations, the need to align goals, provide feedback, and coach for performance is real-time, continuous, and multidirectional.

Performance management is trending toward an increased emphasis on coaching. Employees are looking for more feedback, more frequently. Continuous practices empower local leaders, and create better relationships among teams. Leaders and managers need to be empowered to make data-driven talent decisions.

Changing performance management behaviours and culture requires an investment of time. The increase in the quantity and quality of data gives organizations more information, but also emphasizes the importance of continuous process improvement and course correction. New tools are trying to catch up with philosophy changes including — more social, transparent, mobile, on-demand, and enabling continuous feedback.

A good example of Performance management, playing a winning hand would be:

Check-ins

A check-in is a frequent (every one or two weeks), ten minute converstion between an employee and a Performance Manager about the work – feedback on performance during last week and mutual expectations for next week.

Business & Talent Review

In the Talent Review meeting the Talent Portofolio Owner and Performance Managers systematically review the potential and performance of employees, in perspective of business developments in the near and long-term. The B&TR meetings are being held ten times a year, according to a specific agenda.

Pulse Meeting

Every quarter the Talent Survey is followed up by a Pulse Meeting: in a round table session, the Talent Portfolio Owner connects to a (random) selection of employees, to better understand how the team performance might be improved.

Career Coaching

Conversations between Performance Managers and employees, about how to align their strenghts and ambitions to long term deployment. Consider to start with specific group with a specific challenge.

Performance Snapshot

A short evaluation (4 questions) by a project (or performance) manager which indicates how employee performed on the project (or a period).

Alexander van Noort opened his presentation by saying: “Human capital focus in the companies is still not taken seriously, there is rarely human capital manager or HR manager on the board of directors or the top management.”

Continuing his presentation he mentioned football coaches and teams, explaining the difference between a team player and ego driven one, on which he said: “If the team leader has a big ego it certainly doesn’t  functions, especially nowadays with the new generation.”

Talent Acquisition: Enter the Cognitive Recruiter

Technology, like Linkedln, Glassdoore and crowdsourced sites like OnForce, are enabling new ways of identifying new talent. Candidates are finding the employer, making the “pull” of employment branding increasingly important. Compames are actively marketing employee experience as a brand differentiator.

Al, RPA, and Chat-bots are becoming widely used to improve candidate sourcing and fit by combining pre-existing soaal data and Informatton and applying advanced cognitive capabilities.

Recruiting is becoming skills-based as opposed to experience-based; clients need to know what makes candidates successful and screen for capabilities to find overlooked talent. Talent acqusition sourcing should be connected across HR, business, procurement, IT and other functions. Move beyond silos toward coordinated talent sourcing channels.

Adrian Cretoiu marked his role in the session by saying: “In the new world of O&G business, you have to be more agile and spend more time with the people, understand what they need and help them get it.”

Organization of the future: Arriving now

In order for organization to become ‘Organization of the future’ it needs to:

·       Redesign organizations for speed, agility and adaptability in order to fuel collaboration and knowledge-sharing and create a competitive advantage focused on customer impact.

·       Replace traditional hierarchies with a flexible, team-based model where responsibilities are clearly defined, but roles and job titles change regularly.

·       Organize and utilize resources based off skills, not job level, quickly deploying teams depending on the issue that needs to be addressed.

·       Enable the ‘organization of the future’ through evolved tools that include the latest digital offerings and capabilities such as a high degree of network intelligence spanning the company, the industry and the customer market.

Becoming an ‘organization of the future’ will be key to attracting the ‘workforce of the future’ where work is playbook-based rather than process-based.

Sjoerd Meijer explained the importance of flexibility: “We demand a lot of flexibility for our employees, not a nine to five mentality but the task driven one.”

After the presentation, the session continued as a workshop, which was well received by the audience. Visitors were organized in four groups and handed three topics on which they needed to give their opinion and solution.

The first topic, How to get rid of the EGO, was delivered by Alexander van Noort. The second one, How do we retain talent and get people excited about O&G industry, was delivered by Adrian Cretoiu and the third one, How can we provide flexibility and at the same time get the best out of a team, was delivered by Sjoerd Meijer.

After 30 minute consultations, the groups presented their solutions and showed the power of the team-work for which speakers were full of praise.