How to Manage Oil, Gas Employees in Turbulent Times

Pamela Judah  |  February 19, 2018

This post is now three years ago; so much has happened between then and now. Making employees redundant and thinking you may get them back can be dicey because we have to remember that the oil and gas industry has an aging workforce. With the uncertainty and the unsure prediction of when the oil price will rise again, a wise employer will find a way to retain these well-experienced employees. Take for instance what the Scottish government set up for oil and gas employees who were made redundant in 2015; the Transition Training Fund (TTF), this allows employees made redundant to channel their skills to doing something else. We should ask ourselves the question; what are the chances of recalling these reskilled employees? They would have moved on with their lives especially after finding a comfortable work zone with regards to the unpredictable oil & gas industry. Or how long are they suppose to live on the redundancy pay before getting a chance to be called back? I would say most oil and gas organization are operating more from the Hard Human Resource Management approach where people are used like furniture or office equipment to gain a competitive advantage and when this is not happening they let the employees go. What happens with reskilling these experienced employees? It is high time for the oil and gas industry to start developing their businesses in either renewable energy or relative businesses and thereby reskill their most valuable and skilled employees to fit into the new markets as we cannot really tell when the price of oil will rise again... otherwise, we could continue cutting until we're all along in the business

John Bell  |  May 03, 2015

A good game plan and the ability to control the controllables would eliminate the now urgent need to off load unwanted staff. Empire building by uncontrolled junior managers and the lack of gateways has caused the issue at hand . The lowering of the barrel price has little to do with the panic to right the wrongs, the inbuilt value chain takes care of that along with profit shifting to lower taxing countries such as Singapore. Now we see the age of job shifting to less regulated countries, people exploitation is alive and well. E.G.-: Chevron profit beats expectations? Just smoke and mirrors in order to justify the actions, of profit making. Remember this, you have to sell your product with a margin. You can only get for the product what people can afford. Paying less to bring the product to market may well be your undoing!.

Mike Gibson  |  May 01, 2015

Sir Ian Wood got his employees to take an overall 10% pay cut rather than layoffs. Should this not be a better way to go? Also some executives in the USA have agreed to cut their salary across the board. We have to ask the question Are our senior management and shareholders taking so much that we are seriously jeopardising the future of our industry?

Beral Bandoumel  |  April 29, 2015

Unfortunately most of the time trust for companies is when they need you and then when it comes to fire for any any reason they dont look at a way whereby they can offer an alternative to not make it happen. Like someone said it keeping talented people is an investment and not a loss.

A. Vega  |  April 28, 2015

Loyalty is a matter of trust between two sides but several times one of them forgets the importance of retain the talent. For sure, talent is expensive in this context but it ensures stability and professionalism so when downturn ends, reaction capabilities are there to react. But as said before, this is something most of companies dont care, just to save money. They need to understand the difference between expense and invest and retain talented, loyal and profitable employees is in fact an investment, no an expenditure.

Pierre Colin  |  April 28, 2015

How can we be loyal if the company are firing staff as soon as there is a glitch in the industry? The companies dont care about, its just the financial part which theyre interested in.