Author: Anna Illarionova, PhD, WPC YPC member, Russia
The drop in oil prices and global outlook changes have significantly affected the petroleum companies' strategies, their internal processes and structures. The “cost reduction” and “downsizing” became the mostly used words together with “uncertainty” and “short term planning”. However, in order to prepare business models for managing this volatility and adapting to changing market conditions, the oil and gas industry continues keeping a special attention on new talents’ attraction and retaining within the sector as well as on ensuring proper knowledge transfer and succession planning in case of potential layoffs and restructuring.
The World Petroleum Council (WPC), a non-advocacy, non-political organization founded in 1933, is dedicated to the promotion of sustainable management and use of the world’s petroleum resources for the benefit of all. The WPC includes 70 member countries representing over 96% of global oil and gas production and consumption. Being aware of the importance of providing young professionals and students with the significant role they deserve, since 2004 the WPC has been developing and supporting its Young Professionals and Students Committee (YPC), empowering young generation to become real game changers for the industry.
Within 2017 under the leadership of the WPC YPC a global survey was conducted dedicated to the young perception of the oil & gas industry. Over 1,800 responses proved a high interest of young generation to express their view on the future of industry, its potential and challenges for new comers. 77% of respondents find the industry attractive to the youth due to their strong interest in the sector’s development, opportunity to work in a high technological environment, and for a global industry. Around 43% of young participants see their whole career path within the petroleum sector. And what can retain these interested, inspired and responsible young specialists within the industry in a long term? They give a clear reply themselves highlighting mentor programmes and more support from senior & leaders as one of the key pillars for their retention and development.
Adopted by most of Fortune 500 companies (that includes different sectors such as ICT, energy, FMCG, transport, mining, construction, etc.), mentoring programmes can differ widely based on the needs of a particular industry or company. They may include rotations throughout different departments, face-to-face meetings with a mentor to share information on industry challenges and develop a career path, pairing a mentor and a mentee based on the specific professional skills, case studies and joint problem solving.
Why has this approach become so popular in recent years? The answer is quite easy... Mentoring proves to be a two way learning that gives many opportunities for both participants engaged in the process – a mentee and a mentor. In addition to a traditional view that mentoring approach helps a young employee (fresh graduate) get access to new information, develop leadership and soft skills, fill in lacunae in some areas, get examples of typical problem solving, understand the routine of the high level managers and the decision making process, it gives a lot for a mentor as well.
We see today a process called a “reverse mentoring”, when the industry leader (mentor) receives a proper feedback on how the traditional company's operations can be improved and organized in a more digitalized manner, what communication channels should be used for reaching the younger audience, how the diversity and less hierarchical approach might help raise operational efficiency and implement new ideas. Finally, mentoring programmes ensure a correct succession planning and handover, empower and retain both young and senior talents within the industry for a long period. This is also a part of the sustainable approach to business as mentoring programmes development adds value for both the company's results and its employees' performance and motivation.
Since 2010 the World Petroleum Council has been developing its Mentoring Programme for young people under 35 that allowed several hundreds participants from 21 countries to get access to senior industry leaders, and draw upon their experiences, expectations and suggestions. Mentors encourage and provide perspectives of their profession, expertise and advice to mentees in regular calls and meetings. In return, mentees discuss their questions, thoughts and concerns on diverse issues related to the energy industry with their mentor and their peers in the group. The participants share their feedback on a regular basis during the cycle and that helps constantly improve the programme. If we follow the career path of the WPC mentees in several cycles, we can highlight that most of them (more than 70%) have been developing and reinforcing their professional skills and knowledge of the sector and gradually climbing the career ladder both in corporate and academic spheres. Surely, these positive changes were influenced by lots of factors but according to the mentees’ opinion, having an international and experienced mentor for a specific period of time, helped not only deep dive in the petroleum industry peculiarities but also reconsider some personal behaviors and attitudes. It is also interesting to notice that within the Programme about 5% of mentees decided to change their professional area and moved to another sector. They shared feedback that mentoring experience was useful for them to understand their interests and passion in life as well as flexibly restart their professional development in another direction.
This international programme is strong in its global approach but at the same time it empowers “glocal” (meaning from global to local) talent development within the petroleum industry since most of mentees are selected or nominated by the WPC National Committees and have just started working for the oil and gas companies/research institutions or finishing their professional education. The potential of the programme is high and can be replicated by the WPC National Committee members and involve more students and young professionals on a country level.
Among different initiatives that help develop human capital of the petroleum industry – international and local mobility, diversity enhancement, social inclusion, internal & external training programmes, E-learning, etc. - mentoring will always play an important role as it makes a young person feel that somebody cares of him/her, supports in dealing with challenging situations, shares knowledge and expertise. The development of digital platforms and social networks has significantly simplified the connections between mentees and mentors giving them an opportunity stay in touch in different part of the world, time zones and working conditions.
However, in order to push forward the “mentoring instrument” and make it even much stronger, it is highly important to measure its results. Starting from ordinary feedback from participants, it is possible to arrange the mentoring programmes by using SMART goals and setting clear KPIs. As example, the behavioral change of a mentor and a mentee can be measured after a specific time period, the career path of the mentees can be monitored (more senior roles, new positions, change of the job/company, etc.), the business impact can be evaluated by developing new projects, introducing innovative solutions, solving of challenging situations, etc. These mechanisms will reinforce the influence of the mentoring approach on the petroleum sector development and retaining talents within the industry.
The petroleum sector can give a young professional a wide range of opportunities starting from understanding how vital is to provide the access to energy, applying technical and soft skills, implementing new digital and highly advanced technologies, to cooperating with colleagues around the world, contributing to the industry development in a long run, and keeping the work-life balance. In constantly changing global energy scenarios, it is crucial for a young professional to be very flexible and adaptive to new targets and challenges, be ready to learn on-the-job from an experienced colleague, and be responsible for every action he/she does, not being afraid of proposing creative solutions and ideas.
References
- WPC Mentoring Programme, World Petroleum Council. Available at http://www.world-petroleum.org/youth/mentoring
- The Game Changers: shaping our energy future, 2016, World Petroleum Council, Available at http://www.world-petroleum.org/youth/youth-publications
- Gurdjian Pierre, Halbeisen Tomas, Lane Kevin, Why leadership development programs fail. Available at http://www.mckinsey.com/global-themes/leadership/why-leadership-development-programs-fail
