Linking Training and Development with the Oil and Gas Industry Needs
From the first day I entered the oil and gas industry, I have been told that the industry needs competency. It is an industry in which safety, productivity, and performance are paramount.
So I believe “being better matter” in this dynamic industry. The simple truth is that, despite downsizing, restructuring, and cost-cutting, oil and gas companies now place a huge premium on productivity and high performance of the workforce.
What will happen if you have limited people to deliver productivity and high performance needed?
What will happen if the training programs and university curriculum you offer do not result in performance improvement?
The answer is pretty simple. Oil and gas companies’ shareholders will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to keep expensive experts on staff. Companies will lose market share because of poor performance and low productivity. And you will produce few local leaders of the oil and gas industry and they will unable to leading the industrialization phases execution accordingly
Technology Adoption to Drive Operational Efficiency
The oil and gas industry is changing. So must we. There is the introduction of new software applications and the growth of high technology.
New technology like the internet of things, machine learning, artificial intelligence are transforming the entire oil and gas industry, From upstream, through transportation and storage to downstream utilization and finance.
Read also: Taking Training and Development in Tanzania’s Oil and Gas Beyond the Conventional Way
Those technologies are still black boxes for the users in the oil and gas industry and train and developing the users of those high-end technologies could help reduce costs, improve production and regain public confidence
How do you modernize the human capacity development framework to ensure that are caught up to speed with the latest technology?
How do you build top performing people who are problem solvers and result oriented? How do you produce world-class graduates who can compete for the job both at home and overseas?
New Revolutionary Approach In Training And Development
Training and development of the human capacity in the oil and gas industry are not just providing texts, or throw-out ideas and or distribute training documents, colorful or black to put them on shelves and to have practiced afterward.
Training is not bringing examples from the Gulf of Mexico to develop people; they are living around Indian or the Atlantic Ocean in Eastern or Western parts of our continent.
Training should help the trainees to solve the issues they face in their territory around if they do have challenges across East African oil and gas industry onshore, offshore and
The sad reality is that the traditional way of training and development in the oil and gas industry focuses on what people must learn (training) versus what they can do on the job (performance)
In traditional training ways courses are offered for many reasons. For example, Management or Human resources manager can decide to run an HSE training program because everyone in this industry conducting this program. And so it makes sense for the company to do likewise
The traditional way of training work like this send our supervisor for supervisory training and once they back will perform. Or run a petroleum engineering program at a local university and young people will be employable upon graduation.
The traditional type of training and development lacks alignment between the training programs offered and the organization’s goals or industry needs. Nobody is responsible to ensure the new skills and knowledge gained in training will apply to the job.
The evaluation is only conducted at the end of the course of training sessions. Such evaluation does not collect data to ensure the skills and knowledge of training are applicable to the job
This results in many headaches and hassles that most oil and gas companies and countries are forced to go through. The problems range from reduced market share to low productivity and poor performance
Adopt A Performance Improvement Mindset.
Challenges and opportunities in East Africa should be addressed through developing local resources, capacities and finding collaborative solutions and prepare East African students to be world-class graduates and training and developing the East African young professionals and move them from just users to top performers and professional Specialists.
With oil price being low for a long time, it is important decision-makers, HR managers, and managers adopt a performance improvement mindset in dealing with performance in their organizations and across the oil and gas industry.
System thinking approach to performance requirement that is directly linked to the operational and industry needs will enable them to analyze and understand the reasons for poor performance.
