Workforce Planning – The Right Stimulus Package For The Natural Gas Industry

Just about everyone, it seems, is lining up for their cut of the stimulus package billions – except of course the oil and gas sector.

As a consequence, workforce planning must become more important than ever for oil and gas companies. To be effective, the planning should encompass a valid workforce strategy and a prudent tactical plan, both for the short term and the long term. It should also be fully aligned with ongoing business strategy.

Workforce planning has many facets. It addresses current needs and future capabilities and takes into account elements such as performance management, skill forecasting, workforce modeling, core work analysis and attrition forecasting. In addition, it must integrate with knowledge management and process optimization to achieve the real benefits available.

Performance management, for example, is vital if you want to avoid making decisions based on opinion or popularity. Take the case of the employee segment nearing retirement. As this bracket is generally paid significantly more than younger workers, it is vital to determine who is performing well and who isn’t as well as to determine whose knowledge is vital to be captured. Also, a key focus is to clearly evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the workforce to identify areas where additional personal development can be of value to the organization, versus where it will not benefit the organization in the long run. The key is to focus retirement planning and prevention efforts on those areas that are demonstrably best as determined by real performance analyses.

How about hiring? While the “natural thing to do” in a recession is close all the recruitment doors, this has often been found to be the best way to hasten the decline of the business. A period of record layoffs, after all, is a period of tremendous opportunity. But you won’t ever benefit if you impose a global hiring freeze.

Talent that would have cost a fortune in signing bonuses only a few months ago might be available today at reasonable rates. Instead of haggling over hefty salaries, some very bright minds may be more than happy just to have another job.

But once again, don’t just hire anybody. Instead of filling vacancies in general, highlight those areas of organizational weakness where you are bleeding profits. Cutting expenses is only half of the equation, the other side that must be addressed, along with budget management, is true performance and process improvement. Management may look unkindly on what can appear to be demands for salary increases when they are calling for cutbacks. But they may well be interested to hear how they can raise revenues by tens of millions by adding competent personnel to specifically targeted areas.

Knowledge And Process

Any workforce strategy has to incorporate two key areas – knowledge management and process optimization. Why? Not all areas of an organization perform at the same level. The positive areas need to be addressed squarely with knowledge-management techniques to ensure these data are made available and leveraged within the organization. Additional personnel can also be added to such areas as apprentices and trained on those data – particularly where members of existing staff are nearing retirement.