Empowering the Workforce: Social Collaboration in the Oil and Gas Industry

White Paper

Energy and Resources

Tom Franklin

Tom Franklin is a domain consultant and an industry advisor with the Upstream segment of the Energy and Resources business unit at Tata Consultancy Services (TCS). He has over 30 years of experience in the industry. Prior to joining TCS, Tom worked as a partner for Ernst & Young and the Concours Group, with oil and gas majors like BP, Shell, Marathon, W&T Offshore, Murphy Oil, Reliance, Chevron-Texaco, Conoco-Phillips, EnCana USA, and several other exploration and production companies. His engagements span business and IT strategy, system selection, business process design, and system implementation. Tom also has expertise in business processes such as prospect evaluation, production field operations, drilling, petroleum and reserves accounting, and energy trading and risk management. He was a contributor to the Cambridge Energy Research Associates landmark study, 'The Quiet Revolution' that assessed the impact of information technology on the petroleum industry.

About the Author

The oil and gas industry is undergoing several changes, both in terms of the nature of its workforce and overall operations. For instance, 50 percent of the workforce is likely to retire in the next five to seven years, opening up concerns related to loss of valuable expertise. The nature of work is changing too, with companies beginning to explore more remote and harsh environments to enhance production. This requires advanced technological skills that are often held only by a few experienced employees. Lastly, with businesses becoming global, oil and gas companies need to contend with changing government regulations that demand local resources to ensure smooth operations in remote environments. In a knowledge-intensive industry, these changes pose several challenges with respect to employee retention, engagement, training, and productivity. Addressing these changes requires a holistic view of the multiple dimensions involved, i.e., people, processes, and technology for a more collaborative and productive work environment.

The consumerization of IT and trends like BYOD, combined with the widespread prevalence of social networking platforms and mobile devices, present numerous opportunities for creating a more connected workplace. Considering that oil and gas projects typically include geographically dispersed stakeholders, a social collaboration platform can help discover, capture, and share tacit knowledge more effectively. It can bring in better co-ordination among stakeholders within and outside the enterprise, resulting in faster and more effective decision making. Such a platform also allows new hires to engage with the wider organization, helping them gain the requisite operational knowledge in a relatively shorter duration of time. This paper discusses the need to adopt social collaboration for knowledge management, and the urgency for employee and stakeholder engagement to drive better business results for oil and gas companies.

Abstract

Contents

Understanding the Changing Workforce and Nature of Work 5

Leveraging Social Collaboration to Bridge the Knowledge Gap 6

Moving from Traditional Content Management to Social Collaboration 6

Key Components of a Social Collaboration Platform 7

Making the Most of Social Collaboration: A Use Caseand Some Key Success Factors 8

Building a High Performance Workforce for Better Business Outcomes 9

Understanding the Changing Workforce and Nature of WorkRising global integration in the oil and gas industry means that operations are increasingly being carried out across geographies. Understanding both local and global practices is therefore vital. In most cases, employees are repositories of valuable information and local expertise that are necessary for carrying out specific tasks and making business decisions. Industry trends reveal that individuals with significant expertise are nearing retirement age, or are being drawn to new opportunities outside their current organizations.

Approximately 40–60 percent of current employees (mainly geoscientists and petroleum engineers) are planning to retire in the next five to 10 years.¹ There is also a considerable gap in experience between the retiring and the incoming workforce. About 20 percent of the industry has fewer than five years of experience², and the average age of exploration and production company employees is 50 years¹. What does this mean for oil and gas companies? The Talent and Technology study from SPE estimates that such loss of expertise could result in losses amounting to $40 billion. Moreover, 20–30 percent of drilling efficiency could be lost once experienced drillers hand over operations to their replacements.

To further complicate matters, the industry is undergoing changes with regard to locations explored, methods applied, and products churned out (conventional oil versus unconventional oil, natural gas versus coal seam or shale gas). There are also new and complex techniques as well as experiential knowledge and best practices that must be shared with new hires and other stakeholders across geographies. In addition, the need to find new oil reserves has driven companies to explore and operate in harsh, remote, and even hostile locations. This shifts the focus to unconventional exploration techniques that require the support of digital technologies and extensive technical expertise. However, finding the talent with experience in new technologies and unconventional production techniques is not a simple task.

Unfortunately, the current education system does not support the growing need for skilled resources. People graduating as geologists every year, from universities across the globe, form only a miniscule percentage of the ones who graduate in other disciplines like law, medicine, engineering, and journalism. Oil and gas companies therefore need to either train new hires or recruit personnel from other countries to bridge this gap. Industry players are considerably challenged to train these employees quickly in order to maintain productivity. Effective knowledge management and collaboration is not only critical to bridge these gaps and prevent loss of critical expertise but also build new competencies. A more connected workplace that enables easy exchange of information is thus a business imperative.

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[1] World Petroleum Council, ”A World in Transition: Delivering Energy for Sustainable Growth” (2009), accessed January 30, 2014, http://www.world-petroleum.org/docs/docs/speeches/wpc%20Presentation%20the%20Aging%20Workforce%202.swf

[2] PetroSkills, “Talent & Technology.” 2013

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Leveraging Social Collaboration to Bridge the Knowledge GapIt's important to address these challenges from a business perspective and not just consider them as HR or technology issues. This starts with understanding the needs of 'digital natives' entering the organization who are more than comfortable with social networking tools, and providing an environment that enables experienced employees to share their expertise through this emerging medium.

Driving collaboration through social media and other collaborative tools generates significant business value by improving the way knowledge is created, accessed, shared, and used. It also builds a synergetic ecosystem that is far more dynamic compared to traditional content management. From routine tasks to special projects, social collaboration transcends geographical boundaries. It captures the tacit knowledge of experienced employees by motivating them to contribute through intuitive and easy-to-use platforms. At the same time, it offers new generation employees access to collaborative technologies that allow them to leverage the knowledge ecosystem for faster integration within the enterprise. Such technologies also help create a network of support through communities of practice (CoP) and connect companies with academic institutions to prepare students even before they enter the industry. A key step in adopting social collaboration is to focus on choosing an enabling technology, or building a service line to create a platform that supports collaboration and overcomes the limitations of traditional content management systems.

Moving from Traditional Content Management to Social CollaborationTimely access to the right data, information, and expertise is one of the strongest drivers for social collaboration in the oil and gas industry. The amount of data — which is mostly unstructured in nature — is growing exponentially due to the rising complexity of technology. Therefore, a good part of an engineer's time is spent on gathering data and information rather than analyzing it. Plant outages are largely attributed to the difficulty in finding correct information in a timely manner.

Though typical content management initiatives provide the means to manage data, they do not enable contextualization, and therefore, fall short of a comprehensive knowledge management platform. Traditional enterprise content management (ECM) systems are driven by enterprise taxonomy and capture knowledge that can be documented. They are not well equipped to tap into unstructured sources such as emails and instant messaging, and other sources of tacit information. Moreover, ECM works within the boundaries of workflows and file management systems, and struggles to gather digital content (like videos and images) created through a series of disparate, unorganized processes.

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The existing ECM systems are also mere repositories of processes. Many of these content management solutions are built piecemeal by a particular business unit, and focus on providing employees with the knowledge they require for conducting routine tasks. They do not provide an interactive environment where employees can post their queries and get the required support to develop solutions for more specialized projects. Certain components of ECM allow for collaboration and communication. However, since the focus is implicitly on content creation and storage, important documents may not remain 'alive' for extended periods of time due to a lack of collaboration.

Social collaboration takes knowledge management beyond the rigid structures of taxonomy and toward folksonomy, where content is categorized through collaborative tags and annotations. Social collaboration platforms have evolved from the traditional system of records (SoR) to becoming systems of engagement (SoE). While ECM does extend some collaborative features such as simultaneous editing of documents and integration with instant messaging, it is largely used as a system of records. Social collaboration platforms aim to overcome the challenges posed by ECM systems. Such platforms bring context to data, help in the discovery of experts, and capture unstructured knowledge across the enterprise with ease.

Key Components of a Social Collaboration PlatformAs a networking tool that enables collaboration within the enterprise, a social collaboration platform should also encompass the social strategy for an enterprise, along with the associated policies and processes. An ideal social collaboration platform should be easily accessible through mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets, and be available round-the-clock for anytime, anywhere access. It should allow users to share information and communicate with each other through instant messaging, blog posts, and wikis. Though the information generated through social collaboration platforms is vast, the use of features such as hash tags contextualizes the information. Activity feeds, based on user-specific subscriptions, enable the generation of personalized streams of information to maintain subject relevance.

An in-built ideation engine facilitates generation of ideas through crowdsourcing, either for specific topics or in response to general industry trends. The platform should also offer discussion boards and polls that help in driving conversations around industry relevant topics. Instant access to the appropriate subject matter experts, through communities and other private and public forums, will enable faster problem resolution. By integrating with a comprehensive content management system, the platform should also enable real-time storage and retrieval of content.

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Figure 1: Key components of a social collaboration platform

Figure 1 depicts the key capabilities of an ideal social collaboration platform.

Making the Most of Social Collaboration: A Use Case and Some Key Success Factors

ELEMENTS OF SOCIAL COLLABORATION

MOBILITY INSTANTMESSAGING

WIKIS BLOGS-TEXT,AUDIO, VIDEO

CONTENTMANAGEMENT

QUIZZES &IDEATION

DEBATES/POLLS

RECOMMENDATIONS COMMUNITIES

Reservoir Management

Geology and Geophysics Systems

Well Engineering

GIS

Drilling Technology

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In this section, we discuss a scenario that explores how social collaboration can be applied to the oil and gas industry to improve productivity. Consider an oil well that goes offline frequently, and the production engineers and operators are unable to identify the problem. Let's say the employees who may have worked on various components of the well such as lift technology, pumps, and others, have also moved out of the company. Such issues could be posted to communities on a social collaboration platform to reach the extended workforce – contractors, suppliers, and ex-employees. The social collaboration platform can also provide specific workflows that allow ex-employees to participate in discussions until the problem is resolved.

Building a social collaboration platform is just the beginning; the following key factors will ensure faster adoption and continued success:

n Change management: This will influence how well employees are able to adapt to the new collaborative work environment.

n Collaborative culture: Technology is just one element of social collaboration; participation hinges on building and sustaining people's interest. Enterprises should make all-out efforts to motivate employees through senior leadership participation and recognition programs.

n Ease of use: The collaboration platform should require minimal training and be easy to use. Ensuring uninterrupted availability of the platform on mobile devices will also help boost employee participation.

n Ability to evolve with changing needs: The social collaboration needs of an enterprise and its employees may change over time. The right support will be needed to handle multiple iterations to meet these changing goals and employee expectations.

Building a High Performance Workforce for Better Business Outcomes Social collaboration tools are changing the way we communicate and exchange information both outside and within the workplace. Many businesses are already using it to support their marketing efforts and engage their customers. For the oil and gas industry, social collaboration holds immense potential in capturing and disseminating knowledge sourced from their experienced employees. Enterprises will need to think beyond traditional databases or content repositories, and embrace new social tools that drive continuous improvement of knowledge and skills. Building communities of interests and using discussion groups and podcasts could be some ways to connect with the right experts across the organization and accelerate issue resolution and decision making.

While these are important steps in the process, the greatest success lies in a shared vision of social collaboration, as well as rethinking organizational ethos and the ways of working. The demand for specialized skills and the influx of digitally savvy employees will require tools and technologies that support idea generation and open avenues for continuous innovation. In addition, such collaboration should happen anytime and anywhere to meet the needs of a geographically dispersed workforce. Future success will therefore lie in adopting social media and mobility enabled collaboration that will pave the way for a more agile, responsive, and productive enterprise.

About TCS' Energy and Resources Business Unit

TCS offers a comprehensive portfolio of services spanning consulting, infrastructure, engineering, asset management, and business process services. We help global Oil and Gas, Mining, Metals, and Construction businesses achieve greater efficiency by streamlining supply chains, optimizing asset utilization, improving customer care, and complying with regulations.

Our offerings address critical business areas including oil field services, refining, mining operations, exploration, and trading. Our solution frameworks leverage our expertise and best practices to help organizations achieve seamless integration of their operations, with superior decision systems, and reduced time and cost to market.

Our offerings are backed by our domain-focused Centers of Excellence. Our strategic alliances with HP, Oracle, SAP, Microsoft, and Siebel help us deliver significant value to our clients.

ContactFor more information about TCS' Energy and Resources Business Unit, visit: http://www.tcs.com/industries/energy/Pages/default.aspxEmail: er.marketing@tcs.com

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