Human Capital essential element for Oil and Gas Companies

CONFERENCE CALLER: The AOG Exhibition and Conference set to kick off in Perth next week and one session in particular should be mandatory attendance for Oil and Gas companies who care about the welfare of their personnel.

According Gregory Bayne, a Phycologist at Total Leader & Coach Solutions Australia, any oil and gas company which fails to properly invest time and capital in its employees has a strong chance of going under, particularly in this depressed market.

Bayne is a Human Capital specialist and will be facilitating a special FIFO Mental Health panel session at AOG 2015.

Bayne asserts that studies have shown how the proper management and care for staff can be one of the most critical elements to a company’s success – or failure.

“If an organisation does not commit enough time and money into developing their human capital the organisation will lose its competitive edge and ultimately fail,” he said.

“A study by Crook et al. (2011) reports an 80 per cent (Return on Asset) improvement by increasing the collective number of years of executive-level experience from 35.2 to 59.4 years.

“The key implication being that organisations need to not only source, invest and develop human capital, but also retain the human capital.”

Bayne believes a key factor to sustainable organisation performance is identifying the human capital unique to a specific organisation and to then develop, nurture and build the human capital in these areas.

This is particularly important for the oil and gas sector, he said, which is not only a complex sector, but is also highly competitive.

“To remain a sustainable force in the market, oil and gas organisations need to be carefully considering how they are managing their human capital to gain market strength,” he said.

“If one had to look at any of the major oil and gas organisations around the world, the ones that have the greater percentage spend on human capital on an annual basis will also be the organisations with the best performance, best shareholder value, best safety performance, and lowest turn over.”

FIFO and worker support issues are currently a hot social topic across Australia and they will also be a leading issue for discussion at the AOG Exhibition and Conference.

Day two of the Conference will feature a day long Human Capital stream, with the FIFO Mental Health Panel Session facilitated by Bayne.

Bayne said the FIFO Mental Health panel will be focusing on providing insights and comments on the challenge of managing and supporting the prevention and management of mental health in the work place from a number of different perspectives.
“This panel discussion would be one of the most important sessions to attend across the AOG conference as we are discussing an issue that is current, that is impacting individuals, teams, leaders and organisations,” Bayne said.

“While we have no doubt the session will be well attended by HR, OD and practitioners, the session is highly applicable for any person in a senior leadership role, particularly COO’s and project managers/directors.

“We hope to provoke thinking, discussion and hopefully action as a result of attending this panel discussion, and most importantly stimulate the awareness around mental health in the workplace (and perhaps challenge a few of the myths).”

Also participating in the panel discussion, which will be staged on the afternoon of Thursday March 12, will be Dr Graham Jacobs, MLA, (a member of the Parliamentary Inquiry into FIFO mental health issues), Nicole Rooke from the Chamber of Minerals and Energy of WA and Alistair Box of Total Leader and Coach Solutions.