It seems that “mindfulness-based stress management” is in vogue across the oil & gas industry as the sector apparently responds to a rise in mental health awareness among its workforce.
The fall in oil price and its dramatic impact on the North Sea, not least thousands of redundancies, has meant that stress-related conditions such as anxiety and depression have become important issues in the sector.
One is advised that at least some North Sea players are looking for innovative ways to proactively protect their workforce from the harmful effects of work-related stress. It is perhaps recognition that this most important of all assets is in reality also remarkably fragile.
One of the outcomes of such concern is that Dr Steve Smith, an Enterprise Fellow and senior lecturer in mental health and wellbeing at RGU, has become involved.
It is well-known that stress-related illness is one of the major causes of sickness-related absence in industry.
It accounted for almost half (43%) of all days lost to the British economy in 2014/15, with 440,000 workers affected and a total of 9.9million days lost.
Every employer ought to be aware of the need to protect employees from the effects of toxic work environments. But many don’t and, for example, plenty of illegal sweatshops are to be found in advanced economies; even in Britain.
They are not confined to developing and “Third World” countries . . . India, China, much of Southeast Asia and Africa, for example. And slave-wage workers caught up in such practices are quite probably far more stressed than highly paid Westerners in the North Sea.
According to The Robert Gordon University, mindfulness-based approaches are currently one of the most accessible mental health solutions used by organisations of all sizes and across all sectors, encouraging participants to focus on what is happening now as opposed to becoming engaged in thoughts of future or past events.
Smith, who leads the RGU:Wellness mental health solutions service, told Energy: “Mindfulness-based training is flexible to any audience and working environment, and has been shown to significantly reduce stress and anxiety, lessen distraction and increase attention to task. Mindfulness practice can also help staff achieve more and to a higher standard.
“Many organisations are providing free mindfulness classes for their staff; RGU has been doing this for the last three years, and as word spreads other organisations are offering drop-in sessions and structured programmes providing instruction and support for staff to ‘be-in-the-moment’.”
Premier Oil is the first operator to engage with RGU:Wellness’s programmes and supposedly has a proactive occupational health culture. The company was receptive to an initial trial involving a volunteer group of 12 staff exploring mindfulness-based stress management as a means to protect its workforce “in an affordable and effective manner”.
Smith delivered an eight-week course to Premier’s initial group in Aberdeen, based on a weekly two-hour session at its North Sea HQ.
According to Smith, “Premier could see the strain that the economic uncertainty was having on the industry and is paving the way for the rest of the sector to recognise that proactively protecting the mental health of its workforce is a valuable and necessary investment in its prime commercial asset”.
That is all well and good for direct employees at apparently enlightened companies. But what about contractors; does such thoughtfulness extend to them? Let’s assume it does. The question then becomes; how far down that supply chain does this . . . I’ll call it respect . . . actually reach?
For example, what about companies that provide offshore support vessels . . . perhaps on spot contracts; perhaps long-term? What about the guys on those boats?
Does this sense of caring reach down to their level? After all, they too are professionals.
Take a turn around ports that regularly host OSVs; like Aberdeen and Peterhead. Dominant are the trucks of the North Sea . . . ordinary supply boats shuttling the routine consumables of drilling rigs and offshore production installations.
Check out their ports of registry . . . all sorts of exotic places. Look at their crew . . . all sorts of exotic faces; many clearly from the Indian Subcontinent and Southeast Asia. One such vessel found itself in the P&J last month. Malaviya Seven was detained in Aberdeen in what the union RMT says is a “blatant example of modern day slavery”.
According to the union, the decision to detain the vessel was taken as a means to securing pay and benefits for the 15 Indian nationals who, to that point at least, were crewing Malaviya Seven.
None of the crew had been paid for almost two months while several have not received a penny from their employer for several months, according to the RMT.
Also according to the union, Malaviya Seven had been on recent charter with BP, Wood Group, Dana and, wait for it, Premier Oil.
RMT stated on June 15: “This is therefore a vessel working in and out of UK ports and servicing the UK sector. Despite this, and even if the exploited workers were paid today, they would still only be earning around $2 US dollars per hour, less than a fifth of the UK National Minimum Wage provisions.”
RMT said too that a second vessel, Malaviya Twenty, faced detention in Great Yarmouth where Port State Control had been alerted to a similar situation on that vessel.
I have found irrefutable evidence that neither the Seven nor Twenty are strangers to the UK. On the website of one local agent, for example, are 2012 references to both.
They are units of GOL Offshore, an Indian company that claims its people are its key asset. GOL says on its website: ”We strongly believe that it is the people behind our assets that are the prime movers for value creation in our business.
“Attracting talented individuals and proactively engaging them in our endeavours has been the hallmark of our people strategy. We believe that to have satisfied customers, we need satisfied and positive personnel.”
Strikes me that there’s an awful lot of smoke and mirrors in the UK offshore industry when it comes to people. How about honesty and fairness. It would a good place to start.
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