Steven Leaper discusses why mentorship has to protected in a downturn.
Sustainability in today’s ‘lower for longer’ oil market requires engineering services suppliers to adopt a fundamentally different approach to delivery. Returns on $100 oil justified the ‘deliver at any cost’ model means, even if we all tacitly acknowledged its inherent inefficiencies. Achieving a balance between the Operators’ need for shareholder value against their own need for sustainable profitability requires engineering services providers to adopt a mentor focused approach to the development of the skills and experience required of competent technical delivery in a prolonged $50 market.
It appears counterintuitive to suggest that the industry is facing a skills shortage when livelihoods remain at risk but whatever the causes of the downturn, the fact remains that the UKCS has a huge infrastructure that needs maintenance through to cessation of production, and beyond to decommissioning if or when that begins to gather momentum. Short termism in the form of redundancies and recruitment freezes might shore up balance sheets through more efficient monetisation of assets but in the longer term lost experience isn’t going to improve the industry’s skills shortage or reduce cost; it’s more likely to exacerbate both. Factor in negative media reports focused on oil price collapse, perceived industry instability and cuts in training and development investment and it’s unsurprising that a generation of young people who might have considered working in the industry can’t now see a long term livelihood in it, even though the scale and context of the challenge can undoubtedly still provide a long and rewarding career.
Against this backdrop the long term future of the UKCS will be affected in no small part through mentorship and the transfer of knowledge and experience to the next generation of technical authorities and experts. Businesses that today build staff engagement by embracing the mentoring philosophy and integrating it into their culture and core values are currently developing the technical leaders and industry managers of tomorrow. Mentorship benefits all interested parties, from mentor to mentee through employer to client and industry. Businesses that demonstrate a willingness to invest in staff and their professional development benefit from high levels of staff engagement, and pass the benefits on to their clients and the wider industry in the form of service continuity and cost efficiency.
Businesses structured in this way are well placed to meet the demands of the ‘lower for longer’; oil price environment, and can even thrive within it. By capturing the skills and knowledge of their technical authorities for the next generation through mentorship, engineering services providers can help secure the future of the industry whilst balancing the requirements of value driven clients with their own need for long term financial sustainability.
Steven Leaper is Apollo’s business support director. Learn more about Apollo here.
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