Attracting and developing the right people is one of the most important responsibilities leaders have.
If the energy industry doesn't have the people with the right skills, aspirations, drive and ambition, there is no business.
If the industry has those people, anything and everything is possible.
The Challenge Most of what is referred to in this paper will be based on the lessons learned at BP, but there is a lot going on in this area across the industry, and much can be learned by sharing experience.
There are two basic questions. What is the challenge the industry faces? And what can be done to address the challenge? The key issues are a shortage of younger professionals in some key geographical areas and the shortage of important skills in some key functional areas. These shortages are of particular concern at a time when the industry itself faces major commercial, social and environmental challenges and therefore needs to attract a disproportionate share of the world's most talented people.
Changing the First, the age profile - - here there is a dichotomy. In new markets, such as China, BP and the Profile industry are attracting many graduates and young people. But where the markets are mature, for example the U.S. and U.K., the workforce has also become mature.
In fact over half of the petroleum engineers employed in western oil companies are over 45 years old.
Clearly experience is needed, but replenishment is also required. In some important technical areas, more than 50 percent of the workforce and contractors will be eligible for retirement over the next five to ten years.
This problem has two roots - - first, the industry's habit of stop-start recruitment, following the ups and downs of the business cycle.
In particular, a decade of low recruiting in the 1990s diminished the pool of talented employees who are now ready to take over from those who are soon to retire.
And even where the industry does recruit substantial numbers of young people, there are certain areas of expertise where talent is in short supply.
In some disciplines, BP has a flood of applicants. In others there is a trickle. In commercial roles BP tends to have hundreds of applicants per post, whereas in technical disciplines it can be less than ten, and in some cases as few as one.
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It's an exaggeration to call the overall recruitment situation a crisis, but if there is one area of major concern it is that student enrolment in petroleum-related university programs has declined to a new low in mature markets.
For example, enrolments in geo-science degree programs in the U.S have fallen by over 50 percent since 1980s, The problem becomes visible in universities, but it
