By 2035, nearly 1.9 million job opportunities are projected in the oil and gas industry.
So, it’s safe to say that workforce management professionals, schedulers, and demand planners alike have their hands full. And if they don’t already, they will.
We evaluated the current industry trends to discern the top three labor challenges the industry is facing in the hopes of providing a roadmap for improvement.
1. Worker Fatigue Management
With heavy physical labor and harsh environmental conditions, it will come as no surprise that there are inherent dangers to the trade and that skilled, competent workers are key.
But what may surprise you is that, according to OSHA, the number of US fatalities in oil and gas is 7x higher in comparison to other industries. What’s more disheartening is that this is more commonly due to human error than to mechanical failure.
These statistics can be preventable with some basic fatigue management. If your organization is still relying on paper-based scheduling, it’s easy to assign an employee at the well too many hours and not even realize it. Besides putting the company at compliance risk for violating OSHA guidelines, you are also putting that employee at risk of physical pain or drowsiness, increasing the likelihood of an accident.
Having an automated process in place greatly reduces such human error scheduling risk and ensures schedule fairness.
Optimize Employee Management with Indeavor
2. Labor Shortages in the Oil & Gas Industry
Automation is certainly one of the reasons why the industry is getting more tech-savvy. More companies are looking for quality software engineering talent as oil and gas continue to onboard cutting-edge IoT capabilities to gain a competitive advantage.
But it’s easy to see why the current oil and gas workforce is working themselves tired—there’s a people and skills shortage. In fact, engineering positions have been among the hardest to fill in the US for nine years in a row, seemingly making the wave of interest in IoT come crashing down on the industry.
The good news is that you can make do with the employees you have (yes, without burnout). Tribal knowledge can be replaced with a fully functional and integrated qualification management system (QMS). That way, you’ll have access to a skills matrix that allows for multiple tie-breakers to ensure that the most optimal—and available, in accordance with compliance rules—employee is allocated to the right location.
3. A Hybrid Workforce with a Hybrid Approach
Deloitte’s Human Capital Trends Survey of 2018 unveils that 84% of oil and gas survey respondents do not have a well-defined strategy for their hybrid workforce in place. The industry is focused so much on its full-timers that contingent staffers are not fully integrated into the day-to-day flow.
Contractors and freelancers are in need of defined performance goals and, in some instances, proper training. It is critical that part-time workers are subjected to the same cultural norms as full-time employees, especially when considering the safety hazard that comes with a lack of training.
Considering that contractors help fill a very wide skills gap that spans across organizations, it’s time to reevaluate this piecemeal approach and start integrating them fully into your schedules and skills evaluation process.
Workforce Management Solutions with Indeavor
Our workforce management SaaS solution offers clients an end-to-end, cloud-based employee scheduling, time & attendance, and absence management system. Integrate with your human capital management and enterprise resource planning systems to create a robust platform that provides you with real-time employee data.
Learn more or request a demo here.
