Succession Planning; A Way Forward in Achieving Organizational Strategies

The upstream oil and gas industry, facing with an aging workforce, need to implement the right approach to ensure that competent work force available to carry forward the needed tasks in achieving the company's strategic goals. As organization grows, we need to ensure that processes are in place to attract, retain and develop the employee's talent for succession planning and management. The paper present a strategic process that focuses on creating a sustainable value chain of high potential talent who have the requisite knowledge and skills to lead and manage new organizational requirements and address business challenges. As good succession planning is critical for companies facing the "big crew change," a systematic approach to implement fast track processes is proposed. It involves: i) Critical analysis of manpower (ageing/ specialization etc.), ii) Identification of specialized jobs / competencies, iii) Designing training & development roadmap for all jobs/ levels iv) Young Professional's, Mid- Career and Advance Career Competency Development Roadmaps v) Shadowing the personnel according to the jobs with target date and vi) Robust competency assessment process. The significant impact of implementing above process will ensure the changed crew acquire the desired competencies within timeframe and will be able to take over the retired employee's position. Moreover, there will be no substantial setback to the organization in achieving the organizational strategies since technical capabilities is retained through systematic knowledge transfer process. Implementing a proper succession plan process within the company is one of the significant initiatives to support the development of technical capabilities and leadership capacity to address the challenges like growth in production targets and handling maturing and more complex fields. The proper succession planning and management will also overcome the challenges of selecting the top performers and pooling the talent with equipped technologies. The approach adopted will not only solve the problem of emerging big crew change but also help in achieving the company's strategic goals.