Crisis Management, Opportunity Knocks

By: Peter Wolf

The American Business Ethics Professor Peter Wolf describes crisis management as ‘an opportunity’. The significant factor for Dr. Wolf is how we react towards a crisis.

What is the crisis we are confronted with and what should be our reaction? The crisis that I am speaking about is finding and retaining suitable employees. The reality of 2011 is that the conventional Oil and Gas industry in Canada still suffers from a lack of qualified professionals. It was hopeful that the downturn of 2008-2009 may have caused the employee tap to open, but for a brief period of time, that never really materialized.

The Petroleum Human Resources Council of Canada recently released a report: The Decade Ahead: Labour Market Projections & Analysis for Canada’s Oil and Gas Industry to 2020. The report does not create a pretty picture. Fundamentally it states that the oil and gas industry is facing the reality of a persistent labour shortage for the next decade. Previously we could look to Canada’s other provinces for qualified professionals but that is no longer the case.

Ontario with their push towards alternative energy is creating well-paying long lasting jobs in that Province, Quebec and its Shale Gas has the potential of keeping and attracting professionals, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and particularly Newfoundland were always a wealth of qualified professionals, no longer, The East Coast is drawing professionals back home with excellent paying jobs. Too add even more hardship to finding qualified employees once major projects like the Keystone pipeline gets full US approval the demand for employees will only get worse. Add in the eventual opening of the Arctic and an already tight job market has just gotten even more constricted. It is fair to say that the oil and gas industry, both conventional and unconventional, is in growth mode. The Petroleum Human Resources Council of Canada has stated that in the next decade we will need anywhere from 39,000 to 130,000 new hires.

Confronted with the ‘Crisis’ where, in the words of Professor Wolf, is the ‘opportunity’? Having been in the Human Resource field and the Energy sector for some 20 years I have seen enough ups and downs. One thing I know from experience is that the oil and gas sector has been very innovative in finding, extracting and producing energy. So how can the industry apply that same innovation to finding and retaining human talent? Let me offer some potential solutions.

It is said that the world is getting smaller, international business is the norm, communication between countries and cultures is a given, Canadian companies will gladly look to overseas markets to expand their business but rarely do they look to other countries to tap another resource, their human resource.

It is precisely foreign workers that Canada should be looking to in order to alleviate some of the labour shortage. It is 2011 and the time has never been better to exploit Canada’s favourable economic standing and import foreign workers. Why do I say this? Uncertainty exists overseas. The Mid-East and African countries, especially the Arabic nations, are finally overthrowing their dictatorships. This transition causes economic turbulence and skilled workers and their families are unsure of
the future. Canada offers a safe haven for these professionals.

Europe is dysfunctional, you have 17 countries pushing and pulling in all directions, over spending beyond their limits,
over taxing their population with a persistent high unemployment rate. People get tired of political bickering and just want a
brighter future for their family and Canada offers that stability.

In Venezuela the Chavez regime is nationalizing everything that exists. The future does not look bright for any educated, skilled professional. Canada is a free market country that encourages prosperity and advancement. The Mid-East, Europe and South America these three areas are low hanging employment fruit that should be taken advantage of by Canadian  companies.

And here is another point of interest in favour of foreign workers; they typically get paid less, on average 9% less, for doing
the same job then their Canadian counterpart. If they are getting paid less for the same job why would a foreign worker want
to come to Canada? Aside from the obvious strong economic growth, stability and security reasons they are paid a great deal
more working in Canada then their home country. For example an employee working in the former Russian Stans  [Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, etc.] will on average make 3-4 times his/her annual salary in Canada. Foreign workers and their presence in Canada are a win-win situation for everyone. The employer is happy because they get a well-educated individual for a lower average cost and the foreign employee is happy because they are making more money than they could ever dream of and they are living in a safe and secure country.

Are Foreign Workers the sole ‘opportunity’ amongst a crisis? The ultimate solution to a persistent employment problem? No, they are not singularly the Holy Grail. Another untapped source of future employees is right under our very nose, Women.

Women make up roughly 50% of the general population but they certainly do not make up 50% of the working population
and if one is to look at employment within the oil and gas sector that percentage is even lower. The sad fact is that the
oil and gas sector has been slow in attracting women to their workforce. Prevailing opinion is changing and the opportunity
exists to tap into this talent pool. Colleges and Universities that have programs geared towards the oil and gas sector are
actively pursuing female applicants. Companies such as Suncor and EnCana have had a solid reputation over the years of
encouraging women to enter the energy sector. Programs like the Women Building Futures [WBF] in Edmonton have slowly but steadily increased the number of women working in the energy sector. The jobs that these women are occupying are high paying, long lasting and in high demand. More needs to be done and more creative options need to be produced in order to seize the ‘opportunity’ that Women present the oil and gas industry.

Are Women and Foreign Workers the only two avenues available to the industry in solving the workforce shortfall? No, there are other areas and approaches that can be explored but the industry needs to be more imaginative. They need to take the same innovative approach that they use in finding resources and apply it to finding new employees, by doing so the future labour shortage will not be so unmanageable.