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BP pledges better communication with employees; team report says this might be management’s last chance to win back trust
Kristen Nelson PNA Editor-in-Chief
This summer BP Exploration (Alaska) Inc. responded to employee concerns about maintenance at Prudhoe Bay by establishing a review team to look at the concerns and at why some employees took their concerns outside the company.
The operations review team completed its report in September and Greater Prudhoe Bay management said the team “validated concerns raised by workers about the integrity of GPB facilities and operations. We also realize current processes for resolving employee concerns have not always been responsive.”
Management pledged “immediate action” on many of the recommendations — and said it would track those recommendations to completion.
“We recognize,” management said, “that beyond the completion of these actions the true measures of our response will be improvement in our overall response to employee concerns and the integrity of our facilities.”
Employees distrust management The operations review team interviewed 250 of 600 BP field personnel and 50 contract and support service personnel in July and August and said it found that the majority of workers “feel safe working at Prudhoe Bay… (and) are confident of their own ability, and the ability of their co-workers, to recognize workplace hazards.”
But workers feel the mechanical integrity of equipment at Prudhoe is deteriorating as the field ages and “that certain critical safety systems are in need of urgent maintenance or significant upgrades.”
While all BP employees said they were prepared to raise significant safety and operational concerns, they “are not convinced that management is adequately addressing their operational integrity concerns.” The review team found a “fundamental lack of trust of all levels of management” above operations team leaders “exists among many of the GPB operators and technicians.”
The review team said it believes much of the poor communication and distrust “stems from a long progression of decisions, actions and inactions over the last five to 10 years.”
It said underlying causes for employee concerns include: frequent management changes; lack of clearly assigned accountability for delivery of operational excellence or operational integrity; management decisions made on the basis of incomplete data; slow pace of integration of BP and ARCO Alaska Inc. management systems; pace, timing and degree of budget reductions; and reductions in staffing, training and budget “which many workers believe are making field operations less safe.”
Sustained change required The team said “a sustained change in management behavior” is needed to improve communication and build trust between management and employees.
In the western operating area — the old BP-operated side of the field — the team found “the level of worker mistrust of management … is more acute and personal” than in the eastern operating area — the old ARCO side of the field — “largely due to a longer history with the company and BP management, in addition to issues associated with the emergence of the union in 1995.” While workers in the eastern operating area lacked the historical distrust of BP management, they were skeptical of management communications and concerned about further cutbacks.
“The majority of operator level employees believe a positive, trust-based relationship can be built with management, but that it will require time and demonstration of greater commitment than they have experienced in the past. Many WOA (western operating area) employees expressed the sentiment that this is management’s last full opportunity to recapture their trust.”
Processes not effective Within the past five to seven years, western operating area workers have communicated “concerns, suggestions, issues and opinions” to management by both formal and informal means. And during this period, “management made significant efforts to encourage and facilitate employee communications on many issues (including safety).”
The review team said the encouragement from management “created an expectation that management would consider workers’ opinions and respond to the issues with decisions or information. When employees did not feel management was responding they became frustrated.”
Lack of feedback, perceptions of deteriorating mechanical conditions and high rates of management turnover have compromised management credibility, the review team said.
“Commitments made by one management team are not always kept by the following team. The result is a work environment in which management’s promises and initiatives are heavily discounted by workers.”
More face-to-face The review team recommended that employee concerns be addressed and feedback provided, that Prudhoe Bay management “communicate a clear vision and strategy” for the field and review and revise if necessary the integration plan for the eastern and western operating areas; that managers at Prudhoe should remain for three to five years “to develop consistency and reestablish trust.”
Managers should use less e-mail to communicate with employees and “make greater use of small group meetings to facilitate more two-way communication.”
Prudhoe Bay management said it recognizes “that enduring improvement will require change” in the way Prudhoe Bay is managed” and pledged to “eliminate barriers to communication” between workers and management, to “ensure management is responsive to the concerns of workers” and said: “Increased face-to-face communication will supplement e-mail and other communication methods.”
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