Value and Energize Our People

We are creating a high-performance environment in which we continue to build a talented workforce with the competencies needed to execute our business strategy. Our goal is to attract and retain employees by offering an environment of openness and trust built on shared purpose and common values, balancing our business objectives with employees’ career and personal goals.

Our workforce process—from planning and recruiting through training and development to knowledge sharing and succession planning—is designed to address employees’ competencies and needs throughout their careers.

At every level, we look for and cultivate five essential leadership competencies. We believe that our organization succeeds when our people:

• Focus on business execution
• Manage diverse relationships
• Think innovatively and strategically
• Engage in personal development
• Communicate and influence effectively

We value employee feedback and use it to drive decision-making for the organization. Our redesigned and combined employee safety and engagement survey, conducted in 2009, has been an important tool in this process. The survey also showed that we are on the right track in most areas. When responses were benchmarked against both the energy industry and a proprietary database of North America high-performing companies, we scored above the high-performing index on 80 percent of all benchmarked questions.

We still face challenges: a workforce demographic that includes a large number of retirement-eligible employees with fewer mid-career workers available to succeed them; achieving work-life flexibility at all levels; and a recognition that we need to continually deepen our diversity and inclusion approach so that it is woven throughout every aspect of our business. These challenges are considered as we formulate business plans and strategies.

Workforce Planning and Recruitment
We take a strategic approach to workforce planning. We assess the basic skills, knowledge and competencies needed within each business unit and map those needs against the talents available internally and externally. To attract the people we need, we combine targeted recruiting efforts with outreach programs. For example, through outreach programs in Houston we encourage students as early as middle school to consider the energy industry as a potential career. <Read more>

Employee and Leadership Development
We offer ongoing programs to help employees develop the skills, behaviors and competencies necessary for organizational success and employee career advancement. We do this through mentoring, skills and leadership development, and work rotation. We incorporate this into our performance management program. Through our performance management process, we identify strengths and needs of individual employees, and tailor action plans and progression paths. <Read more>

Engaging our Employees
Employee engagement is a valuable indicator of how our employees feel about the way our company values and supports them. In our 2009 employee survey, our employees indicated that key drivers of their engagement are our corporate commitment to integrity, social responsibility and well-being, and their being empowered to make decisions and perform worthwhile work. We are formulating plans to address the key drivers and will measure our progress through our biennial employee survey. <Read more>

Knowledge Sharing
Knowledge sharing is a key to institutionalizing our existing competencies and developing new ones. This is a two-way process, as tenured employees share their experience and new employees share their knowledge of emerging trends and technologies. <Read more>

Valuing Diversity and Inclusion
We recognize the value that a diverse, inclusive workforce can bring to every aspect of our business and we strive to reflect the diversity of the communities where we operate. Our commitment to diversity is integrated into our policies and practices throughout our operations. <Read more>

Ensuring Health, Safety and Well-being
We encourage the health, safety and well-being of our employees by promoting work-life flexibility and healthy lifestyles. We emphasize employee safety through safety-focused events, awareness drives, leadership communications, incident reporting and assessment. <Read More>