Petrochemicals Organization

Long term Learning and Development Partnership

Background

Our client is a multinational oil and gas corporation headquartered in Texas, United States. At the time this program was delivered, it was the world’s third largest company by revenue and the second largest publicly traded company by market capitalization. It had 37 refineries in 21 countries making it the largest refiner in the world. Primeast have worked with this client continuously since 1989 within the organizational development, training and coaching arenas. We are currently one of a small group of strategic vendors providing a mix of blended solutions.

The Brief

The client had moved from a regional back office system servicing multiple business lines – with an Upstream, Downstream and Chemical portfolio – to create 11 centres of expertise around the world. This was a Business Process Outsourcing project where the centres were wholly owned client subsidiaries in Canada, Brazil, Argentina, Czech Republic, UK, Hungary, Thailand, Malaysia and the PRC.

Primeast was selected to support the European business centres because of past organizational development experience with the client. We were tasked with creating a focused, experiential intervention that accelerated learners’ ability to work effectively in cross-functional, multi-cultural teams whose ‘customers’ were based globally.

The Solution

This intervention was designed to complement and dovetail with the client’s in-company New Employee Orientation program. With employees from 64 countries, it engaged the learners in a way that enabled practice and feedback that was sensitive to the needs and learning styles of the diverse audience. We provided a high facilitator-to-learner ratio (1:6) to address individual needs in a more effective way than is usually possible in large classes.

A key focus of the program was to help learners understand their personal responsibility in terms of how they interacted with their colleagues and how this impacted on the achievement of good and effective outcomes. The program also involved attendance of a key manager at each workshop to address site-specific issues and hear from learners how they would embrace working in teams effectively.

The Results

2112 employees from 64 countries attended the 3 day intervention over a 30-month period. These are some of the key benefits to the organization:

  • The program became a significant USP for this employer and was seen as a positive attractor for prospective employees who were being hired direct from universities and away from other businesses
  • Significantly reduced the time it took for new hires to be effective team employees
  • Created flexibility in the workforce – employees were able to move from one team to another with a desired and certified level of excellence and perform almost right away
  • Facilitated the cultural integration of employees from 64 countries to work effectively with local nationals
  • Launched many people on a great career with this company – lots of the original hires have now risen to management positions throughout the organization, in their initial location and around the world

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