The 'only rewards drive retention' myth

So what can the oil and gas industry do to both attract and retain critical technical professionals in the long term? Now, it won't be wrong to assume that according to most organisations, the common solution to attracting and retaining talent zeroes down to one word - money. But, in a complete contradiction of the popular belief, money can only act as a short term response. The bottom line is 'rewards alone do not retain talent'.

Be flexible
Technologically literate, the new generation of employees who are just stepping out of university have very different expectations in comparison to their predecessors in the industry. To sum it up in one word, they are looking for 'flexibility'. This implies challenge, opportunity and instant access to information. When dealing with these employees, it's important to remember that 'sticking to one precise role' and 'the lack of flexibility to move from role to role' is directly proportionate to 'restlessness'. This is why it's extremely significant for a company to be in sync with the common aspirations of those entering the workforce.

Move beyond engagement, venture into enablement
With the recruitment challenge out of the way, what's next? Your new technical specialist is on board, and now you must retain them. Hay Group's research on employee effectiveness shows that in order to maximise retention, both employee engagement and enablement are critical. In an ideal scenario, when both these factors are in place, organisations can gain with more revenues, customer satisfaction and a 54 per cent reduction in employee turnover.

Go beyond pay
Some other factors like 'innovation, engagement, effectiveness, personal growth and honest communication' rank highly when it comes to what engineering employees in 'high performing organisations' value.The high ranking of these five factors only shows that organisations can create an environment that reflects the expectations of their engineering staff.

Personal grades have to amount to achievement
Personal growth and challenge-orientation are also very significant when it comes to individuals working in these disciplines. But, unfortunately this is not reflected in their role design. Now, I'm not saying that organisations should stop developing career paths. But, the need of the hour is for employers to realise that what worked for the previous generation will not work for the new one. Therefore, the oil and gas industry cannot attach a timeline to giving opportunities to an employee who has already demonstrated a clear understanding and delivery of their side of the role.

Create the right environment
Mentoring not only paves the way for an increase in engagement levels, but it also leads to personal growth. This is why it's extremely important for technical professionals to feel that their personal aspirations are a part of the strategy that their leadership implements. For this, managers must set achievable targets, provide clarity on how these objectives will be measured and provide specific feedback.

Combining the aforementioned strategies with accurate assessment of pay spikes will help an oil and gas company retain its vital staff. With the shrinking population of technical professionals posing a massive challenge, the oil and gas industry needs to formulate an end to end career plan for fresh recruits and pay is definitely not where the buck stops.

The author is Debabrat Mishra, director, Hay Group India. Re-printed with permission. Link: http://blog.haygroup.com/retain-your-technical-workforce-combat-the-talent-crunch/