Oil & Gas Technology: Christmas - A Time for Change?

Part of the Oil and Gas Technology series

I sat down this week to think about what I wanted to write in my blog (not the usual way to write a blog I admit, but this has been a particularly busy period for me and the blog has kind of slipped off the bottom of a very, very long to do list). As I sat in my living room surrounded by wrapping paper, cards, stamps, glitter and more than one empty wine glass something suddenly struck me…

How often do I send people mail these days (and by mail I mean traditional ‘snail’ mail, not e-mail)? So why do I feel the need to work my fingers to the bone writing out hundreds of cards each year, mostly to people I don’t see or speak to at any other time?

The answer is very simple and has to do with change–I send cards because I always have done and, let’s face it, probably always will.

This got me thinking about our beloved industry and a survey from Microsoft and Accenture that I have recently been looking at that tracks the industry’s opinions on the effectiveness of Web 2.0 collaboration technology. There are clear benefits to this technology including increased productivity, transfer of intellectual knowledge and collaboration among project teams. But the survey responses highlight some significant findings:

• Although more than 40 percent of oil and gas professionals view social media technologies as important to enhance collaboration and boost productivity, only 1 in 4 respondents’ companies are implementing them
• Respondents believe these tools can play a vital role in enhancing collaboration, including project management, sourcing scarce resources and sharing health and safety advisories
• These professionals also stated that social media technologies can help stem the flow of knowledge exiting the business from workers who are approaching retirement age
• Of these people 50 percent said their companies were receptive but not proactive to adopt social media tools
• Respondents saw the following common barriers to the implementation of these technologies—company management doesn’t see knowledge capture as important, current information is silo-ed on individual personal computers and spreadsheets and older workers don’t typically use digital knowledge-sharing capabilities

Now, clearly you are not in the portion of people in the industry who shun new technologies/processes/any form of change and I am preaching to the choir here, but if you could forward this to ‘Mr. Change Resistant’ sitting across from you in the office, then maybe, just maybe we can start to turn this tanker around!

By Jennifer Draper

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