upes: 9th oil & gas hr table

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PROCEEDINGS

Contents

The Organizers: India School of Petroleum & Energy,

1st Floor, 55, Community Centre, East of Kailash, New

Delhi - 110 065.

The Proceedings are conceptualized and compiled by

Ms. Tanushree Sharma and formatted by

Mr. Vikas Narula, India School of Petroleum & Energy.

[email protected]

9th Oil & Gas HR Round Table - Proceedings 01

Academic Partner

Corporate Sponsors

Page

Associates and Event Sponsors........................................ 1

Introduction.............................................................................. 2

Program Schedule.................................................................. 3

Speakers Profile....................................................................... 4

Setting the Tone...................................................................... 12

Keynote Address..................................................................... 14

CEOs’ Panel Discussion......................................................... 16

Session-wise Proceedings................................................... 19

9th Oil & Gas HR Round Table

has been possible, thanks to:


Introduction

The 9th Oil & Gas HR Round Table saw a significant increase in the participation from oil & gas

and power sector companies. The meeting was attended by over 150 HR professionals from

over 75 companies from national, international and independent oil & gas, power companies,

government & NGOs, service providers and consulting companies, which included:

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Aarvi Encon Pvt. Ltd. Juris Corp. Advocates & Solicitors

Ace Energy Infrastructure Pvt. Ltd. Kalpataru Power Transmission Ltd.

Adani Power Ltd. L&T Ltd.

Afcons Infrastructure Ltd. Linde Engineering Services India Pvt. Ltd.

Anglo Technical Recruitment Ltd. Lobo Staffing Solutions Pvt. Ltd.

Arya Offshore Services Pvt. Ltd. MpowerEnergy Associates

Baker Hughes Singapore Pte. NaftoGaz India Pvt. Ltd.

BG India Nagarjuna Oil Corporation Ltd.

Bharat Forge Ltd. Niko Resources Ltd.

Bharat Oman Refineries Ltd. Oil India Ltd.

Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd. OM Freight Forwarders Pvt. Ltd.

BJ Services Company Middle East Ltd. ONGC Ltd.

Bureau Veritas (I) Pvt. Ltd. Parichay Management Consultants

Cairn Energy India Pty. Ltd. Pawan Hans Helicopters Ltd.

Dolphin Offshore Enterprises (India) Ltd. Petroleum Federation of India

Drive India Enterprise Solutions Ltd. Petronet LNG Ltd.

Emerson Process Management (India) Pvt. Ltd. Power Grid Corp. of India Ltd.

Essar Engineering Services Ltd. PricewaterhouseCoopers Pvt. Ltd.

Essar Exploration & Production (I) Ltd. Reliance Industries Ltd.

Essar Oil Ltd. Reliance Infrastructure Ltd.

GAIL (India) Ltd. Sabarmati Gas Ltd.

Gammon India Ltd. SAGA Global Consultants

GeoEnpro Petroleum Ltd. Schlumberger Asia Services Ltd.

Great Offshore Ltd. Shell India Markets Pvt. Ltd.

Green Gas Ltd. Simplex Infrastructures Ltd.

GSPC Gas Co. Ltd. Singhania & Co.

Gujarat Gas Co. Ltd. Strategic Projects & Technical Services Pvt. Ltd.

Hindustan Electricity Generation Co. Pvt. Ltd. Taurus Contractors Pvt. Ltd.

Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd. Thermax Ltd.

IBM India Pvt. Ltd. TUV India Pvt. Ltd.

IndianOil Corp. Ltd. VVF Ltd.

Intertek India Pvt. Ltd. Weatherford

Jubilant Energy WesternGeco International Ltd.

Jubilant Enpro Pvt. Ltd.

The meeting was split into seven key sessions. Here is an attempt to summarize the key

discussions and action points for each session in the subsequent pages.

Friday, August 27, 2010Day Two

Session 6 : Striking Gender Balance in the Sector

Session 7 : Innovative Ways of Managing Talent

(New HRM Frontiers of Leading

from the Front)

1:00pm : Summary & Close of Conference

Session Chairman: Executive Director

(HRD), Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd.

Personnel Manager, INM,

Schlumberger Oil Field Services Ltd.

Director (Human Resources), Asia

Pacific Region, Baker Hughes

Director (HR & Administration), Cairn

Energy India Pty. Ltd.

Director (Personnel), Power Grid Corp. of

India Ltd.

Session Chairman: former Director (HR),

IndianOil Corp. Ltd.

Vice President (Human Resources),

BG India

Chief Coordinator (BP), Oil India Ltd.

Deepti Sanzgiri,

• Lisa Silipigno-O’Brien,

• Regina Shadle,

• P. Senthil Kumar,

• V.M. Kaul,

V.C. Agrawal,

• R. Suriyanarayana,

• P.K. Devchoudhury,

Program Schedule

Thursday, August 26, 2010Day One

9:30am : Registration & Welcome Tea

10:00am : Opening Address - The year that was

10:15am : Keynote Address

10:30am : CEOs’ Panel Discussions

Sanjay Kaul,

S. Sundareshan,

• N.M. Borah,

• Rahul Dhir,

• Rajeev Sonthalia,

• Walter Simpson,

S. Mohan,

• Lakshmi Suresh,

• Yogi Sriram,

• Anil Sharma,

C. Ramulu,

• V.K. Sood,

• S. Varadarajan,

Rajeev Bhadauria,

• Srinivas Peri,

• B. Ananthakrishnan,

President, University of Petroleum & Energy

Studies

Secretary, Ministry of Petroleum & Natural

Gas, Govt. of India

Chairman & Managing Director, Oil India Ltd.

Managing Director & CEO, Cairn Energy

India Pty. Ltd.

Vice President & Managing Director,

Schlumberger, Asia Services Ltd.

President & Managing Director, BG India

Session Chairman: Director (HR), Bharat

Petroleum Corp. Ltd.

HR Manager, India & Southwest Asia,

Baker Hughes

Executive Vice President (HR &

Administrative Services), Larsen & Toubro Ltd.

Head (Learning & Development), Essar

Oil Ltd.

Session Chairman: former Director (Finance),

Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd.

Executive Director (Corporate Finance),


Executive Director (Corporate Finance),

Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd.

Session Chairman: President (HR),

Reliance ADAG

Sr. Manager (Executive Hiring), IBM India

Pvt. Ltd.

Head (Reservoir Development),

Cairn India Ltd.

Session 1 : Changing Dimensions of 'Talent

Mix' in Organizations

Session 2 : Finance Talent – Newer Dimensions

Session 3 : Emerging Talent Trends in Technology

Management including Research

Session 4 : Search & Deployment of New &

Existing Talent

Session 5 : Changing Face of Talent in Marketing

5:30pm : Summary and End of Day 1

Session Chairman: Vice Chancellor,

University of Petroleum & Energy Studies

Region Organization Development

Manager, West MENA, Weatherford International Ltd.

Project & Engineering Services,

Regional Manager East Electrical – PELE, Shell India

Markets Pvt. Ltd.

Session Chairman: Chairman, Petroleum

Federation of India

President, Petroleum Business,

Reliance Industries Ltd.

Zonal Dy. General Manager, GAIL

(India) Ltd.

Marketing Manager, India &

Bangladesh, Schlumberger Oil Field Services Ltd.

Dr. Parag Diwan,

• Manoj Parmesh,

• Shailesh Desai,

S. Behuria,

• R.K. Chaturvedi,

• Kamal Tandon,

• Sunil N. Gulrajani,

9th Oil & Gas HR Round Table - Proceedings 03 9th Oil & Gas HR Round Table - Proceedings 04

Speakers Profile

S. SundareshanSecretary, Ministry of Petroleum &

Natural Gas, Govt. of India

Mr. Sundareshan did his Master’s from the

Bombay University and MBA from the

University of Leeds, Britain. He was Chairman

of Forward Markets Commission, Govt. of

India and held senior positions in the

Ministry of Finance and Commerce.

Mr. S. Sundareshan was charged as the

N.M. BorahChairman & Managing Director

Oil India Ltd.

Mr. Borah holds a Bachelor’s degree in

Petroleum Engineering from the Indian School

of Mines, Dhanbad. He also holds a Post

Graduate Diploma in Petroleum Prospecting

and Reservoir Evaluation from the Norwegian

Institute of Technology, Trondheim, Norway.

He is associated with the Society of Petroleum

Engineers, USA and the Society of Petroleum

Rahul DhirManaging Director & CEO

Cairn Energy India Pty. Ltd.

Mr. Rahul Dhir aged 43 was born in Delhi and

completed his B. Tech. from the Indian

Institute of Technology, Delhi and later

completed his MS from the University of

Texas at Austin; and MBA from Wharton

Business School in Pennsylvania.

Mr. Dhir started his career as an Oil & Gas

Reservoir Engineer before moving into

Sanjay KaulPresident


Mr. Sanjay Kaul is the founder President of

the University of Petroleum & Energy Studies.

His tasks and responsibilities include

positioning of the university nationally and

globally among the stakeholders i.e. policy

makers, key influentials, academic and

research institutions and the industry. He

provides valuable and strategic inputs to the

management, boards and faculty of the university

towards the future industry scenarios and skills

set required for professionals of generation next.

He is a management graduate with distinction

from St. Xaviers Institute of Management,

Mumbai and has over 23 years of professional

experience with Chevron, Shell and PwC in the

energy sector.

Mr. Kaul is also the global leader for Energy and

Resources Practice for Deloitte in India.

Secretary of the Ministry of Petroleum and

Natural Gas from February 1, 2010. Previously,

Mr. Sundareshan was the Additional Secretary

and Special Secretary in the ministry. He is an

Indian Administrative Service officer of the 1976

batch Kerala cadre.

The 58-year-old officer has handled several

important assignments in Kerala too, including

Principal Secretary (Revenue) and Secretary of

the Department of Expenditure.

Geophysics. He has over 36 years of experience in

the oil and gas exploration and production industry.

He is a member of the top level strategy team and

is responsible for Oil India's foray into international

exploration activities. Previously, he held the post

of Group General Manager (Main Producing Area)

and General Manager (Geosciences) in the

company. He joined the Board on May 6, 2004 as

Director (Operations) and was elevated to the

position of Chairman and Managing Director with

effect from December 1, 2008.

investment banking in the year 1994. He has

worked at SBC Warburg, Morgan Stanley and

Merrill Lynch where he managed a team advising

several major oil companies and a number of

independent E&P companies on mergers,

acquisitions, and capital market related issues.

He worked as the Managing Director and co-

head of Energy and Power Investment Banking

at Merrill Lynch before joining Cairn India in

May 2006.


Speakers Profile Speakers Profile

Anil SharmaHead (Learning & Development)

Essar Oil Ltd.

A B.Sc. Geology and Post Graduate in HR

from M.S. University, Vadodara. Mr. Sharma

has over 21 years of experience with the

Energy Sector, Automobiles & Auto

Component and IT industry. He is known for

his Training and Development initiatives in

the industry and building the start up

organizations.

C. RamuluFormer Director (Finance)

Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd.

Mr. C. Ramulu was Director (Finance) of

Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited

(HPCL), India, till January 31, 2008 which is a

Fortune 500 downstream oil company with a

turnover of over Rs. 100,000 crores. At

present, Mr. Ramulu is working as a

consultant and advises various corporations

on Strategic, Financial and General

V.K. SoodExecutive Director (Corporate Finance)


Mr. V.K. Sood has over 34 years of experience

in the Oil Industry. Presently, he is heading

Finance Department in Corporate Office

which oversees finance functions of all the

divisions of the corporation.

He is a Chartered Accountant. During his

tenure, he has relentlessly pursued excellence

in quality and speed of each activity.

Yogi SriramExecutive Vice President (HR & Administrative

Services), Larsen & Toubro Ltd.

Mr. Yogi Sriram has over 30 years of

experience in the Human Resources

Development function, of which 17 years are

in leading Human Resources teams in

companies of major significance.

He has an Honors degree in Economics from

Sriram College of Commerce, Masters in

Personnel Management & IR from the Tata

Institute of Social Sciences, L.L.B. from the

University of Delhi and M.B.A. in Organization

Behavior from the Faculty of Management

Studies (FMS), University of Delhi.

Mr. Sriram also has a Diploma in Training and

Development from Indian Society for Training &

Development. He is accredited in psychometric

testing techniques such as MBTI at NTL Maine

US, FIRO-B and has gone through extensive

training in personal counseling (Karkuff Model).

He has an extensive exposure to organization

re-structuring, Leadership development, Change

Management, Attractive Talent and Acquisition.

One of his key strengths is to engage employees

wherever he has worked.

Management Issues.

Mr. Ramulu is a Chartered Accountant and

Company Secretary and a rank holder at the All

India Level. Mr. Ramulu secured distinction in

MBA from the University of Leeds, U.K. He has

participated in various Management programs,

and also presented papers at National and

International Conferences.

He was also in-charge of HR function of

Marketing Division from 2004 to 2006. He has a

passion for development of human resources and

keen interest in training and development

activities of the Corporation inside as well as

outside. While heading HR, initiatives like

Leadership Mirroring Survey and Competency

Mapping of senior management was undertaken

largely with the objective of placing right people

in the right job.

Walter SimpsonPresident & Managing Director

BG India

Mr. Walter Simpson is responsible for both

upstream/downstream business of BG in

India which also includes India's largest

downstream company, Gujarat Gas Co. Ltd.

Mr. Simpson joined the BG India team in

2009 from BG’s Head Office, where he had

been the Group’s Vice President and General

Manager for Production, Operations & Well

S. MohanDirector (HR)


Mr. S. Mohan is Director (Human Resources)

on the Board of Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd.,

a Fortune 500 company.

Mr. Mohan graduated in Mechanical

Engineering from the Birla Institute of

Technology & Science, Pilani, in 1973 and

completed his MBA from the Indian Institute

of Management, Bangalore in 1977. He

Lakshmi SureshHR Manager, India & Southwest Asia

Baker Hughes

Rajeev SonthaliaVice President & Managing Director

Schlumberger Asia Services Ltd.

Mr. Rajeev Sonthalia took over in August

2007. He started his career with Schlumberger

as a Wireline Field Engineer in March 1992 in

offshore Mumbai. He worked in various

positions in field operations and management

for the Wireline business unit, in India and the

United Kingdom before returning to India as

HR Head of Schlumberger in 1999.

Subsequent to this assignment, he moved to

Houston, USA and worked in the strategy group

of the Drilling & Measurements division of

Schlumberger from 2002 to 2004. He headed the

Drilling & Measurements business for

Schlumberger in Kuwait, China, Korea and Japan

before returning to India once again in

August 2007.

Mr. Sonthalia has a degree in Engineering Physics

from the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai

and a Masters degree in Business Administration

from the Erasmus University in the Netherlands.

Engineering since 2006. He joined BG Group in

1999 and worked on the UK assets in Aberdeen

before moving to the Head Office in Reading as

Head of Well Engineering in 2004. He has been

associated with the oil and gas industry for 25

years and has worked majorly as an independent

operator and a large scale service provider.

He holds a Masters Degree in Engineering

Science from Oxford and Petroleum Engineering

from Herriot Watt.

worked in Tata Engineering & Locomotive Co.

(TELCO) and Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd., (BHEL)

before joining Bharat Petroleum Corporation

Limited in 1983.

During his career spanning 25 years in Bharat

Petroleum, he held key positions in the

Engineering and Projects functions. He was

Personnel Manager of the Eastern Region,

General Manager of the Southern Region,

Business Head of LPG, Executive Director (Human

Resources Development), till his appointment to

the Board.

Ms. Lakshmi Suresh is Manager – India &

Southwest Asia for Baker Hughes, Oil Field

Service Company. She joined the company in

October 2008. Prior to joining Baker Hughes;

she was General Manager – HR for Kuoni

Travel Group, India. She was part of Kuoni

Travel Group for 13 years and held

various positions.

She began her career as a Marketing person and

then moved to teaching for a year. She then

moved to Personnel & HR function and has a

career span of over 18 years. Throughout she was

handling HR Generalist Role.

Ms. Suresh is an Economics Graduate, Post

Graduate Diploma in Industrial Relations &

Personnel Management and Masters in

Human Resources Development

& Management.



Manoj ParmeshRegion Organization Development Manager

West MENA, Weatherford International Ltd.

Mr. Manoj Parmesh has done his PGCPM

from IIM Kozhikode. He is currently working

as Region HR & OD Manager for West MENA

region of Weatherford International. In his

current role, Mr. Parmesh is responsible for

HR, Training/Competency and Organizational

planning functions for all MAGHREB

Countries such as Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco,

Shailesh DesaiRegional Manager East Electrical, PELE

Shell India Markets Pvt. Ltd.

Mr. Shailesh Desai has 30 years experience in

the Oil & Gas industry. He joined Shell in

1980 after graduating in Electrical

Engineering from Nottingham University in

UK. Initially, he worked in Downstream Shell

refineries in UK for 15 years in various project

and maintenance management roles. Since

then he has had diverse and varied

S. BehuriaChairman

Petroleum Federation of India

With over 35 years’ rich experience of the oil

& gas industry, Mr. Sarthak Behuria is

Chairman, Petroleum Federation of India

(PetroFed) and Advisor, Petronet LNG Ltd. For

a five year term which ended in February

2010, he was Chairman, Indian Oil Corporation

Ltd. - India’s largest commercial enterprise with

a 2008-09 turnover of US$62 billion. He was

concurrently Chairman of a group company

Dr. Parag DiwanVice Chancellor


Dr. Diwan did his post graduation in

Chemical Engineering and Doctorate in

Business Administration with thesis on

“Designing and Development of an

Enterprise Resource Planning System”. He

passed all his degree programs with

top honors.

His specialization is in organization wide roll-outs

of management solutions in terms of People

(attitudinal training and training the trainer);

Technology (Technological Solutions-ERP,

Communication Computing, MIS) and

Application Assessment (Learning and

Application Assessment Benefit Analysis). He has

been perfected in various organizations and

especially during his seven year tenure as Dean

& Director of Centre for Management Education

at AIMA.

Mauritannia & Mali comprising 1800 employees

and US $ 500 million in revenue. Mr. Parmesh was

previously the Country HR Manager for

Weatherford in India and has moved into his new

role three months back.

experiences of working in different geographies,

cultures and businesses including-the

Netherlands (mainly LNG), Muscat –Oman (EP),

KL-Malaysia (various sectors).

Mr. Desai is very interested in sports particularly

cricket & rugby, however watching more than

participating. His passion is travelling &

immersing himself in the cultural atmosphere

around ancient monuments.

Chennai Petroleum Corporation Ltd., besides

heading IOT Infrastructure & Energy Services Ltd., a

joint venture for building and operating terminalling

services for petroleum products.

Under the stewardship of Mr. Behuria, IndianOil

transformed into a major, diversified, transnational

integrated energy company through strategic

initiatives across the hydrocarbon value chain,

including petrochemicals, and globalization of

operations.

Rajeev BhadauriaPresident (HR)

Reliance ADAG

Mr. Rajeev Bhadauria brings along with him

more than 2 decades of wide experience

across the entire gamut of HR. He started his

career in NTPC and thereafter headed the

Northern region before joining BSES Ltd. in

1995. At BSES, now known as Reliance ADAG,

he headed the HR of Dahanu Thermal Power

Station during the days of its infancy, which is

Srinivas PeriSr. Manager (Executive Hiring)

IBM India Pvt. Ltd.

Mr. Peri holds a Masters in Psychology and

posseses a total work experience of 15 years

across various HR roles.

He was instrumental in building teams

globally and across the technology and

consulting spectrum over the last 15 years.

B. AnanthakrishnanHead (Reservoir Development)

Cairn India Ltd.

S. VaradarajanExecutive Director (Corporate Finance)


Mr. S. Varadarajan has completed schooling

from Don Bosco Matriculation School and

graduated in Commerce group from

Vivekananda College, Chennai, and then

completed Chartered Accountancy as well as

Cost Accountancy.

He joined Bharat Petroleum Corporation

Limited in 1983, and held various stints in Pricing,

Regional Finance, Management Accounting,

Corporate Planning and Head of Strategy. He

served as Vice-President, Finance in Bharat Shell

Ltd., a joint venture of BPCL and Shell. He was

Head of the Retail Business for Southern Region

from July 2002 to April 2006. Currently, he is

heading Corporate Finance for BPCL in Mumbai.

rated as one of the best coal based power

stations of the world in its category.

He has a number of credits to his account like

creation of the All India Contract division at

Noida with 5 Regional Offices across the country;

setting up of the key team at BSES Telecom that

lay down the first Metropolitan Area Network;

privatization of Delhi and Orissa Distribution

companies and several such critical HR issues of

transition and transformation across the power

and telecom space.

Mr. Peri has worked with both Indian and

Multinational firms in various geographies. One

of his earlier roles was as L&D Manager with

Adobe Systems.

Mr. B. Ananthakrishnan is a post graduate in

Petroleum Geology and has 20 years

experience in the industry with 14 years in

Cairn.

He has worked in both exploration and

development projects in Cairn and has been

closely associated with the Rajasthan project

since 2003. Mr. Ananthakrishnan currently heads

the Reservoir Development department in

Cairn Energy.



Regina ShadleDirector (Human Resources), Asia Pacific

Region, Baker Hughes

Ms. Regina L. Shadle (Kuala Lumpur,

Malaysia) is currently engaged in an

expatriate assignment for Baker Hughes

incorporated and serves as the company’s

Director of Human Resources for Asia Pacific,

based out of Kuala Lumpur Malaysia. Prior to

her current assignment, she served as the

Chemical Division’s Talent Manager for

Lisa Silipigno-O’BrienPersonnel Manager, INM


Ms. Lisa Silipigno-O’Brien is the Personnel

Manager for Schlumberger Oilfield

operations in Indian and Bangladesh.

She is a certified Professional Engineer (P.E.)

in Petroleum Engineering in the United States

and holds a Senior Human Resource

Professional (SHRP) certification recognized

by the Society of Human Resource Management

(SHRM).

Ms. Lisa has a Bachelor’s degree in Civil

Engineering Systems from the University of

Pennsylvania and has over 16 years of experience

in the Oil & Gas business.

Europe, Africa, Russia & the Caspian based out of

Aberdeen, Scotland. In addition to her core

responsibilities, she facilitated the development

of BHI’s Corporate Diversity & Inclusion efforts

which was launched in 2009. Ms. Shadle joined

Baker Hughes in 2005 as the lead Human

Resources Manager for the Chemical Division’s

Manufacturing & Support Functions based in

Texas.

V.M. KaulDirector (Personnel)

Power Grid Corp. of India Ltd.

Mr. V. M. Kaul is a first class Bachelor of

Mechanical Engineering from IIT, Delhi with

MBA Degree from IGNOU. He is holding the

post of Director (Personnel) in POWERGRID

since March 16, 2009 and has previously held

the position of Executive Director (Human

Resource), in-charge of Private Investment and

Business Development and Corporate Planning.

Mr. Kaul has over 35 years of work experience. He

has worked in NTPC and EIL before joining

POWERGRID in 2002.

P. Senthil KumarDirector (HR & Administration)

Cairn Energy India Pty. Ltd.

Mr. P. Senthil Kumar began his career as

production engineer at ICI. He has been with

Cairn India since January 2005. He is

responsible for strategic decision making in

the areas of HR policy, compensation

planning, recruitment and performance

management in the organization.

Mr. Kumar holds a Post Graduate in

Personnel Management and Industrial Relations

from Xavier Labor Relations Institute (XLRI),

Jamshedpur and a Bachelor’s degree in

Technology (Chemical Engineering).

Kamal TandonZonal Dy. General Manager

GAIL (India) Ltd.

Mr. Kamal Tandon is a B.E. (Chemical) from

Department of Chemical Engineering &

Technology, Punjab University, Chandigarh

and MBA in Marketing from Narsee Monjee

Institute of Management Studies, Mumbai.

Mr. Tandon posseses 25 years of work

experience in the field of marketing of

Natural Gas, Polymers and Petrochemical

Sunil N. GulrajaniMarketing Manager, India & Bangladesh


Mr. Sunil Gulrajani’s career in the Oil & Gas

sector spans over 16 years, all of which are

with Schlumberger. He commenced in a

Research and Development function at Tulsa,

USA and subsequently diversified into a

series of Marketing and Team Management

responsibilities at Aberdeen, UK, Port

Harcourt, Nigeria, and Paris, France,

Deepti SanzgiriExecutive Director (HRD)


R.K. ChaturvediPresident, Petroleum Business

Reliance Industries Ltd.

Mr. Rajiv Chaturvedi has 36 years of

experience in the Petroleum Industry in India.

He worked with 2 State owned Oil Companies

– IBP and Bharat Petroleum for different

assignments in sales, distribution, operations

and HR before joining Reliance Industries as

Chief Operating Officer.

Mr. Chaturvedi was part of the leadership team in

Reliance responsible for developing the strategy

for Petroleum Retail and setting up a network of

1400 retail outlets across the country in a record

time. He has now been entrusted with the

responsibility for learning, growth & organization

development in Petroleum Business of Reliance

Industries.

products with two of India’s outstanding public

sector enterprises (GAIL and IPCL). His technical

background has extensively involved him with

production teams of the companies in

formulating policies for management of

production of the products, production planning

and ensuring the product meets with all the

quality.

respectively. During his various stints, Mr.

Gulrajani has been exposed to client-focused

responsibilities, technology promotion, and

developing Marketing & Sales teams across all

disciplines in the Upstream E&P business.

Mr. Gulrajani’s current responsibility focuses on

strategically positioning Schlumberger’s

technology portfolio in India, Bangladesh & Sri

Lanka. Immediately prior to his current

assignment, Mr. Gulrajani was the Global Sales

Manager for Schlumberger’s Completions

segment, based in Houston, USA.

Ms. Deepti Sanzgiri is a Chartered

Accountant, a trained behavioral trainer and

a certified Master Coach in Organization

Learning Methodology by Innovation

Associates USA, and trained in Performance

Coaching by Sir John Whitmore of

Performance Consultants, UK. Ms. Sanzgiri

has had a wide experience in training. She

has also been trained in creativity techniques by

Prof. Pradeep Khandwala, faculty IIM (Ahmedabad).

Ms. Sanzgiri has had varied experience in the

Finance function holding several important

portfolios like Management Accounting, Pricing

and Commercial and Treasury Management.

Before taking over as ED (HRD) in BPCL,

she was heading Strategy and

Finance functions in Retail

SBU of BPCL.


Speakers Profile Setting the Tone

R. SuriyanarayanaVice President (Human Resources)

BG India

Mr. R. Suriyanarayana is responsible for

leading the Human Resources function for

BG Assets in India.

He joined BG India in December 2004. He

served as BG India’s HR Director for two

years before being seconded to the Group’s

Headquarters in the UK. In the UK,

Mr. Suriyanarayana was based at BG Advance,

P.K. DevchoudhuryChief Coordinator (BP)

Oil India Ltd.

Mr. Devchoudhury is a Chemical engineer

from Benaras Hindu University in 1976. After

completion of first year of M. Tech. in the

same university, he joined Oil India Ltd. in

1977 as Drilling Engineer Trainee. He has a

long experience of 33 years in hydrocarbon

sector in different capacities, mostly in

materials management, procurement and

V.C. AgrawalFormer Director (HR)


Mr. V.C. Agrawal was the former Director

(Human Resources) on the Board of IndianOil

Corporation Ltd. since August 2005. IndianOil

is a Fortune 500 company and is India’s No.1

business organization in terms of turnover.

He holds additional charge as Director – In-

charge, IBP Division of IndianOil.

An Electrical Engineer and an alumnus of IIT-

Roorkee, Mr. Agrawal also has a Masters Degree

in Electrical Power. He has more than three

decades experience of working in various

Technical and Human Resource Management

functions. He is credited with aiding IndianOil

evolve as learning and knowledge-centric

organization, facilitating the alignment of

employee goals with its Corporate Vision of

emerging as a major, diversified, integrated

energy company.

the Group’s technical centre. He was responsible

for resourcing of key technical talent globally and

also instituted ‘parenting’ processes for more

effective talent management across the group.

Mr. Suriyanarayana returned to BG India in

August 2008 and is currently based in Mumbai.

processing of contracts including a stint of about

5 years in offshore operation in Bay of Bengal.

From 2004, he has been associated in the

transformation process undertaken by Oil India

as Breakthrough Performance Project to enable

the company to become a learning organization.

Presently, he is the Chief Coordinator of the

CORAL (Centre of Reflection and Learning) and

also heading the Task force for preparation of the

XII Five Year Plan (2012-13 to 2016-17) for the

company as the Chief Coordinator.

Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage

to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads.Erica Jong

The most exciting place to discover talent

is in yourself.Ashleigh Brilliant

The 9th Oil & Gas HR Round Table on “Discovering New

Talent” was held on August 26 & 27, 2010 at

Le Royal Meridien in Mumbai, India. The Round Table was

attended by approximately 150 delegates representing different

organizations from oil & gas and power sector companies. Thirty

speakers brought to the forum not only diverse perspectives but

also contributed to the creation of mélange of insightful

information on discovering and managing new talent.

The format of the Round Table primarily consisted of a CEOs’

panel discussion followed by the presentations delivered by

senior HR practitioners on issues associated with the discovery of

new talent and gender diversity in oil & gas sector. The Round

Table was structured around seven sessions, each distinct in focus.

The Round Table observed effective exchange of experiences and ideas on new talent dynamics &

strategies and also helped participants to gain insights into the ways to develop organizational initiatives

for acquiring and managing the “talent of tomorrow.” Thereafter, ensued serious and sincere dialogues

concerning the gender imbalance in the oil & gas industry. The discussion lead to the collective realization

of the need and added impetus to the meager intent and efforts made in the direction of restoring the

imbalance.

In his inaugural address Mr. Sanjay Kaul, President, University of Petroleum & Energy Studies and the

Program Director welcomed the audience to the 9th Oil & Gas HR Round Table, the annual industry event

that ISPe has been successfully staging for the past nine years.

Detailing the theme and the scheme of the Round Table he said, “The entire theme this year is actually a

derivative of what we have been projecting in the last 8 to 9 years. We have looked at organizational

transformations; we have looked at optimization; we have looked at competency driven HR systems; we

have looked at leveraging outsourcing, talent management and talent portfolio management and last year

it was very interesting, I must compliment my industry colleague in Cairn India, Mr. P. Senthil Kumar who

brought in the element of generation next leaders under his program directorship last year.”

Referring to the continuous talk of new talent and enquiring as to what is new about the talent he said,

“New word has been used so many times that we would like to pause for a while and try and define

it and that is the attempt that has been made in this one and half day.”

Having expressed gratitude to the members of steering committee for their advice and guidance Mr. Kaul

presented to the audience a vivid picture of the events and happenings that brought the oil & gas industry

under spot light the previous year. “This year has been a serious year.” He said and added, “However,

shadows are perhaps more than the great big stories.”

He started the count with BP oil spill that as per him got advertised very well and wondered how many

companies in the world have wherewithal like BP to manage the contingency of that scale. Trying to heed

the signal given by last year he said, “We need to fly a little more carefully in the way we are exploring

and looking for oil and developing it.”

Moving on to the next event he said, “Gas in India received

a boost from governance angle because of Reliance, Anil

and Mukesh Ambani’s dispute. I think that was a saga that

unraveled a lot of things. Ministerial panels were set up; not

only the gas prices were determined but also a lot of

confusion as to whose asset is it anyway was answered.”

This year has been a serious year.

However, shadows are perhaps more than the

great big stories.

Sanjay Kaul, President, UPES


Keynote AddressSetting the Tone (Contd.)

Proceeding further, he said that recoveries and subsidies were

big shadows. Referring to structural issues he said “Do we have

schemes like “Aadhar” or “directed subsidies” where subsidies

could be provided where they are required.” Counting further,

Mr. Kaul included to the list, deregulation of petrol, flow of oil &

gas from the field of Reliance and Cairn, emergence of shale gas

as new frontiers, quiet resurgence of Iraq and Iran and increased

E&P activities, interesting finds of oil in difficult places like East

Siberia, offshore Dubai and Afghanistan.

Calling deepwater and gas business as the noticeable trends of

the last year he said, “We are going to see a lot of deals, a lot of

technologies and a lot of efforts and business both in gas and deepwater. There has been a committed

investment of about $167 billion by 2015 in deep water. People in the offshore business have estimated

$330 billion in the next five years in terms of offshore operations and maintenance.”

Reflecting upon the Fortune 500 list, he said that it more or less remained the same and noted, “Five out of

ten companies being oil & gas companies in the top ten and almost eight out of the first twenty but quietly

and significantly both the Chinese companies have moved to 9th and 10th places which means they are

now in top ten, in India our top five oil & gas companies have fallen by ranking except Reliance Industries

which has improved its ranking dramatically, for the same reasons that there were under recoveries in the

government owned companies.” He then highlighted emergence of EPC in service providing sector and

hubs that happened last year and pointed out, “Middle East has become EPC and oil service providing

hub and Malaysia has emerged very strongly as deepwater hub.”

Further he said, “Great deals have happened from $10 billion to 20 billion to 30, 40 and there was a deal of

$90billion last year. M&A activity continuing and speeding up, ongoing licensing rounds have been

stronger last year. Our own NELP round, 32 production sharing contracts were signed, 7 CBM blocks were

awarded, consolidation in refining was very visible; Shell has openly declared it will sell 15% of its refining

asset; Bina, Bhatinda refineries coming on their own; in Essar & Reliance, one can see consolidation

happening and the Tamilnadu refinery also got a financial closure in the last year.”

Mr. Kaul brought forth an interesting development seen in

the oil companies. He said that from the last year a very

open, transparent and committed declaration of many oil

companies to go for nuclear, wind and solar ambition and

also mentioned the fact that US surpassed Russia as the

world’s largest gas producer. He further detailed the advancement made at technology front, developments

taken place in CGD, bitumen, lubes and retail sector last year and also the policy about ethanol blended

petrol. Moving on to the governance issue and the policy leap of China where it established a single energy

commission, he commented, “A country which didn’t even have a ministry of oil & gas, went ahead and set

up a national energy commission directly under chairmanship of its premier and vice premier, and this is the

body which will formulate all the policies.” He also brought out a significant development about protection

of ownership right as he spoke about Eukos owners winning the arbitration against Eukos takeover.

Mr. Kaul concluded the snapshot of last year by sharing with the gathering an interesting and unusual

episode where Saudi Aramco got sued for the death of a beauty queen camel. Having painted the picture

of previous year, he invited to dais the esteemed members for the CEO panel discussion and introduced

them to the gathering.

Audience at the conference

Middle East has become EPC and oil service

providing hub and Malaysia has emerged

very strongly as deepwater hub.

The keynote address was delivered by Mr. S. Sundareshan,

Secretary, Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas, Government

of India through a video message.

He said, “We are traversing very interesting times and I would

like to touch on some of the issues. Some are achievements

some are challenges.”

The most resounding achievements of the industry over last

several years, is what we have done in the downstream in terms

of building refining capacities. As of now, we have nearly 185

million tones of refining capacity and this is likely to go to about

255 million tonnes in the course of the next two to two and half years.”, Mr. Sundareshan added.

Speaking further, Mr. Sundareshan said, “This has been a collaborative effort of the private and the public

sector in the country. Even today petroleum products are the largest merchandise exported from the

country and by 2012, we will be exporting over 100 million tonnes of petroleum product. This is a

remarkable achievement in a country where 80% of domestic requirement of crude is actually imported.

The most sophisticated refineries have been set up in the private sector. In the public sector more capacities

have been added up and in what other area of economic activity can we say that even. The domestic

demand of 2020 would not only be addressed by domestic production but even in 2020 with the existing

planned capacity expansion we have, we would be surplus of the order of 40 to 50 million tonnes. Along

with this marketing network which we have, day in day out is able to supply petroleum product from Kerala,

Lakshadweep to Jammu & Kashmir from the west coast to the hills and the difficult terrain of north east 365

days a year, 24 hours a day and in this also the recent months have been fairly historic.”

According to Mr. Sundareshan, the Government has taken some important decisions, for the first time in

the history. The prices of petrol will be market driven, the prices of diesel will be market driven. What does

this mean? This means that there will be a competition between the private and the public sector not only

in refining but also in downstream marketing ultimately leading to the benefit of the consumer.

Moving on, he said, “Apart from deciding that prices of petroleum would be market driven, the government

has also decided that the prices of APM gas would be revised. I had said this a few months back also that

the first target we have in terms of domestic gas, we must have equitable pricing of the gas irrespective of

the sources from country. You really had a skewed situation a few months ago where the APM gas was

being sold at $2 or less and your gas from some joint venture fields being sold over $5. We have rectified

this and today APM prices will be approximately the same as priced from other sources in the country and

this is in conjunction with what I called gas revolution that has taken place in the country over last year or

so. We had a domestic production of 80 MSCM and at one go from the KGD6 field, there has been an

additional production of 60 MSCM which means something like an increase of 80% in gas production in

just one year.”

Mr. Sundareshan further added, “Quite apart from the increase in the production, the management of this gas

produced; supply of gas to priority sectors like fertilizer and power; supply of gas to city gas requirement and

LPG production has been all impeccably organized. And along with this, as I stated earlier has been the revision

of APM prices which really augurs well for widespread use of gas in the important sectors of the economy.

Simultaneously, we have insisted upon the completion of pipeline which has been authorized by the

government in time bound manner. GAIL is aggressively progressing on implementing the pipeline network.”

S. Sundareshan Secretary, MoPNG

This has been a collaborative effort of the private and the public sector in the country.

Even today petroleum products are the largest merchandise exported from the country

and by 2012 we will be exporting over 100 million tonnes of petroleum product.


Keynote Address

He further said, “We expect by the end of 2012 you would have a vibrant pipeline network connecting

most of the country. The PNGRB, which has been empowered recently through notification will also be

authorizing additional pipelines. So gas, which was available in western north of India, will be flowing to all

parts of the country. Along with this, we have also moved in regard to strengthening re-gasification facilities for

imported LNG.” He added, “There is also private sector interest in LNG terminals, so along with the

increased supply domestic sources, there will be an additional supplies of LNG in the country which will

throw up additional challenges. Is it necessary that some parts of the country will be paying

substantially higher prices of gas just because only LNG is available? Is there a need for pooled pricing

of gas?”

Moving on to exploration he said, “We have had tremendous success in terms of gas from this particular field;

we would also be having additional production from ONGC, GSPC and other fields. We would expect gas

production to increase at reasonable levels as we go along, providing additional supplies to the people of the

country. Even in terms of oil in the last year or so we had reasonable successes. The production from Rajasthan

which has commenced, and we expect that after a year or so when the production stabilizes, we have

approximately 20% additional production in the country just from the Rajasthan field (a joint venture between

Cairn India and ONGC). Even though success in terms of discovery and production of oil has not been

stupendous, we are making move toward this.”

Talking about NELP he noted, “We had reasonable success in the

NELP rounds in terms of participation. We are very good, and

soon going to launch the NELP IX which will make it more

attractive for the investors, and hope there will be deeper and

better participation of companies.” Coming to the theme of the

conference he stated, “All this have been achieved because of

the tremendous human resource which we have in the oil &

gas sector in the country. This has been built up initially by the

public sector company by adopting remarkable recruitment

processes and competent training methodology. The wide

experience individuals in the public sector oil company are able to

gain by working in a variety of sectors and variety of geographic

locations. This has been the base for the human resource which is available in the sector. However, this is

exploited very much by the public sector, but this is also a pool of talent which is being used by the private

sector in the country for further development of their E&P activities and also for their refinery and other

downstream sector.”

He added, “It’s most important that we must continue to nurture this talent and it has to be done in two ways:

Firstly, by recruiting more and more people at the entry level. I have always been telling the public sector that

your greatest asset is HR which you have, continue to nurture it. There are talks about shortage of talent in a

vibrant sector this is likely to be there, there is likely to be poaching. But to counter this is not simply paying

additional compensation but, you must continue with the tremendous culture of working in this sector. Attract

more and more talent at entry level, over recruit so that you have past pool of talent which can be used as the

industry expands. Secondly, by strengthening the academic institutions. We require specialized institutions in

this regard, and University of Petroleum & Energy Studies is one such specialized University. In the public sector,

we are building Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Petroleum Technology, it’s already in its 3rd year of functioning and we

also require to have curricula specialized in the petroleum sector in various institutions. We require to have

specialized sources which are necessary to provide the appropriate talent required for the industry.”

Concluding his keynote address he said, “I am sure that the deliberations of this seminar will address these

issues in greater depth, and I am sure that at the end of the deliberations, the participants, the companies

who have assembled here will go back with clear ideas on how best they can recruit and nurture talent

for the new face of the Indian petroleum industry which is going to grow bigger which is going to take

dimension as an important player in international arena. I wish deliberations all success.”

Audience at the conference

CEOs’ Panel Discussion

The CEO panel comprised of Mr. Rahul Dhir, Managing Director & CEO, Cairn Energy India Ltd., Mr. Rajeev

Sonthalia, Vice President & Managing Director, Schlumberger Asia Services Ltd., Mr. N.M Borah, Chairman,

Oil India Ltd., and Mr. Walter Simpson, President & Managing Director, BG India, was engaged into a

thought provoking discussion by Mr. Sanjay Kaul, the Program Director. The discussion touched on a

number of pertinent issues ranging from market-share vs. mindshare competencies, unique talent

requirement of upstream sector with inherent risks and boundary management issues, next generation

leadership, customer centricity and prevailing gender imbalance in oil & gas sector. Mentioned below are

the excerpts of answers given to the questions raised by Mr. Sanjay Kaul.

Mr. Kaul asked the panel, “One is hearing so much of enterprise value, dash boards, portfolio

management, and country strategies and so much is happening at CEO level. CEO being the lynchpin

between the shareholders and other stakeholders, what are your top of mind impressions of skills

sets, areas, expectations that guide you in the kind of business you are in?

Responding to the question Mr. Dhir said, “Beyond the technical

side of things, it is the intangible aspect- real ownership and the

commitment and that is something I believe can be nurtured. I

was just thinking you can pay people to come to work. How do

you get people get excited when they get up in the morning?

How do you get people in a position a mindset where they solve

the problem?” Emphasizing the change in nature of business of

Cairn from being specific project oriented into much of a going

concern he said, “now needs for us are not just for kinds of

specific technical skills but of people who think more like

businessmen or businesswomen. People who take more holistic

view about the business.”

Sharing his thoughts on the question Mr. Borah said that new talent doesn’t necessarily mean talent at the

entry level alone but includes a pool of talent which a company has failed to use and added, “For an E&P

company, particularly in the field of Geo-sciences, Geology, Geophysics, Reservoir Engineering, you can’t

afford to have anything but the best in the world; and must have people who are absolutely world class.”

Mr. Simpson expressed his opinion by saying, “Competency in the chosen discipline of the individual is

crucial, whether that is a technical discipline: Petroleum Engineering, Reservoir Engineering, Geology,

Geophysics, Finance, Legal or whatever that be. That basic capability of being excellent at my field, is the

starting point. A lot of people have that basic capability.” Correlating diversity and success he further said,

“To be able to make an E&P company work successfully, you need some diversity. We look for that diversity

in such a way that gets people who are not just capable in their field but they are also leaders develop by

themselves. They can naturally lead others, they have that willingness to lead others’ performance and you

want them to connect to the business and have that business savviness. They want to understand its value

in their particular discipline and bring it to business so that they can connect it to strategy.” Summing up he

said, “We look for a lot more than just basic technical capabilities that is almost your entry ticket, but you

need more than that to be successful and that’s the real success case.”

Presenting the service provider’s perspective Mr. Sonthalia said, “We do look for strong domain expertise

technically. However, in today’s environment with the complicated and more risky production assets and

environments for drilling, we do look for people who are good at domain but can work in multisphere

teams. It is very important that domain experts understand what others do because a decision made by

one domain expert can affect everybody else. We do look for people who can do collaborative decision-

making. Detailing further he said, “we look for people who can translate the technical knowledge to what is

valuable to our customers.” Summing up he said that we do look for people who are driven, ambitious

have the zeal to go forward and take ownership.

Moving on to the next question to the esteemed panelist, Mr. Kaul asked, “There is a lot of emphasis

on the capability of being able to engage in terms of mindshare with your stakeholders. Would

The CEOs’ Panel at the conference


CEOs’ Panel Discussion (Contd.)

anyone like to comment, how you facilitate creation of such competencies where people are not just

focused on what they have to functionally deliver but they develop competency to actually engage

the shareholders.”

Addressing the issue raised in the question, sharing his takeaway from the business school Mr. Dhir said, “As

a businessman, my only obligation was to my shareholders and I had to drive business for value. Over the

years, I realized that it was wrong. As a business, you are an integral part of the society. The starkest

reminder of that, I think all of us had, was the BP case; and what was certainly scaring to me, was how

inadequate we were, at least I felt so. We as leaders, as an industry haven’t really focused on these issues.

The BP case is the stark reminder of criticality of these issues.”

He further added that in order to sensitize people about this, they had created a committee of leaders

called “stakeholders relations” comprising of all the business leaders and said, “We discuss in a pretty

holistic manner all the shareholders’ issues, everything from CSR initiatives and how they are related to

business, land acquisition and how we can do it properly and in terms of how we are managing our joint

venture partners or government etc. The idea is, because there is no text book that you can read, there is

no course that you can study. My simple idea is that if you can get people together and start discussing

these issues and collectively built through collective apprenticeship, you learn and the understanding of

how to think in a broader sense improves.”

Taking the discussions further, Mr. Kaul asked Mr. Borah, “I would like to ask a specific question on

the upstream because that seems to be the darling of the world for the last 14 years or so. It is

believed that when you mobilize a new operation, it’s always a new operation. There may be existing

talent, there is always a start up kind of feeling you have about an E&P activity. Are there any

competencies, new talent issues you are facing because the cycles are getting shorter and shorter and

stand by and daily cost of these operations are exponentially raising? Are there newer skills or newer

talent issues you are foreseeing you need to inculcate or cultivate?

Answering the question Mr. Borah said, “Very important factor is to unlearn something which get

embedded in our mind and really allow people to come out with ideas and have open mind to discuss

those issues. I think this way of doing things will be extremely important when we are going for new

interventions, new green field projects because the moment we take a position saying, the more

experienced people used to say, they know that that was the final answer, I think we are getting into a

losing battle.”

Next in line was Mr. Simpson, who Mr. Kaul asked, “I would like to ask about Walter about the

ongoing challenge of making senior management team working together.”

Mr. Simpson answered, “I go back to the clear vision: Where do you want to take the organization, what do

you want to look like, what do you want to achieve and the strategy you are going to employ as a team to

get that and then giving people the freedom to work their way to deliver that. So they can see what they

can contribute, what their team members can help them contribute and how they can help their team

members. Now, if people are working in that way, they have got clear delivery themselves, they can see

what they got to be doing, they can see how they can help their team members and they can see how their

team members can help that. If you have those three things then you have people… feeling more

empowered, you have people feeling they are the key elements in the business and they know where they

are taking it, if you can get all these things together then you have the empowered team that can make a

difference to your business.”

Mr. Kaul then moved to Mr. Sonthalia, asking him, “I will definitely take some insights from you Mr.

Rajeev about the customer aspect of it because I think that is most pronounced in your line of

business. What we have noticed perhaps in the last HR Round Table where we discussed the

generation next and the leadership issues extensively and we found this is the generation which is

more mobile, which more customers are facing and is the most critical element. So, how you

CEOs’ Panel Discussion (Contd.)

combine all the skill of customer centeredness, all that is going in relationship management, all the

whole mechanics about it with the context that you got the large portion of generation next at it.”

Replying to Mr. Kaul’s question, Mr. Sonthalia said, “From a service company provider perspective I think

customer interface is important. When we recruit people we look for strong communicator, because we

want to make sure that once they are outside their technical domain and they break out to meeting

interfacing with people, they can bring forth their ideas and communicate clearly.”

He added, “Identifying the talent right in the beginning is important to break the barrier right in the beginning.

And then, off course, within the company, we do have training programs, non technical training programs to

ensure that soft skills are learnt as well, so we do look for people who can interface better with customers and

try to fit the pegs in the wholes as appropriately as possible. It is not easy because you have a diverse bunch of

people with different ambition. But we do try with employees, proactively steer them in the direction in which

they want, which will make them successful in the organization. Once you get those things working for you, the

generation next will be attracted and see that this is the company that looks up the people, develop people;

and they are the people with high potential and that’s how we cross the bridge.”

Mr. Kaul further intensified the debate by throwing another question to the panel, “How do we tackle

the issue of gender imbalance in this industry? We are much focused on it and we want like

leadership to be involved in it, so any of you like to give suggestions or express your views how do we

go about more in that area”.

Attempting the question Mr. Dhir said, “Oil & gas industry needs smart and talented people and it can’t

exclude half the population in the world from the talent pool.”

Mr. Borah said, “In the larger campus what are we looking for, we are not looking for men; we are not

looking for women. We are looking for talent and we are looking for ideas, creative ideas. Because of

historical baggage, I don’t think women have had their right share, position and power in good old days.”

He further stated, “We usually find oil in a new place with an old idea, sometimes, we also find oil in an old

place with a new idea but seldom we find much oil in an old place with an old idea. There were many a times in

past we thought we were running out of oil whereas we actually ran out of ideas and ideas have no gender.”

Asking the penultimate question of the discussion Mr. Kaul said, “I would be doing injustice to the

participants if I do not use the opportunity for you to give specifically the HR practitioners any

suggestion, any tip or any expectation.”

Answering the question, Mr. Simpson said, “We are a very risk averse industry, we don’t like change. You

look at all time reputation around the globe and obviously the BP problems in America have heightened

that. But that haven’t actually changed our reputation. We are still seen and have been for long time as

macho, polluting, dirty industry that makes awful lot of money by selling petroleum at inflated prices. Well,

that may be on the half side but that’s generally the perception that the world sees of the oil industry in

particular. So, why are we surprised that without reputation we don’t attract women to the organizations.

And we haven’t done a lot as industry to change that. I don’t think it is true, but we haven’t done enough

about changing that reputation, what do we need to do? We need to change that reputation of the

industry, we need to be seen as progressive, we need to be seen as actually caring about the environment.”

Would you have any top of the mind messages for our HR colleagues as far as future is concerned?

Mr. Kaul asked the panel to conclude the CEO Panel Discussion.

Mr. Sonthalia said, “I want the HR people to listen. Listening is very important I like the HR professionals to

change from being transactional oriented to more of a face time organization where they listed to the

employees and try to develop them and support the management team in getting them to move forward. And

that’s the only way to develop people is to make sure they grow along with the organizations they work.”

Mr. Dhir also added, “Very much HR is a strategic partner to senior leadership, that’s very fundamental, it’s

the time for new ideas looking for talent in new places.”


Session 1: Changing Dimensions of ‘Talent Mix' in Organizations

Ms. Lakshmi Suresh began her presentation on changing

dimensions of ‘talent mix’ reasoning “Why to change?” In her

subsequent slides, she dealt with the future trends in oil & gas

services and overall talent scenario therein. Moving further

Ms. Suresh addressed the current business and talent challenges

detailing the demographic shifts and the looming workforce

risks. She also brought to light the talent war waged inside and

outside the company along with the need to shape the right

talent mix. Talking about HR initiatives, Ms. Suresh suggested

that HR must build a strategic talent acquisition & management

capability segment workforce as per potential and business

needs; make use of workforce analytics and robust talent

database management; and most importantly develop talent mindset in the organization.

Going further, she shared with the audience how Baker Hughes had gone about bringing in those initiatives

and said, “We have segmented our people high potentials, key contributors and valued employees. We

have separate plan of actions for these segments of people at all levels. We have a cross functional career shift,

we have a finance heading the business, the business heading HR functions and we are also having local talent

for traditional expat jobs. Ms. Suresh brought her presentation to close by saying that Baker hughes would like

to see the complete holistic iceberg and look at the talent holistically with all the key skills, thought processes,

beliefs, experience, age and gender diversity, and mix the talent for business process.”

Having helped the participants to see “opportunity is now here” in “opportunity is nowhere”, Mr. Anil

Sharma began the presentation on changing dimensions of “talent mix” from Essar’s perspective. He shared

that HR vision at Essar talks about emotionally connecting people to positively engage in value creation

and said, “All HR people (500) talk one language, are we creating value to Essar? And the answer is “Yes.” We

don’t do HR, we do value creation in business and that’s where people become the key fulcrum on the

entire production factors.” He admitted, “One of the HR challenges that we are facing in the upstream-

downstream industry is very unique, very unique in terms of talent management.”

According to Mr. Sharma, “We have got a top heavy senior management, and that is going to retire in next

ten years from now. 70 to 80% talent is at junior management level having less than 5 years experience in

company. In middle management the big challenge that we are facing, we don’t have a

succession plan.

:Session Chairman

Presented by:

S. Mohan, Director (HR), Bharat

Petroleum Corporation Ltd.

• Lakshmi Suresh, HR Manager, India

Subcontinent, Baker Hughes

a• Anil Sharm , Head

n D(Lear ing & evelopment),

Essar Oil Ltd.

g S• Yo i riram,

i e

Executive V ce Pr sident

(HR & Administrative

Services), r t .

Larsen & Toub o L d

The session saw confluence of diverse

perspectives on the topic ranging from use of

robust talent database, workforce analytics

etc. for deciding right talent mix in the

organization; establishing emotional connect

to engage talent besides designing

innovative HR practices; to deciding talent

mix basis international trends, cross

migration and local content. The session also

highlighted the issue of talent inadequacy to

meet the need of economic growth.

Lakshmi Suresh, Baker Hughes

Session 1 (Contd.)

We don’t have leadership pipeline and in turn it is the big challenge for Essar. We have got a new project

2025 as to how Essar will look like because there is an organic and inorganic growth happening, if we don’t

have the pipeline leaders there is a challenge.”

Dwelling on some of the impending challenges he said, “The

biggest challenge that we have been facing in this industry is the

learning cycle and the contribution cycle. Student who passes out

of the college having no experience takes 3 to 5 years to

understand the feel of the industry, equally this is true for the

person with thirty years experience, who has worked in public

sector; he takes 9 to 15 months to get oriented to the private

culture or the other way round. So, when people come from the

large organizations to small start up E&P Company or refinery,

they face different challenges.” Mr. Sharma brought home a point

that the learning cycle is applicable to all whether a person is a

fresher or veteran. Through his presentation, he made the participants aware of actual and perceived

requirement of talent, possible ways of workforce segmentation, career management and employee

development review.

Mr. Sharma raised a question to self and others where he asked as to how companies are coping up with

the reality of multigenerational workforce wherein advisors of grandparents’ age (70 to 77 years), bosses

(40 to 45 years) and youngsters coexist. In the same vein, he endeavored to make the participants

appreciate the huge opportunity and the situation has thrown open for the academicians, industry and

government. Further in the presentation, Mr. Anil discussed what Essar was doing to develop a talent

mindset, the HR world and its innovatively designed products.

He concluded by saying, “We have to move from function centric to business centric approach. We

can’t say we are HR guys rather we have to say we are the business managers, we partner CEO for

organizational value creation.”

Bringing in the international perspective to the session

Mr. Yogi Sriram shared with the audience the “demographic

mix trends” going on internationally in EPC business

particularly. Asking audience to imagine a situation where

business has to be started in countries like Brazil or Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, he said, “One has to be very

cognizant of what is involved when you do business in such countries. Most of these countries have

huge amount of local content, so you just can’t land up there and start a yard or you can’t start a business

unless you also promise the local government that you are going to adhere to local content for example in

brazil, the extent of the local content has to be about 65% that means whatever you fabricate in form of

module in form of equipment, offshore equipment a platform etc., has to be made to the extent of 65%

in Brazil.”

According to Mr. Sriram, “When you talk of changing mix of talent in the oil & gas industry, I think one of

the dimensions that is very important is to understand that old adage-thinking global and acting local has

become more live than ever before. So one has to think how can you work with the locals, how can you hire

them, how can you understand the nuances of their culture, how do you understand what they do in the

month of Ramadan, how you understand about what they do in terms of the roman Catholics in brazil, what

are their food habits, their cultural habits, their work life balance needs?. Therefore, understanding the

importance of adjusting to international wicks is extremely important.”

Bringing in economics perspective to the talent mix issues he said, “If you look at Asia and if you look at

share of global GDP in terms of non-Japanese countries, it is quite interesting to see how the shift is

increasing dramatically to 2025, a projected amount of a quarter of a GDP coming from non Japan Asia. So

this is the first time in 200 years that eastern economies are going to be dominating and the

axes of power is shifting from the west to east. In context of talent what does it mean?

Anil Sharma, Essar Oil Ltd.

We have to move from function

centric to business centric approach.

It means we have huge new opportunity to actually have cross

migration of talent from various countries which is not

happening too much. There is also local content that is important

but while you have local content there is no ban on people

coming over from different countries and working with you. So,

this enormous increase in GDP is going to happen, and likewise,

there is going to be a problem in terms of where you are going

to find this talent because this growth is not capable of having

enough of educational institutions; is not able of coping with the

educational institutions’ supply side-manpower which one

churning out, and that’s not enough. Therefore, one has to look

at how you can find more and more innovative ways.”

Using an equation which states that the economic growth is a factor of labor force growth and productivity

growth, Mr. Sriram further said, “If you look at percentage annual growth which is projected between

2006 and 2015 in terms of labor force growth, it’s actually decreasing from 1.6 to 1.3% because

some of the Asian countries also have aging population.” He went on detailing, “The extent to which

age is going to catch up in countries like China in comparison to what they have now is something like there is

going to be an increase of 170% in the next ten years i.e. people who are going to go out of the zone of 65

years.

Addressing talent mix issue he further said, “We will be forced to look at younger people coming and

taking early responsibilities in their lives or more innovative ways of finding talent from different parts of

geographies. He said that there would be a huge amount of productivity growth in Asia in comparison to

the world productivity growth of 1.5% and concluded by saying, “The fact is the talent you require is not

as much as you need.”

Later responding to the question on leadership development, raised by Mr. Bharat S. Goswami, Dy. General

Manager (HR & Administration), GSPC Gas Co. Ltd., Mr. Sriram said, “Leadership challenge is in our mind

because if we put the younger people into faster positions and have shorter cycle times in terms of their

reaching those positions, then we would have made it. So we’ll have to move out of the old paradigm or

mindset that one has to finish 25 years in order to become XYZ. We have to move people fast.” He also

emphasized the need to infuse young leaders with the skills related to project management, on-time

delivery, cost-quality engineering, risk management etc.

Answering the question on attracting and preparing people from non oil & gas industry, put forth by Mr.

Shashikant Patange, Head (HR), Linde Engineering Services India Pvt. Ltd., Ms. Suresh said that her company

conscious efforts are made to find people in marketing, business

development etc., and to fill the gap of business understanding

through intense orientation.

Summing up the first session and highlighting some of the

evergreen requirements of employees, the session chairman Mr.

S. Mohan said, “People want a fair compensation. They want a

good relationship with their managers, they want a clear career

path to the extent we can define for them. They also expect and

need mobility whether it is within the company to the extent we

can make it happen otherwise. They are also looking at whether

what they are doing now adds value to their CVs. Reflecting upon

the expectations of employers he further added, “Engaged

individuals are what you and I as employers wish for; that people

should be adaptable; they should be agile; they should change with the changing conditions in the market;

with the customers’ requirements and clearly want them to be aligned with the company.” He concluded by

saying, “With whatever talent we have, can we dig deeper? Can we develop them so that

we meet both the ends-the employees’ expectation and the employers’ requirement.”

Session 1 (Contd.)

Yogi Sriram, Larsen & Toubro Ltd.

S. Mohan, Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd.


Session 2: Finance Talent - Newer Dimensions

Mr. V. K. Sood began his presentation sharing with the audience

evolution of the finance function. He said, “Traditionally finance

professionals’ roles was limited to accounting & budgeting,

data management and returns, statutory compliances &

liaison with regulators, records management and providing

support function to others.” He further said the routine work

that consumes most of their time today is poised to change in

future. He held the growing and rapidly transitioning Indian

economy from a closed to globalized, instrumental in bringing

about this change. He further added, Indian companies’

footprints in many countries of the world market, diverse capital

sourcing, growing imports and exports and volatility in the

international financial markets to the above list. He enumerated the following as future role of finance:

Architect in business strategy, leading mergers & acquisitions, identifying value creation

propositions for the business to harness market opportunities, manage business performance,

enable decision making, leveraging financial strengths and value creation vs. support function.

Mr. Sood considered outsourcing low value and time consuming activities, standardization &

automation of routine activities. Focus on specialization and regulatory framework expertise as

some of the steps facilitating demonstration of new roles. To execute these roles, he said finance

professionals would require new skills set viz., solution orientation, value contribution, customer focus, risk

assessment and its mitigation, analytical skills, ability to link financial information and operations

entrepreneurial thinking etc., emphasizing the role of values and ethics in business and the need for

attitude building. He further said, “Finance cannot remain on sideline like a referee, it has to be a

player and unless it starts kicking the ball and starts playing its due role of a team member, well

some of the organizational objectives cannot be met.”

Sessio Chairman: n

Presented by:

c

C. Ramulu, Former Director (Finan e ),

t

Hindustan Petroleum Corp. L d.

• V.K. ood, Executive irector

SD

(Corporate Financ ), IndianOil e

aCorp r tion Ltd.o

• S.Varada ajan, Executive Director

r

(Corporate Finance), Bharat

Petroleum Corporation Ltd.

The speakers brought to light the evolution

of finance function, futuristic roles of finance

professionals, skills set required to execute

those roles and the contribution of attitude

and other attributes in development of a

competency. Issues like leveraging

technology, creating value for the

organization, devising better performance

measurement metrics, and supporting CEOs’

in making business decisions surfaced during

the session. The session emphasized the need

to follow ethics and weave in checks &

balances in the business.

V.K. Sood, IndianOil Corporation Ltd.

Finance cannot remain on sideline like a referee, it has to be a player and unless it

starts kicking the ball and starts playing its due role of a team member,

well some of the organizational objectives cannot be met.

Going further Mr. Sood brought to light the difficulty in and

importance of retaining talent. He presented some of the ways to

retain talent which among others included recognition of talent

and fast track career growth, motivation to perform,

empowerment, trustful environment and transparent systems.

Bringing his presentation to conclusion, he said those who would

be able to cut through red tape would be the futuristic leaders.

Opening his speech, Mr. S. Vardharajan said that the market and

the environment have changed and the talent also looks for a

whole lot of changes, their expectations have clearly undergone

a lot of changes. Underscoring the importance of continuous

learning in the continuously changing environment with GST undergoing changes, IFRS and taxation for

DTC codes coming in he said, “One has to unlearn what has been learnt over several years and relearn

what the current structure is and how do we create

value out of it.” He further added when you

transcend geographies the learning is different and so

are the requirements. Mr. Vardharajan drew attention

of the participants to the importance of developing

better metrics for measurement, to measure return on

invested resources. Towards the end of his speech, he laid emphasis on resource planning, engaging and

training employees, leveraging technology for enabling the interest of business.

Speaking on the occasion, session chairman Mr. C. Ramulu underlined the need for ethical practices and

inbuilt checks and balances in business functioning and said, “We are losing track of ethics, purpose of

life.” He called upon finance fraternity to exercise extreme care while making use of hedging, derivatives

and advanced derivatives. Having outlined the need for finance to add value to business, he wondered

how the industry would keep pace with volatility in pricing,

subsidies, imperfection etc., and match up to the probable

increase in growth from 8.9% to 10%. He envisaged that a

probable spurt in economic activities in times to come, would

warrant finance professionals to handle projects involving huge

money resulting in dire need for project finance management

capabilities. Reflecting upon meeting future talent

requirement, he said that the present challenges must be

drilled into the future generation.

Session 2 (Contd.)

S.Varadarajan, Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd.

One has to unlearn what has been learnt

over several years and relearn what the current

structure is and how do we create value out of it.

C. Ramulu, Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd. We are losing track of ethics, purpose of life.

Great talents are the most lovely and often the most dangerous fruits on the tree of humanity.

They hang upon the most slender twigs that are easily snapped off.

Carl Gustav Jung


Session 3: Emerging Talent Trends in Technology Management including Research

Mr. Ananthakrishnan opened the presentation saying that the

technology management and the talent go hand in hand and

cannot be separated and added that the data, technology and

people are the three most precious things in the E&P industry.

He expressed his surprise on peoples’ perception of E&P industry

as non high-tech.

Having given the overview of Cairn, he shared with the audience

the strategy for sustained growth. He said, “To achieve our

strategy successfully, it is absolutely critical to find and then

apply the right cost effective technology.” He then explained

the concept of technology funnel which has to its right extreme

“research (institutions do)” and to the left “implementation (companies go after).” Talking about Cairn he

said, “We prefer to be faster implementer but that does not mean that we don’t encourage research

in our own way through what we call as Joint Industry Programs (JIPS).” He mentioned that none of

the Indian institutes figure in any of the JIPS for technology application. Cairn is involved because the

research side of Indian institutions especially in geo-tech industry is emerging. He reasoned lack of a

national data repository responsible for the current status.

Mentioning that in India the graduates which are recruited

have basic functional competencies pretty much at the

starting level. He highlighted, “There has to be a very

concentrated effort in developing the talent and

achieving functional specialization so that they can take

the right decision in terms of talent management. We can not only focus on increasing the functional

competencies, however, it is very important that at very early stage in their career you have to have a broad

skills set spanning right through the geo-tech community and may be even outside the geo-tech

community. Because the technical people also have to start taking commercial decisions, every technology

that they are going to apply is about adding value.”

He went on highlighting the criticality of value of information analysis and judgment. He further talked

about how Cairn is going about creating the platform for functional excellence, personal development plan

and graduate training scheme keeping in mind the key enablers for talent management.

Speaking on the occasion, Mr. Srinivas Peri touched upon the broader trends which forced IBM to look at

the competencies that are required to be successful in the changing times. Sharing how the workforce mix

Sessio Chairman: n

Presented by:

,

Rajeev Bhadauria, President (HR)

Reliance ADAG

h• B. Anant akrishnan, Head (Reservoir

eDevelopm nt), Cairn India Ltd.

S• Srinivas Peri, r. Manager (Executive

Hiring), IBM India Pvt. td.L

Very vividly presented to the audience were the

technology skills set sought specifically by the

upstream oil & gas sector, strategy for sustained

growth and the concept of technology funnel. The

funnel through which the strategy comes out as

processes in four stages viz., watching

technological advancement, partnering,

developing and implementing technology. This

session witnessed deliberations on creation of

platform for achieving functional excellence and

key enablers of talent management. Discussions

on novel ideas like knowledge funneling, dynamic

equilibrium and shift in mindset from probabilistic

to possiblistic, succeeded in stimulating the

intellect of the audience.

B. Ananthakrishnan, Cairn India Ltd.

To achieve our strategy it is

absolutely critical to find and then apply

the right cost effective technology.

successfully,

has changed over time and how the people from different age

group work in geographically dispersed teams, he quoted the

example of chemicals and petroleum COC where he said, “Thirty

people based across 12 countries would actually work together in

coming up with solutions and talking to the customers.” Talking

about changed times he named ability to take up challenges and

manage change, develop a systemic perspective and being able

to collaborate globally as the necessary competencies across the

board. He further said, “One of the important things that we

are trying to build in our learning and development

programs is continuous evaluation of what you are doing.”

Mr. Peri summed up his ideas highlighting three themes i.e., instrumented, integrated and intelligent that

underlie what IBM is doing.

Taking the debate further, Mr. Rajeev Bhadauria, the session chairman said, “Continual change is now the

business driver which means that technologically driver today would be those IT tools to handle the

complexities that have emerged. What are these complexities we

see that there are external and internal factors which impact the

business, technology, people and processes? The whole world

changes around us, the parameters are changing no longer

sequentially but simultaneously. And when this kind of change

happens, it is very natural that liner extrapolation does become a

little less relevant than what it used to be earlier.”

He added, “There is a concept of a paradigm shift that has to be

accommodated and factored into all our business processes

thinking and modals so when we think about the paradigm shifts

we think about market turbulences having to be planted in all our

business decisions and especially true in oil & gas sector. He

further stated that, “the magnitude and complexity to be handled is enormous. We have the web 2.0 and web

3.0 applications coming in which are making internet absolutely obsolete. We have to see business

performance platforms the VPPs making the best of ERP modals look sterile and static. The dynamism that is

added to them in terms of business knowledge, business processes, business solutions are all fused into one

on real time basis.”

Enlightening the audience he stated, “In scenario when linear extrapolation is not possible, what kind of

competencies which we have to be in fact infusing in our people, processes and in fact impacted by

technology? In effect creating a new kind of technology to manage this change is a big question and,

therefore, one question that comes to my mind is of agility.”

Mr. Bhadauria further added, “There must be something that has to be changed in our ways of looking at

things. Design thinking processes are one such solution which has actually come to light. Having said that all

the systems, management and technological processes have been built around creating reliability and

accuracy. He added, “Innovation and entrepreneurship would be the two twin requirements which we think

should be available in our people. Given that technology is going berserk which might necessitate the move

from probabilistic to possibilistic,” he said, “instead of inductive and deductive logic process that we have

followed so far the new logic seems to be abductive because what has to be proven cannot be relied upon.”

He went on adding, “Therefore, this new kind of design thinking which has to have a process and the process

can be simply defined through a term called knowledge funneling.” Taking the presentation ahead he said that

the knowledge funneling begins with a mystery but then some ball path is seen through the gut feeling

ultimately leading to an algorithm which is repetitive. He further stimulated the minds of audience

by stating, “This is the new paradigm friends that we all need to incorporate if we want to

manage the technology of future if we want to manage the business of future.”

Session 3 (Contd.)

Srinivas Peri, IBM India Pvt. Ltd.

Rajeev Bhadauria, Reliance ADAG


Session 4: Search & Deployment of New & Existing Talent

To underscore why a new recruitment strategy is needed, Mr.

Manoj Parmesh presented a slide wherein he enumerated some

reasons like all time high industrial activity across the world; oil &

gas industry’s failure to attract people over the last twenty years;

baby boomers generation approaching retirement age.

As he put it, “It is becoming really difficult to get new recruits in

the oil & gas industry.” Reasoning why a different approach is

needed towards talent hunting he said that most of the oil & gas

companies are on aggressive growth plan and have retention

issues in addition to industry wide skills/talent gap and obsolete

past recruiting strategies. Reflecting on the aggressive growth

plans he said that European, Asia pacific, Middle East, North Africa, Russia/former Soviet Union countries

are up for massive growth and further pointed out that the in-organic growth through acquisitions is

further fueling the growth aspirations. Talking about why people leave organizations, he noted that

whenever any employee leaves an organization in oil & gas industry, it is estimated that you are losing

$60,000 along with this leaver.

He held industry consolidation, negative public perception and industry cyclicality with large layoffs over

and over and over, responsible for the skills and talent gap in oil & gas industry. Drilling deep, he added to

the list some more factors viz., boom or bust, no long-term predictability, safety/security concerns, remote

work locations and field work. Reflecting upon public-image he further said, “When it comes to service

industry like us, it is an issue. Building our brand is the biggest challenge within the country. When people

compare organizations like us, even though we are 10 billion MNC with 50,000 employees operating in 125

countries, still they get fascinated with Infosys, Citibank or other banking sector companies.”

Coming on to why past recruitment strategies need to be changed, he said that in the new reality,

recruitment is like sales and marketing and the organization a product unlike old when the recruitment was

equated with the purchase of a commodity. He went on saying that in old reality the focus was on recruiting

people from traditional sources whereas the new reality demands looking into diverse pools, training and

developing people. Hunt for talent all the time and plan ahead, much further ahead was brought out to be

another USP of the new recruitment reality.

Going further Mr. Parmesh said, “Three things are very very important in terms of raising company profile.

Firstly, we must attract talented young professionals and we need to train and develop them effectively.

Secondly, mid career hires from industry by being employer of choice; and lastly, to attract a lot of mid career hires

Sessio Chairman: n

Presented by:

Dr. Parag Diwan, Vice Chancellor,

nU iversity of Petroleum & Energy Studies

o• Man j Parmesh, Region rganization O

ee

Developm nt Manag r, West MENA,

Weatherford Interna ion l Ltd.t a

• Shailesh Desa , Project & Engineering

i

Services, Regional Manager East

Electrical – PELE, Shell India

Ma kets Pvt. Ltd.r

The speaker shared with the audience the

difficulty faced by the industry in finding a new

recruit. He attributed it to aggressive growth

plans, retention issues, talent gap and past

recruiting strategies in the industry. As the speech

proceeded further, recruitment managers skills,

consolidation of recruitment efforts, raising

company profile, discovering new talent pool,

strengthening relationships with universities and

technical schools, making use of employee

referrals & latest recruitment technologies

emerged as some of the probable solutions to

address the challenge of talent crisis.

Manoj Parmesh, Weatherford International Ltd.

from other industries as well.” He laid emphasis on identifying new talent pools and suggested Eastern Europe,

China, India, and Latin America, university and tech schools, defense service personnel as some of the options. He

spent some time dwelling on recruitment technologies and selection methods before concluding saying, “As HR

professionals, we need to look at something new and we need to reinvent the wheel.”

Bringing in global perspective to the issues Mr. Shailesh Desai said, “We look at people as a talent pool for the

group globally.” And went on saying, “We talked a lot about the young graduates, so I want to say something

about how we develop young staff, we have a thing called “develop” which is a program.” He said that in first

three to four years at develop; employees are given two to three short assignments away from their base to

expose them to broad culture, provide them with an opportunity to network and learn technical things as well.

Addressing the issue as to how best to deploy the staff you have he detailed, “In Shell we use a system known

as open resourcing”, he further added that “three times a year all jobs in Shell are put on this open resourcing

and people running in their last six months of the assignment period can apply”.

Sharing the benefit of the program that has helped Shell spotting

talent globally he said, “We have people that we don’t know about

in different countries, people in Malaysia, and people in Europe

who are available but only become visible when they apply for job.

So, you are bringing up the talent if you like, the hidden talent that

is there and making it visible.” Moving on to the last theme of

finding high potential people he said, “In Shell we use a mechanism

called “CEP” which is “current estimated potential” and our HR

people have devised a structure whereby they can give people an

estimated potential, based on some criteria called “CAR” which is

“capacity, achievement and relationships” and this structure is

common throughout Shell throughout the globe.

He further said, “The idea is to find people that are high potential and within two to three years when they

are working in various locations, you can pick out the people that have really got some leadership qualities.”

Summing up his speech Mr. Desai said that the people are the same, they are driven by same motivation

and if we are not able to provide the right kind of value proposition to them, they will go somewhere else.

Responding to the question pertaining to CEP, the tools used, role of line managers therein, and

maintaining consistency across the different assets, Mr. Desai said that CEP looks at demonstration of

certain characteristics and for each of the capacities there exist various levels of management categories

and for each of the categories, the attributes looked-for, are listed; he added that these attributes are the

behavioral attributes so that irrespective of a person being here or somewhere else in the world, you can

still see the same attribute.

“When you have a system of open resourcing, a hiring manager

would tend to hire people who are experienced, have been there

done that as opposed to taking a punt on someone who has the

potential but will go through a learning curve and in transitory

nature of assignments why would he take that risk?,” was the next

question that came to Mr. Desai’s way. Fielding the question, he

said, “the hiring managers don’t work in a vacuum, they know that

what they are trying to do in terms of Shell’s objective, they are

trying to develop people; they have to look at the job and see if it

is possible to take a risk. The hiring manager would take advice

from the skill pool manager and make a joint decision that it is

necessary to wrap up a particular person that he should take that

job and we have to take young people in many of our jobs. We do have to expose people and then we put in

some kind of support mechanism where other senior skill pool manager can monitor their performance”.

Dr. Parag Diwan, the Session Chairman brought the session to close by thanking both the

speakers for their wonderful presentations and exposition of their experiences.

Session 4 (Contd.)

Shailesh Desai, Shell India Markets Pvt. Ltd.

Dr. Parag Diwan, UPES


Session 5: Changing Face of Talent in Marketing

Mr. Rajiv Kant Chaturvedi questioned the popular belief that

companies in oil & gas are monolithic in size, monopolistic in

nature, and have the product which people want and that is why

there is no need for marketing. Challenging the above

assumption he said, “I guess that was the impression sometime

back, may be a decade earlier, but if you would have noticed, this

has been changing quite a lot.” He further added, “All

companies BPCL, HPCL and IOCL started getting into

marketing of some kind in the last decade or so. Most of the

time it was the mother brand that was being used, building

the image of product through mother brand was the very

common theme in the beginning.”

He opined that somewhere down the line, there is the realization that there is a strong possibility of

converting this commodity into brand in the mind of consumers and thereby creating a long term

relationships with them, and it has prompted companies to experiment. As he put it, “Branded fuel by the

companies again was a clear attempt to try and create differentiation in the minds of customers that

the petrol is not only a commodity, petrol is not only a petrol, diesel is not only a diesel, and there is

a possibility to create a better variety of petrol or diesel which is more suitable to the kinds of

vehicle that are coming to market. It happened and worked quite well in the beginning, subsequently,

because of the artificial pricing structure a situation came where continuing with the branded fuel became a

problem; charging customers a premium on the product of which there were always questions, as to how

these products are different from the normal ones, appeared irrational.”

He shared that subsequently, oil companies experimented with different format of non fuel offerings at the

forecourt with little success. But this experience provided them with a great learning opportunity to

understand the customers buying behavior better and to build database. Companies then tried to analyze

this data for positioning themselves differently in the minds of the people or offering the customers

marketing promotions as feasible. It was the change that took place largely in the last decade.

Mr. Chaturvedi enquired, “What do you do with the database of customers? How do you use this

database which is actually cutting across different segments? Have the very different profiles of

customers all jumbled up?” He recollected that outside the industry huge growth had taken place in

terms of techniques for building customer database, data-mining and understanding it.

S s ion Chairman:e s

Pr sented b :e

y

S. Behuria, Cha rman, Petroleum i

Fe ratio f ndiade n o I

• R.K. Chat vedi, President, P t leum

ur e ro

usi ess, eliance I ustri s Ltd.

B n Rnd e

• Sunil N G raj n , ark t ng

. ul a i M e i

Manager, ndia & B nglad sh, I

a e

hlumberger Oil F e d Ser c s Ltd.

Sc i l vi e

• amal Tandon, onal K

Z

Dy. General anager, M

GAIL ( ndia) Lt .I d

As the speakers spelled out the changing face of

talent in marketing, business acumen, technical

bent of mind, customer centricity, flexibility,

mobility and the ability to work in a virtual

environment surfaced as indispensable

constituents of a productive marketing team. The

session saw a couple of points getting

underscored viz., importance of communication in

making customers perceive the suggested benefits

as real; secondly bringing-in structural changes to

get closer to the customers. The session also

accentuated the fact that one size doesn’t fit all,

hence the marketing team’s composition must

match the market needs to be successful.

R.K. Chaturvedi, Reliance Industries Ltd.

The oil & gas industry too got impacted by it, resulting in gradual organizational restructuring thereby,

creating a lot of front-facing/ customer-facing teams. These emerged teams were given more time with

customers to understand them better, more empowerment to be able to capture the moments of truth

when customers visit forecourt.

Understanding the customer behavior became the key to utilize the entire database to one’s advantage,

either in current or future strategies. It started driving a lot of structural change. All oil companies

reorganized themselves into whatever they thought was the best way of remaining closer to the customers.

Relating to his own experience Mr. Chaturvedi

said, “In terms of developing talent for this

kind of a challenge, one thing that we have

realized is that, in this industry while you can

have a lot of techniques and tools to acquire

pace with which you communicate with the

customers, it has also given you a large base of customers, still the key is “what do you offer to

customers”, which means you need to have people who do this very close to customers, have deep

understanding of business especially the customer behavior. He added, “get younger people with

technical background, who are equipped with knowledge of latest technology give them solid

understanding of skills either through job rotations or assignments so that they can combine these

two to take your positioning much farther.”

“What is the value of marketing and sales within an oil & gas

function?,” asked Mr. Sunil Gulrajani as he took on the lectern. He

said, “To me marketing is responsible for loading the wagon

and what I mean by loading the wagon is we have to make

sure that business is in equilibrium.” Deliberating over how to

build the team of marketing, he weighed promoting from within

over pulling the people from outside. As he put it, “Today in

Schlumberger we have a big pool of talent of people; they

are in all kinds of functions whether it is finance, whether it

is personnel, operations, research and engineering, isn’t that

a fantastic pool to go and recruit for marketing and sales?”

Explaining the way to put together a team from within he said

that people are pulled out of the internal talent pool and made to run through all possible career paths

whether supply chain, personnel, HSE or finance and then get through marketing function.

On building core set of marketing people he said, “We need to recognize that there is no one size fits all in

marketing. A marketing function is dependent on what is the geographical environment, where you are

operating at. If you are in matured environment with well established things, you are more of sales function.

If you are in unchartered territory and you need to go out and develop a business, you need business

development alternatively, if you are in truly hostile nature of your business, you need someone who is very

good and high expertise, high experience in delivering what they do.”

Relating above with Indian E&P industry at present he said, “In Indian E&P industry all three of these

elements exist today. We have mature brown fields; we need people who are routine sales force. We

have highly complex operations in the Krishna Godavari basin where we need people truly having

experience and the talent to deliver, and at the same time today in India, we are experiencing

phenomenal interest what is referred as shale gas and that goes back to the domain of business

development. If we do put together a team we cannot just take people and call them marketing &

sales persons. The team has to match the needs of the market as well as the needs of what your

clients truly expect of you.”

Session 5 (Contd.)

What do you do with the database of customers?

How do you use this database which is

actually cutting across different segments?

Has a very different profiles of customers all jumbled up?

Sunil N. Gulrajani, Schlumberger


Going further Mr. Gulrajani recommended supplementing marketing talent with a strong technical

supporting function and emphasized the need for developing technology within marketing function he

said, “As the complexity increases so does the need for technology and the need for technical depth.”

Sharing his opinion that marketing team performs best in a virtual environment he said, “For them to be

placed in virtual environment we need to provide them with right kind of tools to lead a mobile

lifestyle, a fully intertwined completely network set of tools which go about not just talking to what

is relevant to the client but also the internal processes whether it is finance, whether it is data mining

or whether it is access to business resources.” Moving on to the work environment he said, “It is

important for us in today’s environment to realize that people need to be judged on the basis of the

results they deliver on what they achieve rather than from where they are truly working.”

Underscoring training and development Mr. Gulrajani

shared through a slide that the training and work

tools needs to be appropriately developed and

deployed and career paths need to reflect the

organizational functioning. He further added that

both could be incredibly motivating when properly implemented. He summed up his presentation saying,

“One size doesn’t fit all, and the team needs to be put up in a manner that properly reflects the need

of the organization and the place it is operating.”

Bring in the perspective of gas industry, Mr. Kamal Tandon

started his presentation with an overview of Indian energy sector

and further covered projected demand and availability of natural

gas; natural gas availability, bridging demand supply gap; and

game changing events in the history of gas industry. Talking

about city gas distribution he said, “The plan is to have city gas

distribution in over 200 cities by about next 5-6 years time

and there is going to be a huge requirement as far as

professionals are concerned.” In addition, he stated that a lot of

development is taking place in non conventional sources like

CBM, Mitchell Gas where a huge numbers of professionals are

needed. Reflecting upon HR challenges in the near future he said, “We will require professionals in the

field of marketing, operations, HR, and finance in this sector. For example even if we take about say

20 to 25 professionals in one city gas company in one particular city, in 200 cities we will require

about 4,000 to 5,000 professionals alone.”

Appreciating the three perspectives brought in by the three

speakers, Session Chairman, Mr. S. Behuria thanked the audience

and closed the sessions.

Session 5 (Contd.)

As the complexity increases so does the need for

technology and the need for technical depth.

Kamal Tandon, GAIL (India) Ltd.

S. Behuria, Petroleum Federation of India

If we take about say 20 to 25 professionals in one city gas company in one particular city,

in 200 cities we will require about 4,000 to 5,000 professionals alone.

I know quite certainly that I myself have no special talent;

curiosity, obsession and dogged endurance, combined

with self-criticism, have brought me to my ideas.

Albert Einstein

Session 6: Striking Gender Balance in the Sector

Bringing out insights from her own experience Ms. O’Brien

drew the attention of the gathering to the issue of gender in

oil & gas industry. Making use of estimated demographics,

she highlighted how despite educational institutes attracting

women and maintaining momentum, industry having good

public relations and demonstrating career potential to

women well, the oil & gas industry is left with a dwindled

pool of women talent and how this pool gets further eroded

as a result of companies and industry’s failure to retain them.

Having outlined the efforts made to attract women talent at

industry level Ms. O’Brien brought to light initiatives made at

company level, “Last year Schlumberger sponsored a campaign called “Stilettos to Steel Toes”

where we parted with a women society in engineering and we also did essay contest. We said write

an essay as to why you would prefer steel toes to stilettos those high heel shoes, and as a result we

gave scholarships to young women in engineering in some of the major US universities. “We will be

watching the campaign again this year and will be spinning it to other countries. Other thing that my

company has tried to do again to educate people on our industry is to publish “Schlumberger Life’ to

let students know that choosing the oil field is not just a job, it’s a life style.”

Sharing how Schlumberger and other companies measure success of gender balance initiatives she

said, "Metrics that my company look at is how and where are women placed in our

organization, we are looking at the progressive slow change and setting them for success in the

next role and I am very happy to see we are making progress. But we have to keep that bottom

of the pyramid well staffed.” Moving on to measuring gender diversity initiatives, she named exit

interviews, recruiting targets, engagement survey as some of the KPIs of it. Reflecting on the

feedback of career preferences of women she said, “By me analyzing what they would like to do, give

me a sense of under-ambition or lack of confidence in what they can achieve”. She named flexibility

in schedule, family friendly policy, adoption policy, parental leave, child care for kids as some of the

steps taken towards gender diversity and further said, “We have instituted in our performance

management systems observations on how you handle diversity, are you a champion of

diversity or not, because that’s the value of our company.”

S i Ch ir n:ess on a ma

Pr s nt d e e e by:

De pt g , x c i re to RD ,

e i Sanz iri E e ut ve Di c r (H )

B Pe ro m orp. t

harat t leu C L d.

• L a li ig O’B ien, s n e M n g ,

is Si p no- r Per o n l a a er

ch b r er Oil Fel S rv td

INM, S lum e g i d e ices L .

• e na e D ctor HR), Asi

R gi Shadl , ire (a

c f c e io B ePa i i R g n, ak r Hughes

• h l K ar D r cto (HR & Ad ),

P. Sent i um , i e r mn.

a r E e gy In a P y t .

C i n n r di t . L d

• . . l r ct P r nn l

VM Kau , Di e or ( e so e ),

w r C r f Ind a t .

Po e Grid o p. o i L d

This session turned out to be the most vibrant of

all; the panelists and the participants unequivocally

agreed to the need of ensuring gender diversity in

the oil & gas industry. Apart from bringing to light

the tactical and long term measures to ensure

gender diversity, the speakers also highlighted

specific challenges to be addressed through policies

and the general framework. Many ways to widen

the recruitment pool, to reach out to women to

strike gender balance were shared along with the

case studies of successful women oil & gas

professionals. An informative presentation

bringing-in the public sector perspective added

diversity to the session. The session brought home

the point to look at gender diversity as an

opportunity rather than an issue.

Lisa Silipigno-O’Brien, Schlumberger


She shared how at BG they learnt, particularly for women to recruit and place them in clusters rather

than individually. She said that the virtual network called “connect women”, “career orientation

reviews” at five years interval, pre and post maternity leave and pre and post marriage and role

models were some additional initiatives taken at BG. Very importantly, she bought to light the care

that must be exercised to ensure success of role model method. As she put it, “If the role models

are few and they leave or something happens to them, it really deflates the rest of your

population.” Ms. O’Brien concluded her presentation by sensitizing the audience about a very

sensitive issue of sexual harassment at workplace.

“What are the culture and behavior that foster business

processes and systems and then enable the strategic

intent?,” was the question put forth by Ms. Regina Shadle as

she got on to deliver her presentation. In the slide to follow,

she explained the strategic intent using a pyramid,

wherein at bottom one was diversity, inclusion in middle

and growth at top. She said, “We build diverse workforce

that has role models in it, we create an environment

where each individual’s knowledge, perspectives and

style can live out and foster inclusion and from now we

fill long term profitability and grow.”

She further added, “We conventionally move away from an organization looking at how many

women we have and move to an organization that looks at these are women; we have this is

what they are doing; this is how they are enabling us to meet customers’ demand in the market

place.” She then moved on to the business processes and systems and then to culture and behavior

that fosters inclusion. Ms. Shadle ended her presentation with an African proverb that reads, “Every

morning in Africa, an antelope wakes up. It knows it must outrun the fastest lion, or it will be

killed. Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the slowest

antelope, or it will starve. It doesn’t matter whether you’re the lion or an antelope – when the

sun comes up, you’d better be running.” She further said, “If we are not focused on it today I

guarantee our competitor is.”

Mr. Senthil Kumar made clear at the outset of his

presentation, “We all do believe that diversity is the fact

of life which adds richness to your decisions.” Moving

further he asked, “One question that comes to our mind is

what’s the difference between IT, ITEs and an oil firm, we

talk so much lot about technological advancements and it

is high tech area we are talking about in terms of oil

exploration, what’s the difference?”

Answering his question he said, “Do they sit in some fantastic

corporate, in my mind which we visualize as ambience which

anybody will love to be a part of and that’s what it

organizations are giving vis-à-vis anything else that may be held as perception.” He pointed out that

women constitute 50% of world population and stated, “Are we recognizing the fact that 50%

women talent that is available has the necessary talent and capability to deliver at ground in

any sector? Do we really believe in that in the first place? Because only with this belief you can

include somebody.” He emphasized that regardless of gender, people must talk about the

capabilities brought at table which is equally meritorious, equally capable. Examining why people are

reluctant, hesitant and not even aware of the careers in oil & gas sector as much as they are of other

Session 6 (Contd.)

Regina Shadle, Baker Hughes

P. Senthil Kumar, Cairn Energy India Pty. Ltd.

industries, he said, “For many the idea of working in oil & gas conjures images of brawny men

doing dirty work in isolated locations from their families. According to Gallup this industry

ranked as the least positively viewed industry for the last 10 years time.”

Urging some actions in this regard he said, “This tells a compelling story why we should not only

talk about this but go back and so something about it as well.” Mentioning about some countries

with good percentage of women workforce in oil & gas industry and sharing with the audience the

actions taken by Norway to ensure this he said, “One factor is a particularly progressive attitude

about women in the workforce and pressure by country leaders to bring more women into the oil

sector. A law that became effective requires that 40% of the board members of Norwegian

listed companies, including more than three dozen energy companies, must be women.”

He counted structural and cultural changes, making women feel they can have successful careers, fit

into and progress in this industry, friendly HR policies – addressing issues related to remote location

posting, childcare programs, flexible work schedules, harassment prevention, diversity and

inclusiveness training, creating role models – promoting women in senior management, greater

industry academia interaction – promoting oil & gas industry, recruiting fresh talent from campus,

establishing mentoring programs as some of the ways to reach out. He summed up his presentation

saying, “Lets move from statistics to strategy for inclusion of topic, I think that is when we

really attain gender balance.”

Mr. Kaul opened his presentation by sharing his thoughts on

gender balance and its status in India and stated, “As a

result of poor representation of women in technical

institutes, diploma and ITI, there has been a less number

of women in energy sector.” He brought to light the

government’s initiative on gender which included, “Inclusion

of at least one female member in the interview committee

whenever recruiting for 10 or more vacancies where lady

candidates are eligible to apply. Even when there are less

than 10 vacancies, no effort should be spared to include a

female member in the interview panel. All

advertisements/circulars for recruitment should mention

‘government strives to have a workforce who reflects gender

balance and women candidates are encouraged to apply.’ Every effort may also be made to give wide

publicity to the extent feasible about all women friendly policies and concessions/facilities available

to women employees in the Central Government”.

Going on further Mr. Kaul spoke about gender balance in energy sector in general and power grid in

specific. Having detailed the facilities that power grid offers to its women employees, he proudly

mentioned, “One of our substations in south Trichur in Kerala is manned by all women

employees. Women can run a substation on own.” Suggesting ways to achieve gender balance he

said, “Organizations should understand the needs of working mothers and sculpt jobs to suit them.

Many organizations offer part time employment opportunities for working mothers. Organizations

could make policies for a maternity sabbatical of two to three years and allow women employees to

continue their jobs afterwards. Suitable training programs can be planned to reorient these

employees.”

Mr. Kaul ended his speech on a positive note saying, “We will continue to work towards creating a

better gender balance in the transmission and power sector.”

Session 6 (Contd.)

V.M. Kaul, Power Grid Corp. of India Ltd.


IT indeed was a proud moment for University of Petroleum &

Energy Studies when its alumnus Mr. Shilpa Suyal appeared

on the dais to share her story, the moments she lived

through as a women field engineer in oil industry.

Ms. Suyal said, “The one thing that I figured out during

these three years of my life in oil & gas business is that

there are no girls in the field. When I say there are no

girls in the field, I mean when you are in the field sitting

on a million dollar a day rig, you normally don’t have

time to sit down and feel as if the nature of your

upbringing was nowhere close to how you work. Getting

your hands dirty talking hard and getting the job done. It is day like today and forum like this

when a girl from the field can come back and share some of her experiences.”

Enthusiastically sharing the rationale of her work choice, strong reactions and stereotypical expectations

she confronted with and how she insisted pursuing a career in the area of her interest she said, “I had to

shed the inhibitions right at the start of my career as it didn’t take much time for me to

understand that in the field I could not survive being the girl I always was.” She further said, “And

then you start to enjoy it after a little while be it fighting with the company men to arrange for

individual accommodation for yourself or be it the efforts you put in to make people believe that you

can work in the field as efficiently as your male counterparts. What one has to understand is the nature

of the work and of those who do this work? In the field people work hard, fast and right. There is no

time to be diplomatic nor is there the patience to wear those plastic smiles.”

Moving on she advised, “If you are a girl looking out to join an oil company and work in the field do

not expect to be treated any differently to a guy, people are kind but only to an extent. The only way

you can get respect is by working hard, fast and right just like any oilmen do. Like I said, there are no

girls in the field.”

Responding to the question put forth by Ms. Alka Madhan from University of Petroleum & Energy

Studies about the ways to ensure that girls opt for petroleum oriented courses more, Mr. Senthil

Kumar said that there is a need to address this issue at the school level and create awareness about

the sector. He then shared about the “school connect program” initiated by Cairn in that direction.

On a question about self limiting approach of women that

prevents them from moving up the, ladder, Ms. O’Brien said

that the companies that want to see women reach the higher

echelon must be conscious, sensitive and aware to the

everyday conversations. Those words have strong impact on

both men and women.

The session came to an end with Ms. Deepti Sanzgiri

expressing her thoughts on the topic. She appreciated Ms.

Shadle’s query, whether gender diversity is looked at as an

issue or an opportunity. Agreeing with Mr. Senthil kumar, she

emphasized the need to realize the necessity of diversity and

leveraging it. Ms. Sanzgiri further enquired as to how many companies consciously take up the cause of

restoring gender balance and stated, “What PSUs are doing, is more an implementation of government

guidelines than consciously realizing the value of diversity that they need to have.” She highlighted the

need to have a vision on diversity, strategic intent, policies and metrics to measure diversity initiatives.

Before summing up she said that diversity is not about positive discrimination, it’s about accepting

women as equal contributor. In the end, she called upon HR to think of ways to help line

managers develop sensitivities toward diversity and recognize the value that all kind of

diversity brings in.

Session 6 (Contd.)

Shilpa Suyal, Schlumberger

Deepti Sanzgiri, Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd.

Session 7: Innovative Ways of Managing Talent (New HRM Frontiers of Leading from the Front)

The Session Chairman, Mr. V.C. Agrawal opening the session said

that academic institutions and industries are the two agencies

responsible for developing and managing talent. The institutions

lay the foundation of talent and the industries build a building

on it. He appreciated the role played by University of

Petroleum & Energy Studies in developing the talent in the

field of oil & gas. He shared with the audience the action plans

suggested by Nodal agency for oil & gas, the core group set up

to address the concerns raised by the study “talent

management” and its status in oil & gas industry conducted by

Petrofed & PwC. He further elaborated upon the action plan

which suggested that the industry should support and help the

academia in building a stronger foundation and the one that proposed introduction of some chapters on

oil & gas in the curriculum of class X & XII to encourage students to opt for the career in oil industry. Before

introducing and inviting the speakers on the dais, he placed onus on the HR professionals to take the

suggestions forward.

Mr. Devchoudhury through a presentation loaded with the

innovative HR initiatives showcased how Oil India excites and

develops its employees to get the best. He shared how his team

successfully translated the concepts of fifth discipline into

developing the initiative called the breakthrough performance

project to make people vision driven. Sharing the significance of

the slide on vision he said that OIL’s vision was co-created by

involving junior most executives in the company so that people

feel involved and empowered. Addressing the question raised

the previous day whether or not thinking differently is a

competency, Mr. Devchoudhury stated, “Thinking differently is

the competency. Unless you think differently, you can’t act

differently, if you can’t act differently, you cannot achieve different results." He in his subsequent

slides showed how drawing inputs from theatre, Hollywood, sports etc.; Oil India developed and executed

some of the learning initiatives.

S i Ch ir n:ess on a ma

Pr s nt d e e e by:

V . w l, me Di c r (H

.C Agra a For r re to R),

I ianOil C . L d.nd orp t

• Deu C e C ordi tor

P.K. vchoudh ry, hi f o na

B ) O l a L d.( P , i Indi t

• Suri Vi P si nt

R. yanarayana, ce re de

Human R source , G I a

(e s) B ndi

Reflecting on ways to manage talent, the speaker

touched the chord with audience by saying “excite

and develop them to get the best”. The presentation

delivered in this session was replete with innovative

ways to reach out to employees. In addition,

highlighted was the idea that the learning

organization concept helps in creating the right

organizational culture for discovering and nurturing

talent. Measure the contribution towards talent

management to demonstrate bottom-line impact of

HR practices and programs, and also to make rational

and productive choices, was the clear message that

permeated the last session. Numerous detailed

illustrations of measures, methods and resulting

value of varied HR aspects enriched the ongoing

deliberations on innovative ways of managing talent

and for sure qualified as a value added.

V.C. Agrawal, IndianOil Corp. Ltd.

P.K. Devchoudhury, Oil India Ltd.


Emphasizing the need for introspection and reflection on how

HR function adds value to the business. Mr. R. Suriyanarayana

said that it comes naturally to the CEOs’, finance professionals,

they easily articulate the value they generate for the business.

But HR community struggles to articulate the value it adds to the

business. Reasoning as to why does that happen he said, “In my

mind, we don’t speak the language of the business, the

language of business is not English, it’s not Hindi, it’s not

Marathi, it’s metrics, it’s number, it’s data, it’s fact and

figures.” Moving on further he said that in order to be treated as

strategic partner HR must generate value in the experience of its

client groups. And one of the client groups the line managers

wants HR to articulate the rationale of the initiative and demonstrate its impact on business. The next

question he brought to light was, “Why metrics?” Answering that he said, “You got to demonstrate for

everything and anything you take, what is the impact to bottom-line.”

“You got to have your basics right that is an

essential” is what he said but added that if one

wants to be a strategic driver than one must

measure things that are difficult to measure.

Owing it to dearth of enough case studies and research he said that HR might not know how to measure

leadership capability in the organization or how to measure the succession management program in the

organization, but it is something that needs to think about over time and develop some kind of documents

that help it with such decisions.

He further shared with the audience some examples of business driven metrics in terms of measures,

methods and value that BG India makes use of and insists every line-manager to know. He cited cost of hire,

quality of hire, effectiveness, and cost of wrong hire as the metrics used to measure the effectiveness of

“resourcing.” The next example he shared came from ‘learning and development function’ where the

metrics like L&D performance measuring high potential development and graduate program performance

measuring identification of successors, were used. Equating HR with musk deer and challenging it to realize

itself, he summed up his presentation saying, “Let’s us wake up to the kind of value we can add to our

business, the fragrance we have within ourselves.”

Mr. Agrawal thanked the speakers on the dais for brining in

diverse perspectives during the session. Sharing one of his

observations and drawing attention of the gathering to cycle

of disengagement Mr. Agrawal said, “In the employee

lifecycle of any organization, there are times of ups and

down that every employee goes through. Great managers are fully aware of this and so are watchful.

The reality again is the busy schedules, crazy calls, meetings and many other distractions that blind

the managers from seeing the moments of support employees are looking for.” He called upon

people to identify what is desirable and act accordingly.

Session 7 (Contd.)

R. Suriyanarayana, BG India

You got to demonstrate for everything and anything

you take what is the impact to bottom-line.

Let’s us wake up to the kind of value

we can add to our business,

the fragrance we have within ourselves.

Getting ahead in a difficult profession requires avid faith in yourself.

That is why some people with mediocre talent, but with great inner drive,

go so much further than people with vastly superior talent.Sophia Loren

LOOKING AHEAD TO ENERGY

The Program Director, Mr. Sanjay Kaul brought the 9th Oil & Gas

HR Round Table to a close by restating the quotes spoken during

the various sessions and thereby succinctly capturing the spirit of

the sessions. He encouraged the HR practitioners to convert the

momentum gathered by “Gender Balance” issue in the Round

Table into something concrete like formation of industry group

with support from Indian School of Petroleum & Energy and the

University of Petroleum & Energy Studies, to take the cause

further. Mr. Kaul stating that research benefits all including

industry, called for creation of research-groups right throughout

the year, which could research subtopics and present their

recommendations at the next HR Round Table.

He requested the participants to help ISPe’s endeavor to bring in the international element and

perspectives on the issues discussed at the Round Table.

He gratefully proposed a vote of thanks to the steering committee members, supporting organizations

IndianOil Corporation Ltd., ONGC Ltd., Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd., Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd., Oil

India Ltd., GAIL (India) Ltd., BG India, Indraprastha Gas Ltd., SAP, academic partners UPES and the untiring

team of ISPe.

Conclusion

Sanjay Kaul, President, UPES

The enriching deliberations in the 9th Oil & Gas HR Round Table converged on some insightful ideas on

discovering new talent. Some ideas got refined, many more buried deep in the strata of awareness await

exploration. “HR’s Contribution to the Bottom-line and Enterprise Value” is one such less explored idea that

the next Oil & Gas HR Round Table would wish HR leaders to fathom and refine.

It gives us pleasure to announce the 10th Oil & Gas HR Round Table that will open on Thursday, August

25, and conclude Friday, August 26, 2011 in Mumbai.

The Round Table has been celebrating learning year on year since 2002, when for the first time HR

aficionados from Oil & Gas Industry, came together on a common platform to share insights and created a

pool of HR wisdom. In addition to learning, the 10th Round Table promises to celebrate the best HR

practice too. With great humility and pride, we announce the constitution of the Best HR Practitioner

Award. The award shall be presented to the individual/ group for exhibiting exemplary performance in or

making a meaningful contribution to the domain of HR. Let us innovate.

Let the discovery of innovation begin!

Way Forward

Steering Committee

Dipti Sanzgiri, Lisa Silipigno-O’Brien,

P. Sakthivel,

P. Senthil Kumar, P. Suriyanarayana,

Rajeev Bhadauria, S.L. Raina,

V. Vizia Saradhi, V.C. Agrawal,

V.M. Kaul,

Executive Director (HR), Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd. | Personnel Manager,

INM, Schlumberger Oil Field Services Ltd. | Head (HR), Petroleum Business (E&P), Reliance

Industries Ltd. | Director (HR & Administration), Cairn India | Director (HR),

BG India | President (HR), Reliance Infrastructure Ltd. | Director (HR), GAIL (India)

Ltd. | Director (HR), Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd. | Director (HR), IndianOil

Corp. Ltd. | Director (Personnel), Power Grid Corp. of India Ltd.


ISPe, the Indian School of Petroleum & Energy is a reputed Training & Consulting company in various facets of the energy value chain including Exploration & Production, Refining, Retailing, Petrochemical, Power, Fertilizers, Product Supply Chain & Logistics and Auxiliary Services.

For your various training needs ISPe offers customized programs at your convenience and at a location of your choice with no disruption to daily working.

�Enhance the competencies of your employees through ISPe’ short duration in–company training programs covering all aspects of the Hydrocarbon, Power value chain, Soft skills and others.

�Upgrade educational qualification of your managers and engineers through ISPe’ unique WILM (Work Integrated Learning Methodology) in association with its academic partner University of Petroleum & Energy Studies. ISPe’ offering under WILM certified programs, management and engineering diploma & degree program.

�To fulfill your requirements of manpower for short duration projects/ assignments, ISPe offers trained manpower without any employment liability to your organization.

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upes: 9th oil & gas hr table

Documents

naftogaz india

gammon india

india markets

new intertek india

oil bharat petroleum

independent oil gas

energy institute

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