The oil and gas industry is facing challenges related to an aging workforce and loss of expertise as many employees retire. This poses risks to productivity and business outcomes. Social collaboration platforms can help capture tacit knowledge from experienced employees and enable faster onboarding of new hires. By facilitating knowledge sharing across geographical boundaries, social tools address issues related to employee retention, training, and engagement in a global industry. Adopting social collaboration requires choosing enabling technologies, building communities of practice, and fostering a collaborative culture for employees.

1. Empowering the Workforce:
Social Collaboration in the Oil and Gas Industry
White Paper
Energy and Resources

2. Tom Franklin
Tom Franklin is a domain consultant and an industry advisor with the Upstream segment
of the Energy and Resources business unit at Tata Consultancy Services (TCS). He has
over 30 years of experience in the industry. Prior to joining TCS, Tom worked as a partner
for Ernst & Young and the Concours Group, with oil and gas majors like BP, Shell,
Marathon, W&T Offshore, Murphy Oil, Reliance, Chevron-Texaco, Conoco-Phillips, EnCana
USA, and several other exploration and production companies. His engagements span
business and IT strategy, system selection, business process design, and system
implementation. Tom also has expertise in business processes such as prospect
evaluation, production field operations, drilling, petroleum and reserves accounting, and
energy trading and risk management. He was a contributor to the Cambridge Energy
Research Associates landmark study, 'The Quiet Revolution' that assessed the impact of
information technology on the petroleum industry.
About the Author

3. The oil and gas industry is undergoing several changes, both in terms of the nature of its
workforce and overall operations. For instance, 50 percent of the workforce is likely to retire in
the next five to seven years, opening up concerns related to loss of valuable expertise. The
nature of work is changing too, with companies beginning to explore more remote and harsh
environments to enhance production. This requires advanced technological skills that are
often held only by a few experienced employees. Lastly, with businesses becoming global, oil
and gas companies need to contend with changing government regulations that demand
local resources to ensure smooth operations in remote environments. In a knowledge-
intensive industry, these changes pose several challenges with respect to employee
retention, engagement, training, and productivity. Addressing these changes requires a
holistic view of the multiple dimensions involved, i.e., people, processes, and technology for a
more collaborative and productive work environment.
The consumerization of IT and trends like BYOD, combined with the widespread prevalence
of social networking platforms and mobile devices, present numerous opportunities for
creating a more connected workplace. Considering that oil and gas projects typically include
geographically dispersed stakeholders, a social collaboration platform can help discover,
capture, and share tacit knowledge more effectively. It can bring in better co-ordination
among stakeholders within and outside the enterprise, resulting in faster and more effective
decision making. Such a platform also allows new hires to engage with the wider
organization, helping them gain the requisite operational knowledge in a relatively shorter
duration of time. This paper discusses the need to adopt social collaboration for knowledge
management, and the urgency for employee and stakeholder engagement to drive better
business results for oil and gas companies.
Abstract

4. Contents
Understanding the Changing Workforce and Nature of Work 5
Leveraging Social Collaboration to Bridge the Knowledge Gap 6
Moving from Traditional Content Management to Social Collaboration 6
Key Components of a Social Collaboration Platform 7
Making the Most of Social Collaboration: A Use Case
and Some Key Success Factors 8
Building a High Performance Workforce for Better Business Outcomes 9

5. Understanding the Changing Workforce and
Nature of Work
Rising global integration in the oil and gas industry means that operations are increasingly being carried out across
geographies. Understanding both local and global practices is therefore vital. In most cases, employees are
repositories of valuable information and local expertise that are necessary for carrying out specific tasks and
making business decisions. Industry trends reveal that individuals with significant expertise are nearing retirement
age, or are being drawn to new opportunities outside their current organizations.
Approximately 40–60 percent of current employees (mainly geoscientists and petroleum engineers) are planning to
retire in the next five to 10 years.¹ There is also a considerable gap in experience between the retiring and the
incoming workforce. About 20 percent of the industry has fewer than five years of experience², and the average age
of exploration and production company employees is 50 years¹. What does this mean for oil and gas companies?
The Talent and Technology study from SPE estimates that such loss of expertise could result in losses amounting to
$40 billion. Moreover, 20–30 percent of drilling efficiency could be lost once experienced drillers hand over
operations to their replacements.
To further complicate matters, the industry is undergoing changes with regard to locations explored, methods
applied, and products churned out (conventional oil versus unconventional oil, natural gas versus coal seam or
shale gas). There are also new and complex techniques as well as experiential knowledge and best practices that
must be shared with new hires and other stakeholders across geographies. In addition, the need to find new oil
reserves has driven companies to explore and operate in harsh, remote, and even hostile locations. This shifts the
focus to unconventional exploration techniques that require the support of digital technologies and extensive
technical expertise. However, finding the talent with experience in new technologies and unconventional
production techniques is not a simple task.
Unfortunately, the current education system does not support the growing need for skilled resources. People
graduating as geologists every year, from universities across the globe, form only a miniscule percentage of the
ones who graduate in other disciplines like law, medicine, engineering, and journalism. Oil and gas companies
therefore need to either train new hires or recruit personnel from other countries to bridge this gap. Industry
players are considerably challenged to train these employees quickly in order to maintain productivity. Effective
knowledge management and collaboration is not only critical to bridge these gaps and prevent loss of critical
expertise but also build new competencies. A more connected workplace that enables easy exchange of
information is thus a business imperative.
5
[1] World Petroleum Council, ”A World in Transition: Delivering Energy for Sustainable Growth” (2009), accessed January 30, 2014, http://www.world-
petroleum.org/docs/docs/speeches/wpc%20Presentation%20the%20Aging%20Workforce%202.swf
[2] PetroSkills, “Talent & Technology.” 2013

6. 6
Leveraging Social Collaboration to Bridge the
Knowledge Gap
It's important to address these challenges from a business perspective and not just consider them as HR or
technology issues. This starts with understanding the needs of 'digital natives' entering the organization who are
more than comfortable with social networking tools, and providing an environment that enables experienced
employees to share their expertise through this emerging medium.
Driving collaboration through social media and other collaborative tools generates significant business value by
improving the way knowledge is created, accessed, shared, and used. It also builds a synergetic ecosystem that is
far more dynamic compared to traditional content management. From routine tasks to special projects, social
collaboration transcends geographical boundaries. It captures the tacit knowledge of experienced employees by
motivating them to contribute through intuitive and easy-to-use platforms. At the same time, it offers new
generation employees access to collaborative technologies that allow them to leverage the knowledge ecosystem
for faster integration within the enterprise. Such technologies also help create a network of support through
communities of practice (CoP) and connect companies with academic institutions to prepare students even before
they enter the industry. A key step in adopting social collaboration is to focus on choosing an enabling technology,
or building a service line to create a platform that supports collaboration and overcomes the limitations of
traditional content management systems.
Moving from Traditional Content Management to
Social Collaboration
Timely access to the right data, information, and expertise is one of the strongest drivers for social collaboration in
the oil and gas industry. The amount of data — which is mostly unstructured in nature — is growing exponentially
due to the rising complexity of technology. Therefore, a good part of an engineer's time is spent on gathering data
and information rather than analyzing it. Plant outages are largely attributed to the difficulty in finding correct
information in a timely manner.
Though typical content management initiatives provide the means to manage data, they do not enable
contextualization, and therefore, fall short of a comprehensive knowledge management platform. Traditional
enterprise content management (ECM) systems are driven by enterprise taxonomy and capture knowledge that
can be documented. They are not well equipped to tap into unstructured sources such as emails and instant
messaging, and other sources of tacit information. Moreover, ECM works within the boundaries of workflows and
file management systems, and struggles to gather digital content (like videos and images) created through a series
of disparate, unorganized processes.

7. 7
The existing ECM systems are also mere repositories of processes. Many of these content management solutions are
built piecemeal by a particular business unit, and focus on providing employees with the knowledge they require
for conducting routine tasks. They do not provide an interactive environment where employees can post their
queries and get the required support to develop solutions for more specialized projects. Certain components of
ECM allow for collaboration and communication. However, since the focus is implicitly on content creation and
storage, important documents may not remain 'alive' for extended periods of time due to a lack of collaboration.
Social collaboration takes knowledge management beyond the rigid structures of taxonomy and toward
folksonomy, where content is categorized through collaborative tags and annotations. Social collaboration
platforms have evolved from the traditional system of records (SoR) to becoming systems of engagement (SoE).
While ECM does extend some collaborative features such as simultaneous editing of documents and integration
with instant messaging, it is largely used as a system of records. Social collaboration platforms aim to overcome the
challenges posed by ECM systems. Such platforms bring context to data, help in the discovery of experts, and
capture unstructured knowledge across the enterprise with ease.
Key Components of a Social Collaboration Platform
As a networking tool that enables collaboration within the enterprise, a social collaboration platform should also
encompass the social strategy for an enterprise, along with the associated policies and processes. An ideal social
collaboration platform should be easily accessible through mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets, and be
available round-the-clock for anytime, anywhere access. It should allow users to share information and
communicate with each other through instant messaging, blog posts, and wikis. Though the information generated
through social collaboration platforms is vast, the use of features such as hash tags contextualizes the information.
Activity feeds, based on user-specific subscriptions, enable the generation of personalized streams of information
to maintain subject relevance.
An in-built ideation engine facilitates generation of ideas through crowdsourcing, either for specific topics or in
response to general industry trends. The platform should also offer discussion boards and polls that help in
driving conversations around industry relevant topics. Instant access to the appropriate subject matter experts,
through communities and other private and public forums, will enable faster problem resolution. By integrating
with a comprehensive content management system, the platform should also enable real-time storage and
retrieval of content.

8. 8
Figure 1: Key components of a social collaboration platform
Figure 1 depicts the key capabilities of an ideal social collaboration platform.
Making the Most of Social Collaboration:
A Use Case and Some Key Success Factors
ELEMENTS OF SOCIAL COLLABORATION
MOBILITY INSTANT
MESSAGING
WIKIS BLOGS-TEXT,
AUDIO, VIDEO
CONTENT
MANAGEMENT
QUIZZES &
IDEATION
DEBATES/
POLLS
RECOMMENDATIONS COMMUNITIES
Reservoir
Management
Geology and
Geophysics
Systems
Well
Engineering
GIS
Drilling
Technology

9. 9
In this section, we discuss a scenario that explores how social collaboration can be applied to the oil and gas
industry to improve productivity. Consider an oil well that goes offline frequently, and the production engineers
and operators are unable to identify the problem. Let's say the employees who may have worked on various
components of the well such as lift technology, pumps, and others, have also moved out of the company. Such
issues could be posted to communities on a social collaboration platform to reach the extended workforce –
contractors, suppliers, and ex-employees. The social collaboration platform can also provide specific workflows that
allow ex-employees to participate in discussions until the problem is resolved.
Building a social collaboration platform is just the beginning; the following key factors will ensure faster adoption
and continued success:
n Change management: This will influence how well employees are able to adapt to the new collaborative work
environment.
n Collaborative culture: Technology is just one element of social collaboration; participation hinges on building
and sustaining people's interest. Enterprises should make all-out efforts to motivate employees through senior
leadership participation and recognition programs.
n Ease of use: The collaboration platform should require minimal training and be easy to use. Ensuring
uninterrupted availability of the platform on mobile devices will also help boost employee participation.
n Ability to evolve with changing needs: The social collaboration needs of an enterprise and its employees may
change over time. The right support will be needed to handle multiple iterations to meet these changing goals
and employee expectations.
Building a High Performance Workforce for Better
Business Outcomes
Social collaboration tools are changing the way we communicate and exchange information both outside and
within the workplace. Many businesses are already using it to support their marketing efforts and engage their
customers. For the oil and gas industry, social collaboration holds immense potential in capturing and
disseminating knowledge sourced from their experienced employees. Enterprises will need to think beyond
traditional databases or content repositories, and embrace new social tools that drive continuous improvement of
knowledge and skills. Building communities of interests and using discussion groups and podcasts could be some
ways to connect with the right experts across the organization and accelerate issue resolution and decision making.
While these are important steps in the process, the greatest success lies in a shared vision of social collaboration, as
well as rethinking organizational ethos and the ways of working. The demand for specialized skills and the influx of
digitally savvy employees will require tools and technologies that support idea generation and open avenues for
continuous innovation. In addition, such collaboration should happen anytime and anywhere to meet the needs of
a geographically dispersed workforce. Future success will therefore lie in adopting social media and mobility
enabled collaboration that will pave the way for a more agile, responsive, and productive enterprise.

10. About TCS' Energy and Resources Business Unit
TCS offers a comprehensive portfolio of services spanning consulting, infrastructure, engineering,
asset management, and business process services. We help global Oil and Gas, Mining, Metals, and
Construction businesses achieve greater efficiency by streamlining supply chains, optimizing asset
utilization, improving customer care, and complying with regulations.
Our offerings address critical business areas including oil field services, refining, mining operations,
exploration, and trading. Our solution frameworks leverage our expertise and best practices to help
organizations achieve seamless integration of their operations, with superior decision systems, and
reduced time and cost to market.
Our offerings are backed by our domain-focused Centers of Excellence. Our strategic alliances with
HP, Oracle, SAP, Microsoft, and Siebel help us deliver significant value to our clients.
Contact
For more information about TCS' Energy and Resources Business Unit, visit:
http://www.tcs.com/industries/energy/Pages/default.aspx
Email: er.marketing@tcs.com
TCSDesignServicesIMI02I15
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