As the Great Crew Change nears, has your organization thought about a strategy?

Some oil and gas companies are caught off guard and realize when Baby Boomers retire that they have not had the opportunity to pass their expertise on to the Millennial workforce.

In 2008, engineers who had considered retirement changed their minds and decided to keep working. This was the time when employers should have been focusing on preparing for that transition.

Instead, the senior engineers have been busy in the field, and managers did not want to take them away from their work to sit in the office writing training manuals. With almost 20% of oil and gas extraction workers being age 55 and older, this issue cannot be put off. When the industry rebounded in 2010, these workers went out to do the new projects.

Two things must be passed from the Boomers to the Millennials: project design and development, and operational knowledge. They need to learn how to manage safe, efficient, reliable operations.

Here are some tips for managing that transition:

  • Anticipate the conflicting learning styles and know that Millennials learn differently than their older counterparts. Baby Boomers are more used to reading or writing manuals, where Millennials are better at interactive learning.
  • Besides learning differently, these two groups also communicate differently. The older generation is used to more traditional means of communication, including landline, fax, typed memos, but also including email. The younger generation of employees is used to text and chat features, and it may be hard for these two groups to connect through different modes.
  • Face-to-face interaction is essential for the transferring of subject matter. Having to do everything through email, or platforms such as impersonal webinars would be the wrong approach. These two generations need to be interacting on a team together.

For more info, see the full article from Forbes.

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