Training and Development on the Fast Track

HRM. What is it that drives development and training at Devon?

Paul Poley. You could identify three things. One, there’s the market demand of organizational performance. We’ve got investors, and we’re competing for their dollars. There are high expectations. We have an obligation to our shareholders and it’s getting tougher and tougher as the demands of the oil and gas business are getting more complex. The easier days of gas are gone, and the technology is changing.

Secondly, there is an extreme and acute demand for talent. This is felt particularly in the technical industries, and we’re a technical-oriented company.

This ties into the final reason, which is related to the demographic gap that exists. The oil and gas industry is missing half to two-thirds of a generation, because during the 1980s and even part of the 1990s, life in this industry was tough. A lot of the smart technical folks shied away and went into the dotcoms. As a result of that there’s a high demand in this industry for our commodities. That’s pushing a high demand for people, and there’s frankly not enough people to meet the demand. Add to that the relatively aging workforce in the industry. Devon would pretty much parallel those statistics.

Looking to hire, you’ll know there are folks that are eligible for hire in the relatively near future. There are two things that need to be done. First is to hold on to the folks that might want to retire. Second is to accelerate the growth and development of those who are new into the industry, both from a technical and leadership standpoint.

It’s an evolving thing. In Devon’s arena we were very much a mergers and acquisition-oriented company, and we did that very successfully. Now we’re moving to organic growth, meaning we have to learn how to take the existing assets you have and develop them. The good news is we’re demonstrating our ability to grow organically, but we’ve got to continue to push the envelope on the training and development that supports that. So where training used to be somewhat of a choice, now it’s a performance obligation.

HRM. Please can you talk more about how training has evolved?

PP. We’ve gone to a more holistic approach. One time it was more technically oriented and of course we’ve had to ramp that up, as I mentioned. Now we’re integrating everything. We’re expanding things like relational and mentoring on the job. We’re also to looking specifically at how we move people through the organization while enhancing our succession plan. We’re taking a more holistic approach to that and the way we plan for future needs, both individually and collectively. Obviously we had to obviously dedicate additional resources both inside and outside the company to make sure that it happens. It’s almost become part of our branding, which is being pushed by this expectation – particularly in the younger generation – for training and development being an integral part. We’ll talk more about that later though.

Training and development has gone from a push versus a pull. You used to have to promote training but now we have people – both leaders and individual employees – requesting it. We’ve got demand of that internal customer base that’s pushing for that training, so we’ve added resources. For example, we’ve ramped up our college hire and our intern program dramatically over the last couple of years, dedicating resources not only to going out and securing those kind of people, but also developing them in the intern program.

Specifically, most recently we hired somebody whose sole focus is developing programs to grow employees who came onboard through our internship program. That is an integral part towards answering the question of how do we hold onto people, because there is a high demand for talent and that fits well into it.

We’ve also done things like establish systems for enrolling and tracking training. We have a top-down approach, meaning there is top-down sponsorship from the executive level on training and development. It’s not like we’ve got to sell them; they’re big believers, and that’s a change from recent years.

We’ve recently rolled out our “Leadership Attributes”, which is what we expect of our leaders in terms of performance and behaviors. We’re developing a new set of attributes for all other employees or individual contributors, explaining what we expect from them too. We’re expanding and creating our development programs that support those kinds of attributes too.

HRM. Do you take graduates directly from universities and train them up in different sections of the business?

PP. Very much so. We’ll take a fair amount of our college graduates. We probably have about 175 interns this year at various ages, both from working on undergraduate and graduate degrees. We bring them in and while they’re interns we’ll put them through training and they do real work. These are not coffee cup chasers. They are contributing meaningfully to the organization.

Once we use that as our main source for hiring college hires, and then we have specific training programs and development programs that they’ll go through over the next two to three years once they come onboard as a full-time post-graduate situation.

We run a combination of internal programs and external programs, using multiple sources. There are certain things we want Devon to deliver, because they have the Devon culture flavor to them. But when you get into the technical aspects or more expansive areas of growth in the company then we’ll deploy external resources, whether it be universities or training and development organizations or technical organizations.

HRM. In terms of operations there is training right across the board. But what are your main areas of operations?

PP. In training, employees cover everything from leadership development to individual personal development: technical courses like IT, exploration and production, geology, geophysics, engineering accounting, all those functional things. We do a substantial amount of training in environmental health and safety, which is very important. We do compliance and regulatory training. We also do broad-based industry training. For example, we have program geology for the non-geologists and non-engineer, where we teach folks in our business. We have an external person come to our company to teach that. We believe that all of our employees need to understand the kind of business we’re in.

HRM. What is it that differentiates Devon’s training programs from other companies?

PP. Mainly it’s that our training is geared towards Devon-specific needs. It’s geared towards our culture, towards our values, business strategy, business objectives and the gaps that exist between those elements.

HRM. How many employees do you currently have engaged in training development programs?

PP. You know, you could safely say to one degree or another virtually everybody gets some kind of training at some point in time. So all 4700 employees are encountering some training. It varies by individual: by their need, their growth past, all that kind of stuff. But there’s not one person working here that doesn’t get some form of training.

HRM. How do you decide what kind of training programs you will implement?

PP. There are two ways that training happens. The first is through identifying individual need: what do they have, where is their career going, basing the development around that. The fundamental with that one is very grassroots, creating a plan for that particular person. We’re currently increasing the capabilities, quality and intensity of developing those individual plans.

Secondly there’s the macro approach. If we look across the entire organization we might see fundamental issues that exist pervasively, and then we decide whether we need to create broad-based programs to roll out to a large section of our workforce.

There are some special initiatives that may require some training. But in the most it comes down to creating individual development plans around their needs, development, and potential growth.

HRM. Okay. Do you think that training and development are surefire ways of ensuring employee loyalty?

PP. There’s no surefire way to ensure that. But we believe that training development is becoming a more critical component of that total employment experience. There are aspects of their experience that are critical: do they feel like part of the company, do they feel like they have an opportunity to impact, do they have the chance to grow, does the work match the values they have, do they feel they’re getting the proper rewards. Those are all important factors, but so is an individual’s ability to learn and grow. Demand for that is growing, and the younger generation is putting even more emphasis on that.

To give you an example of our work on that, I had a new employee start in my department the other day and he started, his boss brought him around and introduced him to me. Right after he was done just saying hi, he had to go into a two-day training class – this was his first day – and after that he was going to another two-day training class. His boss was heading for a training class the next day for three days. And then I said, “Hey, when you all come back I’ll miss you because next week I, as a VP, will be in a training class also.”

That’s fairly typical of what happens these days at Devon, but we would not have seen that much activity going back three or four years. Our industry has a more accelerated path today. Part is regulatory, part is talent shortage, and part is the technological and leadership changes. What it takes to run this business is becoming a far more compelling, complex, and difficult. Demands are growing in that regard and the talent supply is below the talent demand.

ABOUT DEVON ENERGY

Overview

Devon Energy Corporation is one of the world's leading independent oil and gas exploration and production companies. Devon's operations are focused primarily in the United States and Canada; however, the company also explores for and produces oil and natural gas in select international areas. We also own natural gas pipelines and treatment facilities in many of our producing areas, making us one of North America's larger processors of natural gas liquids.

The company's portfolio of oil and gas properties provides stable, environmentally responsible production and a platform for future growth. About 88 percent of Devon's production is from North America. The company's production mix is about 60 percent natural gas and 40 percent oil and natural gas liquids, such as propane, butane and ethane. Devon produces over 2 billion cubic feet of natural gas each day, about 3 percent of all the gas consumed in North America.

Headquartered in Oklahoma City, Devon has approximately 4,600 employees worldwide. Devon is a Fortune 500 company and is included in the S&P 500 Index. Its common shares trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol DVN.

BIO: Paul Poley – Devon Energy Corporation

Paul Poley, 54, was elected to the position of Vice President, Human Resources, in March 2000. Poley was previously employed by Fleming Cos. in Oklahoma City and last served as director of Human Resources Planning and Development. At Fleming, his responsibilities included human resources development, management succession, strategic planning, performance management and training. Prior to his 11 years at Fleming, Poley was Regional Personnel Manager for International Mill Service Inc. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree in sociology from Bucknell University. He is a member of the Society for Human Resource Management.