RTE (IRELAND): Outsourcing threat to Shell jobs

MalaysiaBolih: Jo Blow-you are right again. It is happening in US and Asia. In fact it is worst in Europe. What Top quartile? This is just consultant speak just to tell you there is further room for improvement and they can help. Lets get the Basic Right lah. For example, a VP Production in Asia. He is not accountable nor influence for any of the productions of the respective Countries. Why do we need a figure head? We already have a EVP Asia who can steer the Country VP. Of course unless we have no job for the current incumbent. This is what we call "Cronic Waste" .

motivaman: John, I work at one of the "lovely" refineries and I heard these rumors also from an electrical and instrumentation contractor there. He told me that shell did send down the pipe a cut in pay. I was told that if this happened, they along with a few others will pull out from our plant. I don't blame them, why take a pay cut when they can go to elsewhere and make more. I have alot of stroke with some of these contractors from the past. I should be able to get my hands on said e-mail if it exists. I'll see what I can do. Motivaman for president.

downunder123: Cannot agree with Jo Blow and MalaysiaBolih more! Can anyone tell me when had Shell ever drastically restructured its organisation with changes of top leaders in the past 10 years? You noticed that everytime the changes are as what Jo Blow descibed - creating new job titles and shuffling the top guns around, maybe paying handsomely for a handful of the better SEGs to leave voluntarily. Although these are changes rightly so, they are completely inadequate to transform a sluggish elephant organisation like Shell. Look at the response in the share prices, and you can well predict the outcome of this paper exercise, designed to fool the outside world. My chinese friends correctly told me what was being done is akin to saying of "changing the soups without changing the medicine". It is so amazing to see the numbers of VPs that makes one wonders if Shell is now in the business of producing cheap and incompetent VPs (of course with apology to some exceptions as I always believe there are still probably a dozen of good credible VPs in the select pool)! You must be a fool to expect a transformation in Shell. But, one thing for sure, more costs will be spent to set up the new organisation - new laptops for examples and more renovations for larger offices! My question is why waste money for something that does not add value? HOW do you measure success and if not, WHO is ultimately ACCOUNTABLE? Goodluck to those happy stayers, happy in the sense that there will be no or less work in the coming months for many in the process of onboarding, away days, travelling for communications. Thank goodness I am retiring soon and cannot give the hood anymore.......In any case the demise of Shell is imminent, if not accelerated now with the lastest set up!

Jo Blow: In my opinion Voser is not doing anything that will cause any more then a token improvement, if even that occurs. Fundamentally all he is doing is re-arranging names and titles. To cause change, you first must drive accountability, you do not drive accountability from the bottom up, you drive it from the top down. You have Williams sending message after message speaking of our 4th quartile performance with 1st quartile people in downstream, yet the only people getting the boot are lowly JG3 and lower in the organization. These folks are not accountable for setting direction, they execute the direction given them. In the Motiva world, you have a project that escalated out of control in regards to cost and schedule, yet the person who SHOULD have been held accountable moves on to a promotion. None of the senior leadership of that project were held accountable with the exception of D.B and J.J, and a couple lower graded managers. It was not Forrest or even Tom who were held accountable. These are prime examples of why our culture drives us to 4th quartile performance. If people are not held accountable for their respective jobs and actions then the culture will spiral to where Shell is today. Nothing I have seen of Voser's plan seems geared towards fixing this so do not expect much change.

John Donovan: If anyone has any email relating to the cutting of IT contractor rates, please supply precise quotes from the content, or even better, send it to me after taking appropriate precautions.

MalaysiaBolih: Jo Blow. You hit the nail right on the head. Unfortunately Voserisation is not going to change anything but instead creating more VPs. Organisation is designed based on people we have. sob..sob....In EP Asia, Paul M you will get to keep your day job. With you in, BP n SF will still keep their jobs in EC-3. Wonder what you will be busy with apart from NOVs. Michiel , surely you can do better than that. Buckle up.

AsiaDragon: IT4Me- it has been known IT cost has been very high. When benchmarked with the industry it is around 2.5 times. However cutting the cost of contractors' salaries maybe the wrong thing as these are the people who actually worked. Voser is right by putting under Finance. We should be critically reviewing the overhead itself, that is those responsible in putting the contract in place and doing nothing after that. Of course their bosses as well. We have a JGA boss plus few JG1s now, 20 years ago, we had a JG3 as our boss. So it is now or never. However agree maybe the way it is done. We still have "Respect for people" as our core values.

IT4me: A small but amusing turns of events in IT last week saw the entire contractor workforce (in Downstream anyway) receiving the same announcement via their agencies of an immediate 12% cut in rates. IT contract rates have softened during the downturn, so cuts are understandable. What's unusual is that this was done at only a few days notice, across the board, and mid-contract. Some recipients of this broadcast had 6 months or more left on their current assignments (whose duration was specified by Shell to secure their availability and rate) while others where in their final weeks of handovers to offshored replacements. In both cases, this was eyebrow-raising: early termination of contracts is normally only for misconduct or non-performance. Within a week, the smoke cleared. Contractors appear to have overwhelmingly said NO, ie most were prepared to stay for the full term or leave immediately, and nothing in between. The prospect losing large number of contractors on the same day sensibly prompted a rethink, and clarification emails were duly rushed out explaining that the cuts were ... um, OPTIONAL (I'm summarising over 300 words in one here, so that's approximate). So that's alright then. Not an earth-shattering event, but perhaps another small insight into declining standards within this great company ?

John Donovan: Scapegoat, you have hit the nail on the head. If Shell management acted at all times in accordance with its claimed core business principles, there would have been no reserves fraud, no fines for price-fixing, no fines for safety breaches which have cost Shell employees their lives, no $15.5 million settlement for misdeeds in Nigeria or multiple settlements of claims for IP theft from the Donovan's. If Shell management was not rotten at the core, this website would not exist. We look forward to the day when you are able to supply information in your own name. When you are ready, we will be very happy to publish any incriminating/embarrassing documents relating to Shell/Motiva operations.

scapegoat: In regard to deeply Concerned, and to our host, I appogize for using certain name but the intent was to show what happens when we hire certain people without a thourough background check. In the future I will only put initials, but when all the checks clear, I will re register with my real name. That way those reading and those whom I am speaking about will know where it came from. Those who know me know I only speak the truth. If in the future they want to deny certain actions they can take it up with me. Sorry if the truth hurts, but hiring unscrupulous individuals only serves to let them ruin the careers of longtime employee's who tick them off. If the corporation really practiced its core values we wouldn't be here blogging today.