BP PLC Global Diversity and Inclusion Report Presentation

Dec 12, 2013 AM EST
BP.L - BP PLC
BP PLC Global Diversity and Inclusion Report Presentation
Dec 12, 2013 / 04:00PM GMT 

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Corporate Participants
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   *  Birdie Taylor
      Rigzone - Director of Content
   *  Paul Caplan
      Rigzone - President
   *  Kirsty Bashforth
      BP PLC - Group Head Organizational Effectiveness

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Conference Call Participants
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   *  Unidentified Audience Member
      - Analyst

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Presentation
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 Birdie Taylor,  Rigzone - Director of Content   [1]
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 Hello, and thank you for attending the BP and Rigzone global diversity and inclusion study presentation. I'm Birdie Taylor, Director of Content for Rigzone. Joining me today is Paul Caplan, President of Rigzone, and Kirsty Bashforth, Group Head Organizational Effectiveness for BP. During today's presentation, we invite you to participate and ask questions.

 (Operator Instructions)

 First, some background about the report. The global diversity and inclusion survey was administered online with oil and gas professionals registered with Rigzone invited to participate in survey through an e-mail link. More than 3,000 oil and gas professionals was responded with 26% working in North America, 24% in Asia Pacific, 17% in the Middle East, 14% from Europe, and 12% and 7% from Central South America and the Caribbean and Africa respectively. And now let us get started with some slides.

 The survey asked respondents if they thought the number of women working in oil and gas had increased or decreased in recent years. In all of the regions represented, more than 50% of the respondents said they thought numbers had increased. The largest percentage in this area was South America at 80%, the highest percentage of respondents had said the percentage had decreased was in the Middle East at just 15%.

 We also asked of the industry was perceived as male-dominated and 72% agreed. In spite of this, 51% said it was important to ensure the industry was attracted to women. Paul, can you talk about why gender diversity has emerged as an important industry initiative?

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 Paul Caplan,  Rigzone - President   [2]
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 Well, simply the industry is a great place to be right now. While I don't want to call it hot, I will call it continuing to increase and the demand for new people to enter the industry continues to be a major focus.

 Top talent is really gender-neutral and I think companies realized that in order to have the most skilled employees they have to draw from the entire population. In the US, for example, 50% of the workforce is women and in the oil and gas industry, according to US government statistics, right now they represent only about 20%. And that is not really dissimilar from what you would find in other geographies.

 So, I think it is safe to say that those companies who are not actively hiring 50% of the workforce are really not doing themselves any favors.

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 Birdie Taylor,  Rigzone - Director of Content   [3]
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 And, Kirsty, from your perspective why would you say gender diversity has emerged as an important initiative?

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 Kirsty Bashforth,  BP PLC - Group Head Organizational Effectiveness   [4]
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 Yes, I would like to build on what Paul said actually. I do think this is a telling conversation. Women and men make up 50% equally of the brain and there is an increasing recognition and need for the industry to go in source talent in places that it may not traditionally have sourced from before. So, there is that angle, but also I think there is a slight impatience with ourselves about we might have expected to have made a bit more progress by now as an industry given this topic of men and women in the workforce across many industries have been alive for more than a few years. So, I think that we look at didn't we make progress, why haven't we made more and a thirst to continue to do better.

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 Birdie Taylor,  Rigzone - Director of Content   [5]
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 We also asked respondents about the gender diversity policy at their companies. Less than 50% said their companies had a clear policy, 36% said their companies did not have one, and 23% did not know either way. Kirsty, why is having a gender policy in your opinion and making it transparent important?

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 Kirsty Bashforth,  BP PLC - Group Head Organizational Effectiveness   [6]
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 Well, first thing I'd probably say is it depends what we mean by a policy and what we are interpreting as a policy. So, that is a whole other debate, but I think we just need to think about that when we think of the word policy. There are three things really for me.

 One is about the confidence for women entering the industry or thinking about entering the industry or being in the industry that there is commitment to a more balanced gender; talent poole across the organization.

 The second one is about awareness of what is going on and that there are good stories out there and the awareness of the facts. There can be a lot of deception. And the third one I think is to help the conversation, have the right input, the right input conversation.

 I know in our Company that now we're clearer about what great looks like. You can have a lot more detailed tangible conversations about how did you get there. So, there are three things, confidence, awareness, and focus on the right input.

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 Birdie Taylor,  Rigzone - Director of Content   [7]
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 Paul, you want to build on that?

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 Paul Caplan,  Rigzone - President   [8]
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 Yes, I think what was interesting to me in regard to some of these results was that even though it seemed that close to 60% said that they did not know if there was an explicit gender diversity policy when you asked them about specifics like child care, flexible schedules, equal compensation, the awareness on that was much stronger. So, in a lot of it, I think it really kind of boils down to a marketing message that companies have to make sure that they get out there about the things that they are doing because I think they are being very active right now.

 And if you look at the gender policy, if you want to call it that, both men and women equally benefit from these programs and as we dig deeper into the results you will see that their value that they place on these programs in a lot of cases are very much equal regardless of whether you are a man or a woman.

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 Birdie Taylor,  Rigzone - Director of Content   [9]
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 (Operator Instructions)

 Now, looking back, there have been a number of factors contributing to female under representation in the oil and gas industry. In our survey, societal conditioning was the number one factor. Paul, how do you think this has evolved over time and how do you perceive its impact today?

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 Paul Caplan,  Rigzone - President   [10]
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 Well, I think the traditional view of the oil and gas industry is that it is a heavy-duty manual labor intensive industry. And the reality today is that technology and automation have changed dramatically the requirements in terms of how much manual labor is actually required. If you look for where the opportunities are now, I mean a lot of it is really about things like software engineering and the engineering sciences which obviously are available regardless of whether you can do manual labor or not.

 Certainly, if you look at the jobs that are posted on Rigzone, there are some that say they are a requirement to be able to lift so many pounds' worth of material. But as you begin to look and analyze the jobs that are out there, you will find that those are more and more becoming a minority in the types of jobs that are actually posted out there.

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 Birdie Taylor,  Rigzone - Director of Content   [11]
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 And, Kirsty, I'd like to ask you the same question regarding societal conditioning.

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 Kirsty Bashforth,  BP PLC - Group Head Organizational Effectiveness   [12]
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 Yes, I think the really interesting topic that is changing all the time as different societies adjust or move forward at a different time scale. So, building on Paul's answer about varied careers, I think the first point is just because it's the oil and gas industry doesn't mean that everybody works offshore or in, as we say, manual labor. There are a lot more very varied roles out there. And so people need to understand that more because there are huge amounts of opportunity.

 At the same time, however, I would not want to put men and women in a box that only men would want to do manual work. There are plenty of women out there who would want this sort of a challenge and I think that is becoming more of a norm that women can and want to do some of these jobs as well.

 The second thing I'd say is around the societal conditioning. I think technology is adjusting how society in general can work and does work and how do we do our jobs using all the different media that we can use means that we can work in different ways and that is opening up different opportunities for men and women.

 And I think a third thing around is also more men and women in -- there's a different definition of family today than there used to be. There are several definitions of family. There are dual incomes, there are families with and without children, there families all different structures. And that means there are different expectations in those partnerships that do work when they work and how they work. So, it's not just the varied career, it's more than just manual work. It is also how society is changing and adapting and enabling different parts of the population to work in different ways and that will go into different industries and do jobs in different ways. There is more adaptability.

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 Birdie Taylor,  Rigzone - Director of Content   [13]
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 Okay. Now, also the societal conditioning factor was followed by a lack of qualified female talent entering the industry. Kirsty, what trends are you seeing that will continue to remedy this as we move forward?

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 Kirsty Bashforth,  BP PLC - Group Head Organizational Effectiveness   [14]
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 Well, I think it is up to both -- well, I think it's quite a lot up to our industry as well to try to keep attracting talent into the industry and we've got to start --well, not start, we've got to continue searching harder for those females who are in STEM, science, technology, engineering, and math subjects, but also how do we get deeper into school life and actually get into those subjects. So, the other aspects is encouragement of them into those topics and into the industry. The other aspect is how do we increasingly defined talent. Maybe we should broaden out our sense of talent. As we talked about, there are plenty of different careers in the oil industry and so we must not be sort of singular focused on our definition of talent. Talent comes in many forms and shapes and styles.

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 Paul Caplan,  Rigzone - President   [15]
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 I think that is a very, very good point, Kirsty, because I think one of the challenges the industry is facing is the competition for the talent on the engineering side, and specifically on the software and the programming side. You are basically competing against Silicon Valley and you're competing against other major technology hubs for the talent that is coming out of college that has the skills to do the kind of programming and technology developments that the industry needs and continues to utilize.

 So, are those engineers heading to Silicon Valley or are they heading to Houston or Dubai or Aberdeen? That's one of the challenges I think the industry recognizes and is beginning to address, but it really means going into the university level and really recruiting people from that point forward.

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 Birdie Taylor,  Rigzone - Director of Content   [16]
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 The survey also gauged if people had personally had gender play a role in professional gains or losses during their career. In general, 72% had never witnessed either situation while 68% never lost out professionally on the basis of gender.

 Regionally, the percentage that said they had never lost out based on gender was the lowest in the United States at 59%. Paul, what role do you think personal experience plays in the push for professional diversity in the workplace?

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 Paul Caplan,  Rigzone - President   [17]
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 Well, I think that what's really positive about these numbers is the fact that I think it does demonstrate how far the industry has come. The fact is that if there was a real problem with this, I think you would hear a lot more about it. This is not an industry that in general is very shy about bringing things to the surface like that. So, I believe that the community if they saw some wrongdoing somewhere I think it would surface rather rapidly. It's really a matter of developing the programs to bring in people and promote them and make sure they understand those opportunities.

 At Rigzone, for example, 54% of our workforce is women and many of them are in top management positions here and have started as outside that position and have been promoted. So, I think it is really a matter of making those opportunities available and making them very transparent.

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 Birdie Taylor,  Rigzone - Director of Content   [18]
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 And, Kirsty, can you share your thoughts as well?

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 Kirsty Bashforth,  BP PLC - Group Head Organizational Effectiveness   [19]
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 Yes. I think this is a really, really interesting topic and in my experience at BP and in my current role. We often as individuals can fall into the trap of trying to persuade people everything is okay, but actually or persuade people of a point of view, but it's about those stories and it's about people experiencing those stores that really helps them understand or shift patterns of behavior.

 So, for example, here at BP we try and make sure that plenty of leaders get an opportunity to experience stories and experience from women and men in the workplace what works, what doesn't work, et cetera, so that we don't fall into a persuasion game of you must have gender balance, therefore, you must do this. So, I do think story telling and hearing stories live from the field rather than from people like me who are sitting in the center and talking about the topic.

 And then because so many people -- people in the workplace have daughters, sisters, mothers, aunts and so they are not talking about things that are separate from us, we're talking about something that all our families or however our family structure is, is going to experience. So, I do think again that personal experience you hear about from others helps you shift your behavior, your presumptions, so just building on Paul's point there about actually good experiences people have had as women in the organizations and coming to this also to build on to say it is about how do people hear stories so that they can understand better as well. It is very important.

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 Birdie Taylor,  Rigzone - Director of Content   [20]
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 Now, as we see more companies in the industry working to advance their diversity initiatives, there are certainly different incentives that can help that along. The survey mentioned several. Now, some such as mentoring programs and gender bias training could certainly impact a company's culture depending on which company we're talking about. Kirsty, at what level do you think initiatives like these need to begin and why?

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 Kirsty Bashforth,  BP PLC - Group Head Organizational Effectiveness   [21]
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 I think first of all a lot of different initiatives have to happen to shift the outcomes over a period of time, so first thing is that there is no silver bullet, no quick fix and whatever industry you're in I think people would agree with that. And so it does take a long time and you have to shift the input. So, those inputs are not just one mentoring program and not just training on gender bias, you have to almost a menu of options to choose from and keep moving all of those forward according to what is making the difference.

 But I think the other point is it's across the whole pipeline. We are not trying to make progress only one place because you create bottlenecks in another place apart from anything else.

 So, I do think -- and this is how we do it at BP, the gender bias training. There is no better place to start than at the most senior leaders and that is where we make it mandatory for about the top 10, it's more than that, it's about top 15% of our organization it is mandatory.

 But mentoring can and should happen across the pipeline, whether there are people are [new] in the organization, whether they are in that middle part of their career thinking about what is the second half of the career. Then we often forget that because people have become senior they do not need any help. Yes they do, because they might not be making the breakthrough they could.

 So, again, balance number of inputs over a long period of time, make sure that gender bias training happens at the top. You probably can't train everybody all the time, but the mentoring and other programs like that is all across the pipeline.

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 Paul Caplan,  Rigzone - President   [22]
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 I think, Kirsty, you make a really good point about it across the whole pipeline. And I think the other point to consider here is at what point does this mentoring and leadership begin with employees and in my mind it needs to start from day one.

 They have to have a very clear understanding that these are the programs that we make available for your career development. That same message has to come down to the university level as well.

 In terms of the internship programs and co-op programs and all of the people who get involved with those particular types of channels, I think making sure they understand that there is a career path for them, there is mentoring available to them is all very important because they are looking for that holistic look at their career and I think understanding that the gender programs and the representation of women in the industry is a very important focus will definitely help create great employees.

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 Birdie Taylor,  Rigzone - Director of Content   [23]
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 When the survey drilled deeper into the company offering that mattered most it was really interesting that the same three offerings ranked highest for men and women just in a different order. Those were mentoring and sponsoring, flexible work arrangements, and transparency and renumeration structure.

 Paul, how do these and similar offerings at this company is really attracting a diverse workforce?

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 Paul Caplan,  Rigzone - President   [24]
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 Well, we certainly all know that renumeration is really the high consideration for whether an employee stays with their current company or whether they move on. But aside from compensation, people really want to know that they are valued at their company.

 And we often hear from our users about the oil and gas industry saying that their boss is an important factor and they look to them for the leadership and the mentoring that will make a difference between making them a content employee and another person who needs an exit interview.

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 Birdie Taylor,  Rigzone - Director of Content   [25]
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 And, Kirsty, your thoughts on how these company offerings play a role when it comes to recruiting a good workforce.

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 Kirsty Bashforth,  BP PLC - Group Head Organizational Effectiveness   [26]
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 I think they are important and I think they are only going to become increasingly important with future generations who from all our work generally around resulting attraction in the company we see increasingly these sorts of offerings are as important to men and women and the future generations.

 I think as individuals, we all make choices about the workplace we want to work in, as Paul said, it's about being valued, but if it's the workplace that I can be the best I can be, thrive, have the opportunity to thrive, have the opportunity to stretch, fulfillment, influence, to some it might be power status, but whatever somebody's definition of success is and so these offerings, yes, pay and benefits are very important, but it does something else.

 We all spend so many of our waking hours in work, at work, connecting to work, doing some work. This idea of fulfillment is on your own definition success becoming more and more important. And while people's lives are becoming ever different and evolving around the world, the definition of what is a workplace is also shifting, so I only see these becoming more and more important for men, women, and any form of diversity across the employee community, I do not think this is just a male and female issue. It will become more important.

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 Birdie Taylor,  Rigzone - Director of Content   [27]
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 We also looked at the opportunities women in industry currently have for advancement into management. We saw a global average of 54% agree that women have equal opportunities to move up the ladder in oil and gas. Regionally, the highest percentages were in South America, Africa, and Asia. Kirsty, how important are these opportunities in building a solid talent pipeline with younger generations?

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 Kirsty Bashforth,  BP PLC - Group Head Organizational Effectiveness   [28]
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 They're amongst one of the important factors I would say. Being able to see role models and seeing role models who you may relate to in the way they live their lives, the way they lead their lives, it's very important. So people are confident that I can do this, I can do that. There are many different ways and different lifestyles by which those role models carry out the roles is very, very important.

 So, if -- you can have all the policies and [present instructions] in place, but if nobody can see anybody carrying out what is their definition of success in a more senior position, it sort of detracts from the confidence and you have to work harder than all the other dials. So that's why I think it is really important those role models, those stories are out there.

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 Paul Caplan,  Rigzone - President   [29]
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 Yes, I fully agree with you. I think you mentioned earlier and just now about the stories. Making sure that those are out there and that people can see the success.

 We are dealing with a younger generation coming into the industry that is extremely connected both from social networking and from information gathering that they are able to do. And I think very quickly the viral nature of information being what it is, I think if companies are seen as being progressive and advancing diversity to management level positions and that word gets out, then that is a really good thing.

 If their companies are dark and people don't know what's going on within those companies, then I think the perception can get spread that the company isn't particularly well tuned to diversity. So, I think understanding the social network nature of this generation that we're now attracting as talent into the industry and making sure that word gets out to them is very, very important.

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 Birdie Taylor,  Rigzone - Director of Content   [30]
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 At Rigzone we recognize that it was important to highlight some of the stories of different women who have made that advancement up the ladder and that series is actually featured on Rigzone currently. A different series of Q&A's where we actually targeted women who spoke to us, told us how they did it, and that series is currently available for anyone who wants to check it out on Rigzone.

 Now, the survey also revealed that a significant percentage of respondents rarely if at all work with females peers as supervisors. Paul, can you talk a little bit about this current dynamic and, more importantly, what can be done to improve it?

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 Paul Caplan,  Rigzone - President   [31]
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 Well, I think that again we're talking about how far we've come but how far we still have to go. And I think that it is taking some time but, again, it is a matter of making sure that the successes are highlighted and that people begin to recognize where the advancement has happened.

 I was actually struck by the story that we ran the other day about the survey and we spoke with BP, Cheryl McKinney, who is the Vice President of Strategy and Commercial Business for East of the Rockies, and she related a story where she said that she is been in the industry for 30 years and for a long time she was the only woman in those meetings and now the meetings that she is going to, anywhere between one-third to one-half of the people in the meetings are women.

 So, it is interesting that while historically most of the senior roles had lower representation, that is changing now. And I know for instance at BP that 17% of their women are at the executive level.

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 Birdie Taylor,  Rigzone - Director of Content   [32]
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 And, Kirsty, your thoughts on this dynamic of having the opportunity to work with peers -- female peers at a similar level and supervisors.

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 Kirsty Bashforth,  BP PLC - Group Head Organizational Effectiveness   [33]
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 Yes. It's sort of a numbers game at the moment because while we are improving as an industry, our perceptions of improvement are improving also in the industry. It is true to say that there's still not quite so many women in the oil industry as we would like. So, it's not that surprising that not many people have worked so often with women.

 But also to Paul's point and Cheryl's point, it is increasing and I've worked in the oil and gas industry solely, the only place I've worked, and for the last 22 years and I do work now with more women than I used to work with and I do work now with more senior women than I used to work with.

 And I also think again this comes back to a bit of a confidence point. If you have an organization where you have a lot of women in the organization but there is only one in each team, it does not necessarily shift the dynamic that much because that person in the team still is the only woman in the team.

 If you start getting, say, three women on the team out of 10, you may start to get a different conversation and then actually that builds confidence and builds a different dynamic. So, how many -- how much diversity in a team is enough quorum to shift the dynamic and to start that tipping point of something different is also an important point. And I think in some places we're starting to get to that, but it will continue to take a while, I think.

 I don't think any of us should expect huge breakthrough numbers tomorrow just because we're focusing on the input more in the last few years. I think it will take a while because it has to come right the way through the talent pipeline.

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 Birdie Taylor,  Rigzone - Director of Content   [34]
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 Kirsty, when the survey focused on an overall outlook, more than 60% of the respondents said they expect to see the greatest increase in female representation among new entrance and junior level professionals. What do you think needs to happen to ensure those numbers keep trending upward?

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 Kirsty Bashforth,  BP PLC - Group Head Organizational Effectiveness   [35]
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 Well, I think it is how as an industry first of all we attract talent into it. So, as Paul said, how do we compete with the young engineering talent that might turn left into Google but actually wanted in the oil and gas industry. How do we attract the talent in, particularly the women -- by sharing, there are so many varied career opportunities, how do we talk about the healthy work environment, and all the other parts of the package that we talked about today, and how do we break down perceptions and assumptions of this is the only way to do these sorts of jobs.

 So, I think that's really important on the attraction side. As companies, we need to work harder, we need to keep working hard because that doesn't change overnight.

 I think once we've got women into the oil industry in more numbers, we've got to not assume that they don't want stretch opportunities and we've got to regard men and women wanting stretch opportunities, fulfillment, or a stable career in the same way and not assume people want different things, actually not to assume at all.

 And then we've got to make sure our processes are robust enough that we are really leaving no stone unturned to ensure that we're putting through all of the talent, men and women, that we need to ensure successful industry, so it really is attraction, retention, promotion and how do we continue to work hard on that?

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 Paul Caplan,  Rigzone - President   [36]
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 And to build on that and some of the things we have referred to this point, we all recognize the critical nature of attracting as much talent into the industry over the next few years as possible. We know we're going to be experiencing a desperate need for more professionals across many, many different disciplines within the industry. And so really it is a matter of it's a talent management issue from the standpoint of gen Y.

 We participated in Rigzone with several young engineering panels and there's a couple consistencies that have come out and those panel discussions with people who are just graduating or people who have been in the industry for, let's say, less than five years.

 They want to know that the company is ethical, they want to know that the company has a green policy, it has views on how to maintain the environment. And they definitely want to know that there's opportunity for movement upward and globally. Those are all things that are very, very important to that group and I think the industry has begun to do a wonderful job in making those points to this generation, but I think there is lot more work that needs to be done in that regard.

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 Birdie Taylor,  Rigzone - Director of Content   [37]
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 Okay. I think we have a few minutes for audience questions.

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Questions and Answers
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 Unidentified Audience Member,  - Analyst   [1]
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 So, the first question is I am a female recruiter and what I find is that women are heavy in the project services role. So, Paul, what is being done to increase the number of women in offshore and some of those more labor-intensive roles?

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 Paul Caplan,  Rigzone - President   [2]
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 Well, I think it is a good question and it is a nontraditional type role but I think as Kirsty pointed out earlier, I think more and more women are open to the opportunities for that kind of position but, again, I think what we've seen over the last 10 or 15 years is a move in technology to lessen the physical demands and really focus more on the mental demands that these jobs and opportunities have. So, I think as technology continues I think it's going to be much more open and much more attractive to women to be able to work in those environments.

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 Kirsty Bashforth,  BP PLC - Group Head Organizational Effectiveness   [3]
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 Can I just build on that as well? What I'd like to say is how can we get more of the women who are working offshore helping with the recruitment and attraction approach. For example, how can we video those women working offshore and talking about just how it is which overcomes perceptions and assumptions albeit it works this way or it does and the women are of this type or not. And we are trying to do that certainly more and more.

 And also how does it work every day? We have got to be more mindful, increasingly more mindful as an industry of the offshore environment, for example, or the onshore environment. How do the day-to-day work practices operate and all the things that we don't even know unintentionally that maybe enable it to be a more male-friendly environment than a female-friendly environment, just unblocking those what might seem small micro policies on unintended things, practices can really help.

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 Unidentified Audience Member,  - Analyst   [4]
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 Another question is for you, Kirsty. Does BP have as sponsorship program for women and people across the diversity spectrum which is where senior leaders watch and support and place a bet on top talent because sponsorship is very different from mentoring and so the second part of that is if you do have these programs you mentioned earlier that societies are progressing at different paces, and so where do you feel that BP geographically battles societal conditioning the most in terms of attracting that female talent?

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 Kirsty Bashforth,  BP PLC - Group Head Organizational Effectiveness   [5]
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 That's quite a broad question. I will take it in two chunks. The first one about sponsorship and mentoring and the second one about how do we -- societally, how do we attract talent.

 Sponsorship and mentoring as you say, two very different things. Mentoring is actually the [mentee] is in the room and getting advice and help and often the [sponsee] is not in the room and may sometimes not even though they are being sponsored until maybe a couple of years later and they think that person probably stood up for me. So, we don't have what I would call a formal program of sponsorship because I do believe sponsorship has got to be the choice of the leader as to who they sponsor and who they regard as talent.

 What we do do is work with leaders to help them spot the opportunity to sponsor talent that doesn't look like them [in adverse comments here] because I think as individuals our natural thing as a leader is to go, oh, that person is just like me 20 years ago, so I might fall into the trap of sponsoring a woman who is 20 years younger than me. Actually, we're trying to encourage leaders to sponsor talent who is just not like them. And so it's about the individual conversations for us rather than having a formal program. We have lots of programs around mentoring, as you say, which is where you can match people in a quite proactive way. So, that is just something about that sponsorship.

 How can you work with senior leaders to help them understand and actually how can I go and sponsor somebody who is not like me. And then just keeping track on that, but we don't have a program that is global or widespread or one-size-fits-all because I don't believe that can work.

 Now, in terms of societally how do you attract talent, obviously there are different societal conditions at play in all sorts of different countries, so it really depends the jobs you're looking for, for people to come into the career. If you're expecting them to come in to do eventually a global leadership role, you'll be attracting them in a potentially different way than if you're actually recruiting purely for local talent to do local jobs for a long time in a stable way. So, some of this is globally consistent and we're having a global graduate process that's consistent and some of it is much more local, so it's a real balance.

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 Unidentified Audience Member,  - Analyst   [6]
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 So, another question is, kind of jumping off the mentoring, mentoring is one component we talked about so, for Paul, what about training male managers as to what they can do to evaluate gender diversity and ensuring that females are evaluated equally to their male counterparts and also how can you find a mentor if you don't have one at your company?

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 Paul Caplan,  Rigzone - President   [7]
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 Well, I think this is an industry that's all about training. There is a tradition in this industry of training people on numerous different areas and I think that gender sensitivity training is a big part of that. Certainly, I think that for a lot of the positions in the industry it is a fairly equal playing field in terms of the requirements if we get away from the rig jobs that we're talking about, but in all I think that having programs where people understand where other groups come from, not just women but other groups in terms of societies, et cetera, is really important, so the evaluation is done in a correct way and it is fairly equal.

 Mentoring, I think you can find mentoring in an organization in all kinds of levels. You're looking for people who have had the experience, who have gone through the things you've gone through before, and I think if you are working outside of a structured program I think understanding through corporate communications about different people in the organization and learning their stories and being able to find opportunities to connect with those people I think are really important, and I think it does take some pro activity on the individual's part, but those opportunities are there.

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 Unidentified Audience Member,  - Analyst   [8]
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 Last question is BP's diversity initiatives are exemplary, however, the industry consists of huge organization which do not necessarily have the same beneficial programs, particularly service programs. Is there anything that BP can do to encourage other organizations to up their game regarding diversity?

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 Kirsty Bashforth,  BP PLC - Group Head Organizational Effectiveness   [9]
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 That is an interesting one. What I would say that one of the reasons we have done the survey is so that we can learn and continue to improve because we can always do better and we can see by the results of the survey across the industry we can always do better. Just doing these sorts of web casts hopefully people more people can understand what is out there what is possible and we can share more stories, share more data. There are an increasing number of networks across the oil and gas industry. There is one that just started up. Women Oil Assembly just started up, the Women's Oil Counsel and how can more people take part in that. And so I think there are a number of ways.

 I don't think it is up to one company to opine to other companies on whose practices are best, but how can more of us in the organizations we're in create the conversations and build the conversations because it is things like this survey, and I got to thank Rigzone for partnering on this survey, that help raise awareness that there is a conversation to be had, there is potentially more progress that we may perceive the risks but there is still more to do. I do not think you are ever done on this, but the more of us that can raise the conversation, raise the question show that we keep on learning and share those stories as well as of course trying to work on those strong policies I think the more progress we'll make but, as I say, you're never done. This is a consistent investment I think for as far as I can see out.

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 Birdie Taylor,  Rigzone - Director of Content   [10]
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 Okay. We are way over time, but I think it's been a great conversation. We had many more questions come in then we are going to be able to cover in the session today, but those of you in the audience, you're more than welcome to leave your comments at rigzone.com. I want to thank Paul and Kirsty for joining our conversation today and remind the audience that this event will be archived and available on the Rigzone website for replay. Thank you for all joining us and have a good day.




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