Head Energy recently concluded the annual employee surveys throughout the company. COO Preben A. Onarheim is happy with the results in general but would like to improve on two specific areas.

Head Energy has conducted annual employee surveys since 2013 and include new subsidiaries and departments in the surveys as they have become fully operative. 2018 is the first year that personnel in Head Energy Denmark participate, while personnel working for newly established Head Energy Infra has been included in the survey together with Head Energy Consulting.

2018 is also the first year we conduct our surveys in both Norwegian and English. An important step in adapting to a more international labor market and allowing all our team members to participate.

Continuous focus

After the 2017 surveys, COO and HSEQ responsible Preben A. Onarheim, highlighted two areas where improvement was a priority: HSEQ related questions and whether Head Energy is perceived to work to install an ethical mindset in our employees.

-Clearly, we had hoped for more development on both these matters but must admit we are not quite there yet. There is no regress though, just less growth than we had hoped for with results averaging between 3,7 and 4,5 on a scale from 1 to 6. Particularly the score on the question asking whether Head Energy has continuous focus on improvement within HSE and QA is one where we would like to see the results go from decent to good. We should probably note that the lowest scores are found among the consultants working externally, at our clients’ premises, and that it is harder to communicate HSEQ-related information to them than to employees working at our own locations in Esbjerg, Stavanger, Krakow and Bergen. We must secure easy access to HSEQ-documents through Recruitment Manager and create more content on this matter in our newsletter and on our websites, states Onarheim. We have specific plans for this that will be implemented in 2019.

-Our second focus area is to increase the growth regarding ethical mindset. Again, the results are not bad, but we aim for high scores, not average. This needs some further investigation, so I am only speculating, but we may need to ramp up our efforts to distribute our ethical framework and code of conduct, highlight sustainability, community and goals related to ethics, and make this a topic in our interviews, presentations, and follow ups with our employees. Instead of averaging between 3,7 and 4,1 we should aim to average around 4,5 next year and work continuously to break the 5,0 barrier, Preben A. Onarheim says.

 

People are busy

Another concern for Onarheim and some of the managers in the Head Energy Group is the reported increase in workload and work pressure. Both have seen a steady increase since 2015/16, mostly in our inhouse engineering departments, among managers in our consulting units and in Head Energy Denmark.

Workload and work pressure are both measured on a scale from 1 to 5, where 3 is considered the ideal amount. If the average score rises above 3,5 efforts need to be made to secure employee health and welfare.

-We have operating units where the average score is close to or above 3,5 on either workload or work pressure. This is something we will have to investigate to see if it is a staffing problem or something that can be solved with optimized workflow or execution models, Onarheim states.

 

Happy employees in general

Although the employee surveys disclosed that some challenges have not been solved since 2017, it also shows some very positive development in other areas. Both confidence in the group management and satisfaction with Team Managers and other staff members are very good and up from previous years, with some minor deviations on single questions in some business units.

This is also the case regarding communication and openness, strategy, vision and values.

Preben Onarheim is also very happy with the results regarding employee’s happiness with their work situation and whether they are happy working for Head Energy, as well as working environment:

-This is important to underscore. Results regarding working environment (psychosocial) is very high and I believe it is fair to say that people enjoy working for Head Energy in general. Social events, team building and an accept for diversity among co-workers are key elements behind the results but is also part of the corporate culture that needs to be nurtured and improved always, Onarheim elaborates.

 

Five is the number

The Head Energy Group has set a goal of scoring minimum 5,0 on group average on all relevant questions and topics in both employee and client satisfaction surveys. Although the results are not quite there yet on employee surveys, Onarheim is confident in the approach:

-There is positive development and we have identified our weak areas. Improvement is always on the agenda and we have a pretty clear image of what needs to be done. We will also improve our follow up and analysis part of the survey to extract even more and better data in the future. I would also like to take the opportunity to thank all our employees who responded to the surveys. My impression is that the feedback is sincere and constructive, which is very valuable to us, Preben A. Onarheim concludes.