About the only positive to come out of the Covid-19 pandemic for the geoscience community has been its ability to adapt relatively easily to the abrupt change in working conditions necessitated by social distancing and other health and safety...
About the only positive to come out of the Covid-19 pandemic for the geoscience community has been its ability to adapt relatively easily to the abrupt change in working conditions necessitated by social distancing and other health and safety restrictions.
Not just working at home. There have been no reported cases of the Coronavirus affecting the operation of marine seismic vessels. The strict boarding procedures, longer crew rotations and the monitoring of crew wellbeing once on the ships has allowed marine seismic contractors to carry on with their summer survey schedule more or less without interruption. That has to be a bonus given the more worrying outlook for work this coming winter and beyond, assuming oil companies take a predictably ruthless view of their future E&P investment strategies.
It should be no surprise that geoscientists onshore can cope with working at home. Technology for processing and interpretation of seismic data for oil companies has advanced inexorably thanks to easily accessed, massive compute power and commensurate software allowing data treatments unthinkable a few decades ago. Furthermore, Cloud computing provides servers, storage, databases, networking, software, analytics and intelligence over the internet to add another dimension. The net result is that individuals with good connectivity can set themselves up at home with all the equipment needed to carry out tasks previously confined to the office.
And so this has proved in practice. During the lockdown and continuing uncertainty over working in confined spaces, seismic service companies have had their employees work from home with surprisingly little disruption to normal services. Unfortunately we are talking here about those who have so far retained their jobs to do the meagre work available during this prolonged crisis.
As the largest company in the oil and gas services sector with a significant geophysical component, Schlumberger was admirably prompt in coming out with a no nonsense, no exceptions Covid Outbreak Management plan to reduce the risk of exposure for its workforce. It included working from home where practical and an almost blanket restriction on travel.
How long this arrangement is sustainable is an issue that affects companies in a wide swath of businesses where a physical presence is not essential. The likes of Amazon, Google, Twitter and Shopify have all acknowledged the validity of working from home for many of their workers. Banks, financial and insurance services, online booking agencies and many other activities with a large computer-based component fall into the same category. Some say that Covid-19 will simply accelerate the demise of the traditional office set up. By this logic adoption of more flexible working arrangements is the future … for some. It is not an option for those employed in industrial plants, manufacturing, mining, oil and gas operations, construction, transport, shop retail, health, police, fire, armed services, etc.
Pre-Covid, the percentage of people who genuinely work from home, as opposed to sometimes taking work home, was surprisingly small. According to Eurostat, in 2019, 5.4% of employed persons in the European Union (EU) who were aged 15-64, usually worked from home. This share has remained constant at around 5% throughout the last decade. The Netherlands and Finland topped the list of EU member states for remote working, with 14.1% of employed people usually working from home, followed by Luxembourg and Austria (11.6% and 9.9% respectively). The US reports very similar figures.
Surveys suggest that the novelty of the working at home experience has met with employee approval. Business consultant McKinsey found 80% of people questioned said they enjoy working from home. Forty-one percent thought they were more productive than before and 28% that they are as productive. The survey concluded that ‘many employees liberated from long commutes and travel have found more productive ways to spend that time, enjoyed greater flexibility in balancing their personal and professional lives, and decided that they prefer to work from home rather than the office.’
This unsurprising portrait only paints part of a much more complex picture. Current assessments are based on a very short period of time, arguably a honeymoon period. The most important perspective belongs to employers, the paymasters. The pandemic obliged them to have their staff work from home. Doubtless they have done their best to support them so that their businesses can operate as productively and harmoniously as possible.
Yet two or three years ago major companies such as IBM, an early adopter of working at home, and Yahoo publicly both announced a halt to having employees work at home. In a nutshell the reason cited for the policy reversal was the erosion of corporate teamwork that fosters the creativity and innovation that are the lifeblood of high tech organizations. Physical proximity, casual encounters at the coffee machine, water coolers or the canteen, plus round the table meetings are cited by many employers as essential ingredients for creating a successful working environment. In Silicon Valley, many entrepreneurs have taken a sort of hip approach to work, turning the office into a lifestyle experience with lots of perks to generate buzz. Critics suggest one downside is an expectation of long hours that make work take precedence over home and family.
It remains to be seen whether there is a push back from big offices, particularly expensive leased properties in major cities. Numerous companies say they are reviewing the potential savings of more home-based workers. But having staff working remotely poses problems. Security of communications and data is one, and an obvious concern for the geoscience business. It is more difficult to secure the flow of information between office, home workers and customers. Popular as they are, Zoom conversations have been shown to be highly vulnerable; in one incident some 500,000 passwords were hacked.
A specific issue for the geoscience business is that continued working from home in the processing/interpretation field may well reduce available software language and tools. The pressure will be on to standardize which some say will hasten the day the treatment of seismic data becomes a commodity business.
Most problematic for a company of any size is management and monitoring of remote working employees, not to mention making coherent corporate strategy decisions. So far, companies including leaders in the geoscience-related services sector, say they are coping. However, there is more than a suspicion that a short break is not a true test. Remote working at the beginning can rely on the social capital already established in the company. In other words everybody knows each other, and a level of trust has been established. A prolonged separation from the office seems likely to change that dynamic. For example, internal company politics will be a whole new blood sport.
Concerning for management is that collaboration and coming up with new ideas is a challenge in virtual meetings. Quick conversations in the office that might answer a query or solve an immediate issue may tend to get bogged down in an email chain, already the curse of office communications.
New hires are particularly disadvantaged. They are plunged into a virtual work environment with no background or foreknowledge about the people they are working with, no real idea of what is expected of them and, most likely, any mentoring is hampered by stilted conversations across the internet.
It is also not a given that working at home suits everyone’s personality or living circumstances. Not unnaturally people can miss the human contact and camaraderie of the office. There is plenty of advice on the internet. One employment agency provides seven hints for remote workers starting with ‘get dressed’. This counsel is less about avoiding a Zoom meeting in a state of obvious undress, important though this is, but about getting yourself into a work frame of mind. Avoiding distractions seems to be the undoing of many ‘telecommuters’. Scheduling meetings, keeping regular hours and closing the office door seem to be the top tips for home work, and of course not constantly checking Facebook, Linkedin or the latest news when sitting at the desk. This is all very well for those who have the benefit of a discreet home office space. Others are not so fortunate. A full on workstation set-up in a bedsit doesn’t leave much room for anything else.
For managers in charge of remote workers, the not knowing what their staff is up to, and how they are faring, is a constant frustration. Beware, there are some fairly creepy methods to monitor work habits if you are connected to the main company server, starting with email volume and time on task tracking. But how can an employee’s mental health or domestic circumstances be checked? Such factors can have an important bearing on an individual’s performance.
There seems to be something of a consensus about the impact of Covid-19 on the future of the office. Larger companies are talking about potential savings on their leases, relieving staff from long commute times, but not so much about productivity. There seems to be an implicit acknowledgement that moving away from the old-style office culture will not be an easy or necessarily a desirable transition.
Running a business is all about return on investment. It makes sense for management to foster good relations with the workforce via pay and conditions to get the best results. It’s not a mantra that applies to all companies but that is another story. What we might be seeing as a result of the pandemic is the spread of a labour contract benefiting both the company and its employees, one undoubtedly applicable to some sectors of the seismic business. It will be a flexible work agreement providing employees the option of spending a proportion of their workdays at home. It would be a move that meets the requirement for everyone to stay connected, reduces overheads and potentially motivates employees. Not a perfect solution but one surely worth pursuing. As Franklin D. Roosevelt is reputed to have said: ‘The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.’
‘It should be no surprise that geoscientists onshore can cope with working at home.’
‘Not an easy nor necessarily a desirable transition.’
