7/28/2019 08 SoftSkills

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2Vol. 8 // No. 3 // 2012

Soft Skills

17%

40%17%

7%

19%

1823 2428 2832 3337 38+

66%

5%

1%

8%

11%

1%

4%

1% 3%

Energy (producer/consulting/services)

Energy (R&D)

Mining and Materials(non oil and gas)

Financial

Industrial/Manufacturing/

Commercial Trades

Utilities (electricity,water, gas, foreign)

Construction (owner,consultant, contractor)

Transportation/Municipal

Education

5%

7% 3%

5%

51%

16%

1%3%

5%

4%

Executive

Manager

Supervisor

Consultant

Engineer/Scientist

Analyst

Educator

Student

Sales and technicalsupport staff

Non-technical supportstaff (HR, admin,acct, etc)

Work/Life Balance in the 21st CenturyJarrett Dragani, Cenovus Energy

Work to live, or live to work? Working

hard, getting the job done, and having

a ull led lie at homecan we really

have it all? In a globalized world where

business never stops and nearly all

our business tools enable constant

communicat ion, where do we draw

the line between work and leisure? In

addition, what impact does separationbetween work and leisure have on our

perormance, job satisaction, and well-

being? These intriguing questions were

among those posed to participants in The

Way Aheads global survey in an attempt

to investigate and contrast work/lie

balances ound in the oil and gas i ndustry

compared with other industries.

The Concept of Work/Life BalanceWork/ li e bala nce is a concept that

signicantly aects the health and

happiness o ones lie. The concept restson your agenda or demarcating the

amount o time you spend with work and

the amount o time you spend in leisurely

pursuits, where leisure is everything

outside the scope o your work.

Work/ li e bala nce is a n area o

research dating back to the 1960s.

In act, it began as a topic o study in

management as an attempt to ormulate

working conditions that maximizedproductivity or industria l companies. It

has oten been a theme o political and

social discussion, and it is important

to realize that dierent societies have

dierent perceptions about what a

suitable work/li e balance is.

A good example is the comparison

that historian Keith Thomas draws

between preindustrial society and

modern times (then the 1960s) in terms

o work and leisure, worker productivity,

and management philosophy. Thomas

presented his research (Work and Leisurein Pre-Industrial Society) at the seventh

Past and Present Conerence in London

in 1964, and, since then, the concept o

the sociology o work and leisure has

emerged as an academic discipline.

A similar comparison today might

be between the 21st century and

what I would call the pre-inormation

technology (IT) era o the 1960s and

1970s. In the pre-IT era, the separationbetween work and leisure, in essence,

was a physical separation between the

worksite and the home. In todays society,

it becomes more dicult to separate

the worksite and the home because we

must take into account virtual as well

as physical separation. As workers and

consumers, we are constantly adapting

to new technologies that enable us

to stay literally plugged in with work.

Smartphones, remote server access,

tablets, phone apps, and email are all

examples o ways by which we can stayconnected with work.

Fig. 1Work/ lie bala nce TWA

survey demographics.

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Soft Skills

Work/Life Balance PollTo nd out how the oil and gas industry

ares in relation to work/lie balance,

we administered a poll. We asked 77

workers rom across the globe and rom

many industries or their take on work/

lie balance. Roughly hal the sample

population were engineers and scientis tsworking in the energy sector, with an age

demographic split airly evenly among

young proessionals, as shown in Fig. 1.

When looking at the demographics,

one sees that 65% o the respondents

were younger than 28, tting into a prole

called GenY. O the 77 respondents, 80%

said achieving a good work/lie balance

was very important to them. In addition,

when asked what workers elt about their

current work/lie balance, only 12% said

it was dismal or unsatisactory. Generally,

this surveys respondents were young

proessionals with an educated view on the

importance o work/l ie balance and who

were well-practiced in the ar t o achieving

that balance.

What CreatesWork/Life Imbalance?

What contributes to a poor work/l ie

balance? Fity-ve percent o the surveys

respondents said it was rom taking

work home with them. Interestingly, an

additional 38% said they elt guilty about

nottaking work with them. Combining

these responses indicates that 93%o respondents eel obligated to take

work home with them. That highlights a

possible di erence between pre-IT-era

and 21st-century work/l ie balance. It also

highlights a risk young proessionals in the

oil and gas industry ace today, because

almost all employees in this day and age

carry work-related electronic devices.

Another question is, How do

people react when they exper ience an

imbalance between work and home (say,longer than 1 month)? When asked this,

15% o the respondents said they would

complain to other employees, 19% said

they would do nothing (i.e., bottle it up

and take it home with them), and 10%

would either speak to management or

quit their job.

Al l employees have expectations o

what their work/lie balance should be

like, and sometimes those expectations

change with personal and proessional

circumstances. As our respondents have

shown, the consequences o not meeting

those expectations can be quite extreme

both or individuals and companies.

When experiencing poor work/l ie

balance, some will lose sleep, others will

complain to ellow workers, and some are

bold enough to quit their jobs.

Achieving a GoodWork/Life Balance

Whose responsibil ity i s it to achieve a

good work/lie balance? It is a dicult

question to answer generally because

dierent societies have dierent

percept ions. Nonetheless, it is animportant question or everyone to ask

themselves. Participants in the survey

indicated that 39% o the responsibility

rests with the individual, 20% with t he

supervisor, 34% with the employer, and

7% with the government.

When asked to comment on work/

lie balance, most respondents said

work to live, not l ive to work, or leave

work at work. However, one respondent

commented, Good work/l ie balanceis about eeling energized and satised

in both your work and personal lie at

the same time. While there is no one

ormula that can create the perect work/

lie balance or everyone, the best work/

lie balance comes rom having a mutual

respect or what the company and the

individual employee needs. For me,

the perect work/lie balance is one that

requires a lot o hard work and lengthy

hours but is oset by a high degree

o autonomy and the fexibility to take

personal time. It is about nding the

right t.

Indeed, it is about nding the right t,

and the challenge our industry aces in

the 21st century is nding that t in terms

o both physical work hours and virtual

work hours. For the younger generations,

the balance may be dierent than it is

or our older companions. However,

regardless o age, people should be

mindul that the perception o what

constitutes an optimum work/lie balance

can be easily skewed by the seductive

and eortless nature o electronic

communications. But, by nding the rightbalance that is comortable and equitable

or all, employers and workers can

prosper together. TWA

Use and Abuse of ProbabilityMany examples exist where well-

meaning practitioners in probability

apply all the correct ormulas and tools

but get the answer completely wrong.

Classic cases include the Monty Hall

problem o which it has been sa id No

other statistical puzzle comes as close to

ooling all the people all the timeand

a case o an appeal against a conviction

o a mother whose two babies died o

sudden inant death syndrome. Another

example, which has been analyzed

incorrectly in most publications and

discussion groups, is the I have a boy

born on a Tuesday question.

Similar dangers exist in the realm

o reservoir simulation. First, we oten

take a single parameterized simulation

model out o many possible geological

realizationsthis immediately shits

(biases) the mean and reduces our

uncertaintyand we then compound the

abuse by making untested assumptions

about the correlations between

para meters, which a ects downside

risk. It may not be unt il we have

perormed a n expensive but ineec tive

water-injection plan that we realize the

aults are mainly sealed and the assumed

independence excluded this possibility

in the original economic evaluation

because it was at the very extreme tail o

the S curve.

ConclusionsGiven limitations in our current sotware

tools, limitations in our knowledge o

the static properties o the reservoir,

uncertainty about parameter correlations,

and unpredictability o uture operational

decisions, it is tempting to give up and

go back to the old waysbest history-

matching case 10%.

However, in the last decade,

we have seen major advances in

computing power, sotware, and

algorithms, and, i the industry

continues to invest in training young

engineers in the skills required,

par ticu larly in probabi lity and statist ics,

it will be able to quantiy uncertainty

with increasing understanding, rigor,

and validity. This will then enable the

engineering alchemists dream

optimization and decision making

under uncertainty. TWA

Tech 101... Continued from page 22