Shell Australia

At the Victorian TAFE Frontiers workshop on Training Flexible Workers in Melbourne on 17 May 2005, Mike Sinclair, Global Director of IT, Shell, delivered a presentation entitled ‘Adapting to a new project delivery model based on Domicile Principles’.

Shell has moved from having separate national bases to an international model run on business lines. Globalisation has driven the change in Shell. The types of issues Shell has had to deal with in a post-September 11 environment include working in different time zones, adapting to cultural differences and different hours of work. The down side is excessive travel, lack of work life balance, isolation, cultural differences, late night teleconferences and lack of face-to-face interaction.

Mike outlined five principles of a ‘domicile environment’:

1. where work activities do not need to be done locally they are moved to the lowest cost delivery location;
2. work is moved to where resources are located rather than resources moved to where the work is;
3. activities are driven and managed by outcomes/outputs rather than by time;
4. a work location is anywhere (i.e. Shell office, home, airport, hotel, etc) where activities can be undertaken with due concern to health and safety of the individual; and
5. a person’s work hours are driven by project demand rather than by a historic standard.

Virtual working abilities are critical to gain global business. Shell Australia has an office of 250 staff based in Melbourne, with only 120 desks—which means people only come into work to do collaborative work. Email traffic can increase substantially when moving to a virtual work model, so parameters need to be set for communication.

Virtual working changes everything about the way a business works—it requires a total change program on behaviours, processes, technology and policies and programs. The behaviours needed included the ability to build relationships based on trust within geographically dispersed team members and using the technology available to fully utilise the resources of the team.

Processes need to be in place around cost allocation, communication, knowledge management, project management and training and development. It is important to learn how to effectively use the available technology to facilitate virtual working such as virtual teaming, video-conferencing, teleconferencing, instant messaging and net meetings. Policies and programs which support virtual work include health and safety policies, workers compensation, country based flexible work policies, technology policies covering broadband, mobile phone and other assistance used at home.

The early outcomes of virtual working for Shell Australia were:

Cost reduction

• Reduction in travel costs and allowances
• Lowering of fixed overheads in office accommodation
• Improvements in efficiency in resource usage and removal of lost time through travel, etc
• Lowering of “bench” related to resource requirements/location imbalances

Improved delivery capability

• Reduction in time to delivery by extending project hours across time zone locations
• Ability to leverage scarce resources across geographies
• Having the “right person, available at the right time, from any place”
• Added creativity and innovation through our ability to use diverse resources from different cultural, ethnic and domain backgrounds

Enhanced employee value proposition

• Significant improvement in work life balance
• mproved ability to attract talent into Shell
• Enhanced people behaviours facilitated by new work protocols and professional standards