Hydrocarbon Resources Limited (HRL) is a part of Centrica responsible for extracting and processing natural gas from reservoirs beneath Morecambe Bay and delivering this to the National Grid for onward distribution and sale by British Gas. HRL staff are distributed over 4 main sites - a support office at Heysham docks, an onshore gas Terminal at Barrow in Furness, a condensate storage facility at Barrow docks and an offshore platform, some 25 miles west of Blackpool in the East Irish Sea. Their circa 300 directly employed staff and 50 core contract staff at HRL work in a variety of roles and in a variety of working patterns. At Heysham, the mainly office based support, engineering and management staff work typical office hours. At Barrow, there is a combination of 24 hour operations, with technical staff working 2x12 hour days, followed by 2x12 hour night shifts, followed by 4 or 5 days rest. The day based maintenance and support staff work typical office hours, although some are also rostered to fly daily offshore every other week for 12 hour maintenance duties. Offshore, staff work 12 hours and work on a 2 weeks on, 3 weeks off rota.
In this environment, teamwork is vital. A command and control structure has to exist, both through legislative drivers and to ensure the delivery of real-time process operations. Alongside this, however, engagement of employees is vital to ensure mission success. Using a variety of formal, union backed structures, and informal targeted communications, HRL attempts to deliver reward and recognition where it is due, promoting values and behaviours that lead to employee commitment, retention and business success.
The Speakers
Clare Pollard of Centrica is a HR Manager, supporting 3 locations across the EIS business. Clare has a generalist role and is involved in many areas, from co-ordinating the Centrica Energy Apprentice Programme, to Leadership Development and Reward and Recognition. Working within the Oil and Gas Industry is challenging and exciting, being part of a leading integrated energy company, with key developments taking place on a regular basis. Prior to this, Clare worked in the retail sector in HR roles.
Anthony Denatale has been a champion for employee driven innovation for over 15 years. He was the driver behind the highly successful staff ideas programme at Legal & General where over 250 business improvement ideas per month were submitted by employees. Before he left there in 2006 he was responsible for delivering cost savings of over £3m. Since 2006 Anthony has been the Operations Manager for ideasUK , the only not for profit organisation in the United Kingdom dedicated to promoting ideas programmes. Since joining ideasUK, Anthony has helped dozens of organisation develop and maintain quality staff innovation programmes and has taken the organisation from strength to strength.
Former Royal Air Force Officer and retailer Andy Beddows joined the giant UK Healthcare & Beauty retailer, Boots in 1990 as an Industrial Engineer. For the last seventeen years Andy has managed the employee suggestion scheme within Boots, initially within its manufacturing areas but now covering all 75,000 employees in 2500 Boots stores.
During these same seventeen years Andy has been heavily involved with ideasUK, as the Boots representative on its Executive, currently serving a eleventh year as Chairman. He believes that the secret of successful employee driven innovation is the open mindedness of the organisation and its removal of barriers. This can be further enhanced by the ability of management to support and embrace an ideas process whilst not losing sight of internal and external experiences so avoiding reinventing the wheel or repeating the mistakes of the past.
Over the years Andy has championed ideasUK and its open mindedness, its willingness to share best practice and its non-involvement with commercial interests to a point where ideasUK enjoys worldwide respect and a wide attraction to the organisations of all nations.
Chris Nicholls is Manufacturing Division General Manager & Continuous Improvement Champion at Ricoh UK Products Ltd and has spearheaded a lean transformation programme at RPL which has firmly established the organisation as a source of best practice within the UK. Eliminating all forms of process waste through the full engagement of employees is Chris's passion and his strong belief is that sustainable improvement is about changing people not processes.
Rob Bland is Continuous Improvement Specialist at Ricoh UK Products Ltd . Rob and his team coordinate site wide improvement activities at Ricoh in Telford. Engaging all employees in seeing, challenging and eliminating process waste (MUDA) is Rob's key objective. Rob has coordinated high level business improvement activities using the RPL Together Suggestion Scheme as an important tool in the engagement of the real experts, our employees on the shop-floor. Bringing real business benefits to the organisation.
Agenda
09.30 Registration
10:00 Welcome - Liz Kentish, Best Practice Club, Introduction and Housekeeping Steve Jackson EIS
10.30 EIS Recognition Scheme - Clare Pollard
11:00 Break
11:15 May I Suggest an Innovation Programme? Anthony Denatale, Ideas UK
11:45 AIM (All Ideas Matter) the Boots employee suggestion scheme
12.30 Lunch
13:15 How Suggestion Schemes Support Employee Engagement
14.00 Discussion groups
14.30 Break
15.00 Feedback
15:30 Summary
16:00 Close
