Chemical Engineering December 2016 - 16

Newsfront
CPI Employment
Landscape: Snapshot 2016
Insights about complex CPI workforce issues come from a variety of sources, including survey
data on corporate attitudes, salary and diversity
IN BRIEF
EXECUTIVE ATTITUDES
CPI WORKPLACE
DIVERSITY
SALARY SURVEY
TECHNOLOGY IN
TRAINING
he chemical process industries (CPI)
continue to face an interconnected
web of workforce challenges, including
the retirement wave of older
workers and skills shortages in the younger
workers who will replace them. Recent information
from a variety of sources paints a
picture of a complex set of issues, along with
strategies for addressing them.
T
Executive attitudes
A host of workforce insights came from a recent
survey of chemical industry executives
and managers conducted by the American
Chemistry Council (ACC; Washington, D.C.;
www.americanchemistry.com) and the consulting
firm Accenture (Chicago, Ill.; www.
accenture.com). The ACC-Accenture study
surveyed over 100 " C-suite " executives from
North American chemical companies, as well
as 400 lower-level executives (see box, p. 22).
" The survey results show a deep awareness
of the talent challenges facing companies
and a wide appreciation for the complexity
of the issues, " comments Stephanie
Rogers-Whaley, managing director at Accenture
focused on chemicals, natural resources,
oil and gas and utilities.
Issues of talent recruitment, training, worker
retention and replacing retirees all have multiple
dimensions and layers, including industry-sector
differences, geographical considerations
and others. The upshot of that, from
the perspective of CPI companies, is that
leaders need to take a nuanced approach
to solutions and be " razor-sharp " about exactly
what capabilities they need and in exactly
how they address specific workforce
16
challenges, says Rogers-Whaley. " Talent and
workforce challenges are not only a challenge
for [human resources], this is definitely now a
'C-suite'-level challenge, " she says.
" We are now seeing companies diving in
and starting various initiatives and programs
aimed at having an impact on these challenges, "
Rogers-Whaley says. For example,
companies have improved greatly in the area
of " onboarding " employees when they begin
work at a particular company and job site.
Many companies are using programs that
allow new employees to go through " rotations "
in all of operating areas of a site to gain
exposure to a breadth of experiences, tools
and equipment. The approach seems to rate
positively for young workers, she notes.
" It's possible that such an approach may
require small sacrifices in initial worker productivity,
but over the longer term, having
new employees 'shadow' experienced workers
in various parts of the process helps them
better comprehend the nuances of the job
and build a wider set of skills by getting them
closely involved, " Rogers-Whaley says.
As companies embrace talent challenges,
one area of focus is addressing the culture
differences among different generations of
workers. " One key to replacing the workers
from the 'Baby Boom' generation [those born
from 1945 to 1964] is a robust mentoring program
for the younger workers in the 'millennial'
generation [born 1977-1995], " RogersWhaley
explains. " And 'Generation-X' [born
1965-1976] is a smaller population overall,
which makes it even harder to fill the gaps in
the middle, those with mid-level experience.
" Generation X workers often have an apCHEMICAL
ENGINEERING WWW.CHEMENGONLINE.COM
DECEMBER 2016

http://www.americanchemistry.com http://www.accenture.com http://WWW.CHEMENGONLINE.COM

Chemical Engineering December 2016

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Chemical Engineering December 2016