Investing in Our Employees
Retaining and developing our employees throughout their entire careers is crucial to ensuring that our workforce continues to meet our evolving business needs. In 2006, we developed new training opportunities for new and experienced employees and supervisors. These will be launched in 2007 and include:
- U.S. and international versions of Horizons, an accelerated development program to build the competency of upstream technical employees with fewer than five years of industry experience. The program has been restructured and standardizes preexisting versions of Horizons to provide all participants with the same development and training opportunities worldwide.
- The Pathways program, designed to assess technical competencies, establish development plans, provide technical and nontechnical training, and provide opportunities for career growth for upstream technical employees with more than five years of industry experience. The program is aligned with the development goals of the Horizons program.
An important element of our Invest in People strategy is to develop leaders who deliver superior results in our culturally diverse, global company. In 2006, plans were put in place to require all managers and supervisors to participate in three newly developed leadership programs starting in 2007. These mandatory programs are designed to standardize leadership training companywide to enable leaders to develop similar skills that support high performance from employees regardless of location.
Selected senior leaders continued to attend the Chevron Advanced Management program, a two-month-long development program to advance their strategic thinking and global mindset. Participants take on action-learning projects challenging them to analyze specific business issues. In addition, International Mentoring Excellence in Technology, part of the Chevron Fellows program, was launched in early 2007 as a parallel program to the existing North America version. It provides group and individual mentoring to develop leadership skills for employees outside North America in technical fields. The Chevron Fellows Program recognizes employees for technical accomplishments and proactively advances the company's technical competencies.
New Energy Technology Centers
In 2006, Chevron Energy Technology Company (ETC) announced the opening of energy technology centers in Aberdeen, Scotland, and Perth, Australia. The two centers, which opened in 2006 and early 2007, respectively, will provide research, development and technical services to Chevron's worldwide operations. The majority of the 100 technology professionals at each center are expected to be hired regionally. Recruitment campaigns are under way to hire experienced professionals and university students in such fields as geology; geophysics; and petroleum, process and facilities engineering.