OPTIMISING Your ASSOCIATE Workforce

• Organisations are relying more and more on experts sourced from a growing global talent network. 45% of the world’s oil, gas, and energy population is now ‘agile’ or temporary, and that is expected to increase by 10% over the next 5 years.

• This growing, flexible workforce of “agile talent” is neither peripheral or marginal to our clients’ performance. In fact, the performance of this group of workers is crucial to the successful delivery of projects or programmes.

• Talent is a key global business challenge, yet talent strategies tend to be uninspired and largely conform to past practices. When most companies think about staffing, they tend to think in terms of either contractors or permanent staff.

• Contractors provide flexibility to resource talent to cover the peaks and troughs in an organisation. However, in order to mitigate any risks of deemed or co-employment, they are very seldom measured, working in a state of mutual non-obligation, with the company not obligated to them and vice versa.

• Permanent staff provide commitment and leadership, and are usually aligned to company objectives, but pressure to create leaner organisations requires a lower headcount.

A managed associate workforce solution enables our clients to benefit from three distinct levels and distribution of talent:

• Permanent Staff: Your management and strategic leadership team. Those talents that are your future, that you want to invest heavily in. Smart, ambitious, and have strong management and leadership skills.

• Associate Workforce: Managed, measured, and motivated against key deliverables by Anvil. This group is vital to successful delivery today, but may not be strategically critical in the future.

• Short-Term Contractors: Top-up resources for when you need extra-hands to hit the ground running for a specified scope of work and duration. These are usually directly sourced from a traditional recruitment agency, but Anvil can manage this process for you.

By employing agile talent through an Anvil associate workforce solution, you are able to:

• Align the delivery team to your goals and objectives.

• Gain commitment through longer-term engagements, but with the flexibility of alternative work when they are not required.

• Measure performance.

• Contribute to their skills development through a specifically designed development programme.

Anvil’s associate workforce solution helps to address:

• Client headcount restrictions.

• The motivation, productivity, and performance of a client’s workforce.

• Visibility of delivery outputs.

• Reducing costs.

The key elements of the Anvil associate workforce solution are as follows:

• Associates are employed or engaged by Anvil and deployed to the client.

• Anvil works closely with the client to align individual and team goals with company objectives.

• Each associate will have their own development programme to ensure delivery and improve skills throughout the duration of their assignment.

• Each associate will work to an individual scope of work with measurable deliverables.

• Each associate’s delivery will be reviewed regularly.

• Anvil will put at risk a percentage of margin to ensure alignment with delivery.

For the associate workforce to deliver success, there has to be an effective combination of:

• Leadership.

• Technical know-how and experience.

• A competent and motivated workforce.

In the associate workforce model, the client must provide the leadership while Anvil provides the motivated and competent workforce as well as administration of the performance elements.

Steps 1 and 2 – Assessing the Talent Mix and Sourcing and Mobilising the Associate Workforce

Anvil works with the client on their overall talent segmentation strategy to determine the optimal make-up of their overall workforce, or specific project team, in terms of permanent staff, associates, consultants, and contractors. This optimisation focuses on strategic needs, agility, and cost. For large organisations and/or projects, Anvil uses an innovative resource optimisation tool to deliver insightful solutions very quickly from a broad range of client data sets. This optimisation step is powered by Loops Cloud AS.

Once the resource needs are established, Anvil works with a number of established recruitment consultants using a number of traditional recruitment methodologies to source associates meeting the client’s requirements, including specialist search and selection techniques, database searches, and job advertising. Anvil works in partnership with our clients to:

• Define the required criteria for associates.

• Interview potential associates to ensure that they have the right technical and behavioural competencies.

• Transition any relevant talent already working in, or with, our client’s business who are more suited to be engaged as part of an associate workforce.

As with any change initiative, the transition of personnel can pose a potential risk to the business. If not managed effectively, it could have a negative impact on personnel, productivity, culture, and business continuity. However, Anvil has considerable knowledge and expertise in the transition of individuals and has successfully carried out a number of similar exercises. We offer full support to both the client and the associates through the critical stages to deliver a seamless transition, mitigating risk to the business.

Step 3 – Ensuring That Associates Are Trained and Developed

Mentoring and Training – Anvil works collaboratively with our clients to agree an individually tailored development plan to ensure that each associate further develops sufficient technical and business skills and competencies in order to meet the client’s requirements. We work with the client to ensure that the appropriate training is undertaken and that ongoing review of training material is up to date in a rapidly changing environment.

Step 4 – Assessment of Performance

Anvil conducts regular performance assessments to ensure that delivery against agreed scopes of work is delivered. Any shortcomings or opportunities are addressed and incorporated into an associate’s development plan. Associates that demonstrate outstanding delivery performance can be converted to permanent staff at the request of the client. Anvil tracks leading and lagging indicators of the overall associate workforce effectiveness. Typical KPIs that are relevant to this approach include:

• Retention metrics.

• Training competency ratings.

• Performance review outcomes.

• Completion of agreed progress and development meetings.

Specific lead metrics are dependent on the KPIs and will be set once the KPIs are established. We utilise the lead and lag indicators to ensure that we deliver against the agreed scope of work and each candidate completes the necessary ongoing training and development required to maintain the necessary skills that are appropriate and sufficient for the client.