Tullow people

Visuals of Tullow staff:
Linda Biribonwa, Environmental Adviser in Uganda;
Leigh Reeder, Well Services Supervisor in the UK;
Declan Byrne, John Doherty, Joe Mongan, Geophysical Technology Group in the Dublin office.

Last year, we spoke about being a great place to work and an employer of choice in the industry. In 2007, we decided to test this by entering our London Head Office in the annual ‘Best Companies to Work For’ competition for the first time.

The Best Companies organisation was set up six years ago to identify the drivers of sustainable business performance. Their research shows that the key is ‘workplace engagement’ and they set about developing an academically rigorous methodology to measure the levels of workplace engagement in companies.

The Best Companies Accreditation Scheme recognises those organisations that have achieved high levels in key areas. The accreditation is a year-round reminder of an organisation’s performance according to eight key factors.

These factors are significant as they are defined through survey results, and therefore by employees themselves, as critical factors in workplace engagement.

The factors are:

Leadership – how employees feel about the senior managers’ and the company’s values;
My manager – how employees feel about and communicate with their direct manager;
Personal growth – what employees feel about training and their future prospects;
Wellbeing – how employees feel about pressure at work and work life balance;
My team – feelings towards their immediate colleagues and how well they work together;
Giving something back – the extent to which employees feel their organisation has a positive impact on society;
My company – the level of engagement employees have for their job and the organisation; and
Fair Deal – how happy employees are with their pay and benefits.

Tullow achieved 3-Star status on the first attempt, which is the highest possible award status. Only 15% of companies who entered this year achieved this, so we are naturally proud of this result.

However, while we do appreciate that this is just a snapshot in time we have set the standard now and must work hard to ensure that we maintain this through feedback and engagement across Tullow.

This is one of the challenges we face as we grow into a larger, more diverse Group operating major projects in many different countries.

In response, we will continue to recruit the best talent into the organisation and keep people at the top of the agenda to ensure we remain a great place to work.