Performance Management, Training and Development
Why It Matters
Our robust performance management system, along with our focus on learning and development, contributes to our overall philosophy to support our people to develop not only the skills they need for their current job but those that will benefit them throughout their career. We take a lifelong learning approach, combined with annual identification of specific performance and development goals for all permanent employees.
We believe that powerful development combines:
- Work experiences – on-the-job training through varied projects and roles
- Relationships – coaching and mentoring from others and connecting with external networks, and
- Formal training – specific training courses and conferences.
Providing opportunities for development is a critical element of employee engagement, building productivity and contributing to staff attraction and retention.404-2
Management
Vermilion is committed to engaging and supporting employees as they identify and achieve career and development goals.
Our performance management program supports two-way communication between leaders and staff, and we aim for 100% participation for permanent employees.
Overall, the process includes:
- Setting clear expectations for performance
- Creating and communicating performance and development goals, and career aspirations
- Rewarding all employees and executives when their performance and the company’s performance is top quartile, and
- Identifying opportunities to learn and grow
- Providing ongoing feedback
- Evaluating results and how they were achieved, and
- Recognizing accomplishments.404-3
Individual performance goals are tied to our long-term business strategy’s six Matters of Importance, ensuring that employees know how their work supports the company, and how they contribute to our success:
- Extraordinary People and Culture
- Health, Safety and Environment (HSE) – Everyone, Everywhere, Everyday
- Robust and Profitable Portfolio
- Business and Operational Excellence, and
- Integrated Sustainability
KPIs include standard industry metrics and internal measures of performance, and are discussed annually in the Information Circular.
The management-by-objectives process begins at the start of the year, when our people identify their performance and development goals, career aspirations and mobility interests through our Driving Excellence – Plan Forward process.
Feedback is provided via ongoing conversations throughout the year between leaders and staff, a mid-year checkpoint, and the Looking Back – Performance Review process at year-end.
We have programs in place in several business units that provide rotating terms of training and exposure across various engineering disciplines for early career engineers.
Vermilion continues to participate in an industry partnership in Australia that has created a standardized education and training program to build a skilled, diverse and capable workforce for the future of the oil and gas industry. This covers those leaving secondary (high) school, and adults who already have a trade but are seeking a career change to become dual-traded, and are in addition to Vermilion's own apprenticeship program. As of 2022, we have four people on staff through this program.
In Ireland, the Vermilion Energy Apprenticeship Program 2022 includes both on-job training at our Bellanaboy Gas Terminal and off-job formal courses through the Education & Training Board, Ireland. Two four-year apprentices joined the program in 2022, working toward becoming fully trained Technicians.
Our international presence provides selected staff unique opportunities to work on assignment, helping to broaden their operational expertise and understanding of our global operations while sharing key specialist expertise among our locations.
Supporting our people helps us to retain and attract the best talent in the industry.
Leadership
Our leaders are evaluated on an additional set of leadership attributes, including achieving results through teamwork, HSE leadership, managing and setting priorities, and demonstrating Vermilion’s values. To support this, we have established a leadership development program with globally recognized content and self-evaluation opportunities that provide a consistent learning journey as our leaders progress in their careers across the company. These include self-awareness tools to support relationships in the workplace, effective team building, supervisory leadership skills, and 360-degree feedback.
Measurement, Evaluation and Adjustment
We use strong workforce and succession planning processes that identify company needs for skills, knowledge and experience, cross-referenced to our performance management process.
This creates an opportunity for us to identify potential career paths for staff within Vermilion, and areas where we may need to recruit externally for specific positions. The Great Place to Work and other staff survey feedback also provides input to our training and development activities.
Over the past several years, we have strengthened training offerings in such areas as HSE courses, and expanded our lunch and learn program to topics such as reserves, investor relations, Indigenous relations, and employee benefit programs. In addition we have had a strong focus globally on leadership development, including HSE leadership development.
We track answers to the question “I am offered training or development to further myself professionally” in every business unit through the Great Place to Work survey. This question provides a clear measure of employee engagement and satisfaction. We are also able to compare these responses to the training and development funding per business unit.
In addition, our ongoing evaluation has allowed us to target increased communication on key performance management topics.