Developing Fresh Engineers into Professionals

#Refinery Training of Fresh Engineers ##Technical Training ##Success in Oil & Gas# #HRD## Competency#

 I wrote an article about a wonderful mechanism I have been effectively using for helping the fresh engineers for their development into technical areas. (Reference; my article dated 7th January 2023 on same topic)

 Many of my readers asked me certain questions and requested to include my replies in this article. Hence, I am writing this article.

 In the journey of a fresh engineer entering a refinery to become a professional delivering the results as per his role, communication is of key importance. Starting from the Induction and subsequent classroom, hands on and blended training, number of interventions are made for training the fresh engineers by various groups of people normally the seniors. 

 These training sessions are vitally important for fresh engineers. I also published various articles on Training of Fresh Engineers. (Reference: my articles on LinkedIn. “Competence Assurance” dated Aug 27, 2021, “What They are looking for in Fresh Engineers?” Dated Aug 19, 2017, “Induction Training” dated Jul 31, 2016)

 However, my current article is about One-on-One interaction with every fresh engineer. One-on-One is neither Mentoring nor Coaching, but surely it combines some traits of Mentoring and some of the Coaching. There are some additional aspects of the One-on-One interactions.

 Mentoring:

Mentoring is communicating and explaining something out of own knowledge and skills and primary objective is to guide and help. There is a direct approach of sharing what is the right way to do a task. Mentor is usually a Subject Matter Expert or reasonably a senior person from same or similar domain.

 Coaching:

Coaching is providing guidance to a person to achieve certain goals. This is motivating and helping others to arrive at higher potential. Coach may be a relatively senior person from same or similar domain. His specialty is being a motivator and moral booster.

 One-on-One Interaction:

One-on-One Interaction is the talk with a fresh engineer or junior employee categorically asking about the Learning Journey or asking him to narrate what he learned at every step from completing education till the present time.

 Domain knowledge of person conducting One-on-One is vitally important as he should be able to understand what the engineer or junior employee is talking about. This will be mainly the asking and not answering nor explaining.  Purpose is to help in consolidating the Learning Journey of a fresh engineer or a junior employee.

 One-on-One Interaction focuses on what another person actually learned partly or fully. Incomplete information-knowledge is identified, and the junior engineer is encouraged to note down and get the left-out information- knowledge in next few days or a week. He would be made understood that he knows the point, but his knowledge is incomplete and for sure half knowledge is dangerous.

 One message is positively given to junior engineer that he was doing well but he could do much better and much more. This works as morale booster and the engineer will move an extra mile and makes higher efforts to contribute for the organization.

 Carefully reading the above explanation will make it very clear that One-on-One Interactions are not exactly Mentoring or Coaching.

 -       One-on-One Interaction with a single person is for nearly one hour.

-       It is made plain in the beginning of interaction that it would not be a validation or examination. Purpose is to help the other person in strengthening the knowledge and skills. The idea is to make him/her alert on what he must be knowing and what he is not actually knowing.

-       Maximum talking is done by junior person and senior person only is asking certain questions.

-       Based on the interaction, a junior person will be able to find the gaps in his own understanding. At the end of interaction, person will be ready with listed points for better understating and area of improvement.

-       By chance, if a question is outside the domain of junior person, he will be able to speak that clearly. e.g., person working through out in a tank farm of a refinery may not be usually  aware about lighting of burners in a heater of a refinery plant.

-       It is expected that the person being invited for One-on-One Interaction takes that seriously, notes down and acts upon own areas of improvements.

-       Ideally, senior person conducting the interaction should get familiarized with education and work background of junior person. Particularly asking the right question will bring out the correct picture.

-       Plain paper sheets, pencils, erasers etc. will be required as many technical questions require a drawing or schematic.

-       This is not a one-time and isolated activity. There should be complete schedule to conduct One-on-One Interactions with every concerned engineer or employee for minimum twice every year.

 Major Benefits

 ·      One-on-One Interaction works as tremendous motivator for fresh engineers, (Trust me, this is not just a theory, it is my experience,)

·      This helps fresh engineer to focus on the really important areas. Such interactions vitally reenergize the fresh engineers. Usually, performance of fresh engineers will shoot up after these interactions.

·      It is providing an opportunity for a fresh engineer to bridge the gaps in key learning areas.

·      This serves as employee engagement exercise.

·      If One-on-One Interaction takes place by a supervisor and his team members, the interaction will help defining/redefining the deliverables and time frames.

·      One-on-One is a simple yet very effective process to provide a realistic estimate on Capabilities and potentials of young engineers. If certain topics are not known well, expecting that he will be able to deliver without having the knowledge will be practically inappropriate. 

 Like all other LinkedIn articles, above article is evolved out of my own experience of refinery training for more than one and half decade. I know this works for anyone of us. Feel free to ask in case of any doubt.

Shobhan M Mehta ( [email protected]), Dip TD

Qualified NEBOSH PSM professional, Tech IOSH

Senior Member- American Institute of Chemical Engineers