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A dream job, Business Strategy, Chevron Nigeria Limited, Communication, Consulting, Dreams, Education, Employee, Employment, First Impression, first job, helping colleagues at work, Interviews, Knowledge, Leadership, Organization, Performance, smart industrial relations, Success, Testing, Winning mindset
We were expecting a new colleague to join the team at Human Edge. As I listened to the various arrangements being made for her arrival and smooth assimilation into the firm, my thoughts strayed to my own first days on my very first job.
I was a rookie industrial relations officer assigned to work at the giant Gulf Oil Company (now Chevron Nigeria Limited) oil terminal at Escravos, near Warri in Nigeria’s oil rich Niger Delta region. The role was a newly created one. In 1980, the Nigerian oil industry was characterized by tense industrial and employee relations. Shut-down strikes and work-to-rule protests were the order of the day and the oil majors in the country were desperately seeking solutions to a problem that threatened to spiral violently out of control.
Gulf Oil had a unique problem in this respect. The Escravos terminal, from where most of the company’s crude oil exploration and production activities were coordinated at the time, was located in a remote area along the coast that could only be accessed by sea or by air. Flights to the terminal stopped at 6.00 p.m each day and inbound flights typically didn’t arrive before 9.00 a.m in the morning. This, of course, was music to the ears of the company’s unions. It meant that a strike could be called late in the evening after the last flight for the day had come and gone, and production could be halted for nearly 12 hours before anyone from head office in Lagos could fly in to try to negotiate with the striking workers. To an oil-producing company such a loss of production time could be very costly and the unions were determined to maximize the leverage they could exert whenever industrial action was planned.
To counter this threat and to give itself a greater chance of nipping potential trouble in the bud, Gulf Oil management decided to establish an industrial relations unit at Escravos itself. The unit would consist of two industrial relations officers who would alternate in seven-days on, seven-days off shifts just like their operational counterparts. Their brief would be to pay regular visits to all operational locations in the Escravos/Warri operational area, including the offshore rigs and platforms, in a bid to pro-actively deal with front-line grievances, identify policy issues that needed to be referred to Lagos, and generally take the pulse of the workforce from time to time.
This was to be my job for the next three years, and if it sounds like a dream job for someone fresh out of national service, you’d be right.
My partner was Joe Odunuga, a somewhat older gentleman who’d been a prominent member of the junior staff union before being promoted into the senior staff cadre and transferred to the industrial relations department where he could bring his wealth of union experience to bear on behalf of management. Despite the differences in age and education between us, Joe quickly became my mentor and friend, and never failed to make his deep industrial relations knowledge and experience available to his rookie partner without reservation.
It was a tough first job to have, but I eventually came to love every minute of it. However, in time I moved on from my industrial relations role at Escravos and eventually left the company altogether. It had been a very exciting time of my life and I remember feeling rather relieved that there had been no major incidents on my watch, a fact I attributed more to a healthy dose of luck than to any great performance on my part.
My erstwhile partner, Joe, continued in his Escravos role for a few more years. He then retired, but sadly died a few years after leaving the company. A year later, I attended a remembrance ceremony in his honor and that should have been the end of the story of Joe and myself; little did I know that there was to be one more twist in the story, a twist that would leave a lasting impact on me both as a person and as a manager.
Shortly after Joe’s remembrance service I visited some ex-Chevron colleagues, all of whom had been at Escravos around the same time as Joe and myself. While we were reminiscing, one of them casually remarked on the unusual friendship that had developed between Joe and myself, and how surprised he’d been that the week before my arrival at Escravos, Joe had taken it upon himself to visit all the operational locations to inform them of my appointment and to appeal to them not to give his new partner any hassles, but rather to reserve any contentious issues for when he would be on duty.
Wow! I always knew that Joe was a large-hearted fellow who went out of his way to be as helpful as he could, but surely his actions had gone well beyond what might be expected in trying to help a new colleague find his feet as quickly as possible. I felt humbled, and there and then I decided that I too would always try to go beyond the expected to help a new colleague have only the most pleasant experience when joining any organization I was a part of.
I suspect we’ve all come across a ‘Joe’ at some point in our careers. Someone who went out of his or her way to unselfishly make us feel welcome in a new job and to help make those first few days just a little less daunting. Now, its your turn. See if you can identify that new kid on the block who could do with a friendly hand and then look for a way to make an unsung contribution to his or her progress. I suspect you will discover the same thing as my good friend Joe, all those years ago – when everything’s been said and done, the true beneficiary of your act of kindness will be you.
Good luck.