Thread regarding Chevron Corp. layoffs

Big Brother is watching you... and doesn't wear stockings.

Seems like HES management is scared out of their stockings about these posts. Maybe they should be! I say we keep on posting. It's all anonymous so there is nothing they can do about it. Keep us updated here. You can't get in trouble unless you are spilling sensitive information to the point Chevron actually gets involved and complains. Normal moaning about miss-management is perfectly legit.

You HES people sure do whine a lot.

Bingo Ringo. I have been with the company 5 years now and it is obvious that only a few people get the promotions and special treatment. Some get to work remote where it is not allowed for others. Some get special transfers and jobs just created for them where the masses dont. We are on the east coast where we have a guy working here that should be in Houston. It is all a good ol girl and boy network where only the select few get special treatment while the rest of us bust our asses to make things happen. This reorg thing is just a smoke in mirror where I guarantee the same old trolls will be in position at the end of the day. Two of coworkers graduated from the same school as I did with chemical engineering degrees. I was .2 higher than they were on GPA but since they are women, Chevron gave them both $7,000 higher starting salaries. We just compared our higher letter a month ago. That does not seem fair. Chevron HES is just a bad place to work and should be in one of those books as the worst place to work in america. I am looking for a new job.

I thought for a second there we were on the same team until I noticed you said she. Our HES manager said almost the same thing to all of us on Friday. I guess a memo is going around to the managers to tell us all to stop posting.

The truth is we need new fresh HES Leadership. The current ones are not cutting it. I will echo others on here by saying

Change out the current Senior HES Leaders and BU HES Managers and fix the PDC. Lets try to start the new year with open and honest communication.

7 year employee here and I want to make a difference and make this function, dare I say, Great Again.

This is a Discussion Board, not Twitter. Some people actually have something worthwhile to say. If you can bother the read their post because of lengh, simply move on to the next commet. Or better yet get lost.

My HES manager pulled us into a conference room on Thursday and said if she finds out that any of us posted something on thelayoff.com, she would personally fire our asses and escort us out the building.

Great Chevron Way Behaviors. You know who you are and I hope you read this.

Wow, that was a bit long but I agree. If one thing comes from the reorg., it is:

Fix HES Senior Leadership and Fix HES PDC

I also think that is what the HES employees said in the global survey and the reorg breakout teams.

If you feel the need to write a novel, go somewhere else please. Thanks.

If you take one minute to read the post and not let emotion feed the equation, you will see that everyone here works hard and wants the respect for working hard. When your function much like HES has become stagnant with little movement over the years, personnel expect to see selections made with logic and heart. When you just select someone because they are a future leader and they have paid very few dues, it creates a backlash. There are at least 100+ studies on how the Japanese removed these future leader programs because it destroyed the team work environment. I see this everyday here in Chevron. HES is a cutthroat function where you may have teamwork today but your coworker will toss you under the bus in 2 seconds if they think you are going to get a job or promoted before them. You have a really great opportunity here to move HES forward.

I would announce the org structure but no names as soon as possible. I would wait until the March PDC ends to announce the names. This give you time to find home for leaders that really do need to leave the organization and time for you set your expectation for the new leaders. Some of these expectations is compassion, field engagements and open discussions on how the front line supervisor can become the VP if that is what the person wants.

The function is currently toxic. Don’t let this opportunity to make good changes pass you by. I do sit in the IT function. I have been where all of you are today. It took our strong leader to come in and wipe the slate. Pull strong leaders from the ranks and set our clear direction. You can do this.

I work with several of the center personnel and they are outstanding. Move them to leadership positions and encourage them to make a change. You have to clear the board of the current leader or you will just repeat the same mistakes again.

Critical and most important. Get your PDC right. Involve everyone that is a PDR in the decisions. Don’t let one leader bully or make you feel like you have to go along with the crowd. Don’t be afraid to lead.

If took us a couple of years for our employees to trust the PDC and we have made the IT function one of the best collaborative trusting and forward thinking groups of any company.

Fix your leadership and fix your PDC. It is really that simple .

HES Senior leaders that hide in their offices and don't engage with the masses are obviously hiding. Get in the field and get to know the personnel that you are making decisions about. You don't know us. You are making decisions about our lives and have never spent 10 seconds with us. We engage with a sponsor that is supposed to give us guidance and that person hasn't had 1/10 the experience I have had with Chevron. How does that work? We want to engage with you. We want to show you our accomplishments. We are like orphaned children trying to please absent parents.

HES Wishlist for the Organization Delivery Model Review:

1. Complete change of leadership positions in the center. We have a lot of personnel with street cred that the BUs would respect.

2. Move the BU HES Managers that are not performing out. We all talk and know there are several that are just not cutting it.

3. More transparency in the PDC. Share with us how decisions get made. There is obviously a problem when I ask my PDR and he has not idea.

4. What requirements do you need to meet to land another job? Don’t just say you need to be well liked.

5. Be visible. We never see any of the senior leaders from the center. The last time I think they were in the field was during their role out to the BU leaders of the new OEMS. I think that if you are in the center, you should have been to every location at least once that you support.

Change is good. Just look around. Our leadership has become old and stagnant. Maybe they are just tired and don’t feel like doing to the work to find the best personnel for the job.

Alls I know is that a change has to happen. If we are just doing some cosmetic changes, that will be sad for all of us.

To address the minion question, I hope so.

Do you think our HES senior leaders are going to read these post and do anything to drive change or do you think they are just laughing at us saying post away minons?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jb1URIJchFA

The HES PDC will continue as long as the same leaders are in position. The senior PDRs have basically been the same for the last 10 years. We need to rotate them out. If this review model doesn't make changes in the leadership, we will be stuck with another 10 years of bad selections.

The HES PDC needs to be more transparent in their selections. We have used the same cut and paste statement for more than 10 years announcing job placements. Employee X was selected because XXXX. At least come up with something original. Honestly, tell me why this person over employee X got the job. Where did I fall short. None of us know why we don't get selected.

The HES PDC is truly a joke and we should just bring in new blood to make some selections or at least have some oversight in those selections. Painful to watch, painful to be a part of and painful to not be doing anything about it.

What is a hes future leader and how do you become one? This is an honest question so please provide an honest answer.

I am not a HES senior leader but I have been in BU HES ranking sessions for more than 10 years. It is rigged to a certain degree. I have been told many times that a person is a future leader and we need to do something more than a 2 for them. Well, once you move them to a 2+, it knocks the real 2+ or possibly a real 1 down to a 2. That is really wrong but it has happened in every single one of our ranking sessions.

My personal experience with the PDC is somewhat similar. If a person is a future leader, they get put into jobs that individuals have been queued up in for years. It is painful to watch and even more painful to agree before you leave the room. My boss and I talk about this all the time.

HES has just become so political with no value on experience. I could name off the BU HES Managers that had no experience for the role they are in but the post would get pulled. If you are in HES, you know the people I am talking about.

We need to make a change now. The game is not over. Let this org review set the tone for the future and show that poor leadership behaviors will not be tolerated.

I had a great chat with my boss on Friday. He said that a huge flaw in our PDC is that most of the jobs like the sponsor role are chosen by one senior person or sometimes the senior PDC. My boss said that since he is not a senior PDR and I have never worked for a senior PDR, I will never be a furture leader or discussed for future leader roles like the sponsor role.

Is that true?

I don't think any of this will be ignored. My boss reviewed the feedback sessions with us from last year where the employees provided the review team with nearly exact comments that are being posted here. This also lines up with the employee survey. If you ignore all 3 which clearly identifies a leadership problem as well as issues with the PDC then you are clearly not the right leader.

Feedback from a 20 year fieldhand. Also, maybe I am getting old but I do agree with the other poster, you always have time to do it right.

Good luck on the org review role out. Make us proud.

I have never posted on here but started to think after reading most of the post which have been deleted now. I agree with everything that has been said. I invite the VP to hang with us afterhours to hear our concerns and complaints. I am guessing that will never happen because this site is viewed as the place complainers go and post their feels. Please tell me where we can send personnel internally to post their feels and have anonymous dialog with others without the fear of being punished.

Everyone agrees that change is needed. Everyone agrees that leadership behaviors have not been the best. Everyone agrees that all the post on layoff.com with be either ignored or deleted. If the VP is reading these post and fails to see the problems in this organization, it shows the problem goes much deeper.

I can not express how poorly the leadership behaviors have been in the PDC to just leading by example. If you don't make a change in leadership, you are saying you agree with how things have been run in the past. Leaders have to change.

I highly recommend you vet the delivery model review with select HES personnel to get their input before you deliver to the masses. If there is not significant change, just make it business as usual and let your HES Team know you see no problems in this organization.

First of all, HES Engineer is not a thing just a made up title to make you feel good, no offense. And, you should start making your exit plans, cause every time management changes out, they do a review, shake things up, and a few years later things are back to normal, and repeat steps with next manager. Second of all, all sponsors and PDRs are full of it, they just give you some BS explanation on how you should make yourself more competitive next go around. Truth is backroom deals are cut behinds the scenes. So as a female "HES Engineer", your options are to put out or shut up. Sorry, dems the breaks.

So 36 post have been removed as of today on the bad leadership in HES. The HES Function is just like the Trump Administration. Cover up the truth and people will eventually give up and believe the lies. My advise is let people speak their mind on this website. They can't do it at work because they get punished. Take note of the comments and address them in your review model. Ignoring these comments make you part of the problem. Don't make the mistake of just changing one or two simple positions and keeping the same leadership. Help me understand how that will move HES to the next level. Advice to the VP would be to have a few breakout sessions with the employees yourself. Don't send a study team to do interviews. You need to hear the truth face to face. Slow down. Understand the Problem. Get it right.

As we used to say in Chevron, there is always time to do it right.

Interesting to note that the two longest replies to a one line question are from HES folks.....🤣😂🤣

I am a female hes engineer here at Chevron. I do not think any of these topics have anything to do with men and women. It has everything to do with bad leadership. I do disagree with John and I will take his bet. I have faith that this new HES Review Model will be significant with the best of the best leaders selected. If I am wrong, I will start making my exit plans. I have only 6 years so not a lot of money on the table. My biggest concern is the Sponsor and PDRs. I never got the same answer on what the requirements were for a single position. It did seem that people were selected more on relationship values or if you were related to someone at a higher level. This is true and we can't change the truth. My most recent conversation on the requirements of being a good sponsor require you to have been in 3 or more BUs, preferred international supervisor experience and about 3 other hard items I was told I was missing. If you use a reference point of the Sponsor, I exceed their credentials by a mile. It is guess work. Just don't piss off people and maybe you will get promoted or the job you want.

Haha, so true. We call it the Chevron circle in my BU. Lol

The bow tie flowchart and all similar tools are nothing more than silly. They make good training tools, but a brilliant HES professional should not rely on using it. All that should already be engrained in their head, like second nature. What Chevron needs are true professionals, not cookie-cutter dopes following a stupid flowchart.

May as well. We had a few guys who really knew HES but they're long gone now and we're the worse for it.

The bowtie poppycock has been in print since the seventies when the Australians "discovered" it. Shell applied it to the Piper Alpha catastrophe. It lost popularity in the 90s when everyone moved on to the next big thing in risk. A bunch of degenerate Dutch guys picked it up again a while back and starting actually selling it to companies. Chevron probably wrote them a blank check for advice on how to prevent more drilling fiascos.

I'm fine with that once we S-can all the internal CVX no ops background HES guys. There not making things anymore safer and aren't pulling any barrels out of the ground. Just for show. Do all the no sense JSAs u want.

Here is an idea, that I am sure all those in driling and operatoins can support. We send out HES audit teams who make daily rounds in the field, and the results of that audit directly ties to your PMP performance. Have an incident, again, directly and negatively impacts your PMP score. Truth is the corporation has supple, white leather, kid gloves when it comes to accountability. HES is forced to be kind and gentle, there are many opportunities to lay truth bare and hold incompetent supervision accountable but we are forced to blame processes. Careful what you wish for as some HES actually know the work, the industry, the policies and the regulations. You want to be a leader, a professional; then learn the rules and follow them; everyone is being coddled because the company is so profitable; if/when money gets tight; all will exoerience a new tone from leadership.

As a D&C guy, I say fire all the HES guys, no severance! We have so many HES people who have no actual understanding of what is going on in our operation, and sit on their a-- all day doing nothing, but reading Reddit or this forum. The rig contractor HES guy is the only one who is knowledgeable and competent. I say we , and only keep the crusty Ex DSMs, and the rest go packing. But yeah, that female HES GM needs to get laid! Lol

Anyone who takes more that 3 or 4 sentences to answer a question or make a simple point really doesn’t know what they what to say or they are covering their a$$ when they talk.

@4ujz, you have obviously never worked with the legal department.

The guy who wrote the essay HAS to be HES. Only they can write a thesis on a one line answer.....

If you want to write a novel, go somewhere else please. Thanks.

Good ideas @XbjYwQ3-2zhm except we are no longer blaming people now that we have learning teams. No swift decisive action possible. Accountability models gone.

Sorry, messes up the last post. Correction.

One major concern is that even with a ROM or department re-structure conducted, we as a corporation, could greatly benefit from simplification from the numerous processes being applied to serve the same aim; broadly stated as safe work performance. We have several strategies aimed at accomplishing the same goal, each with a document (form) and or process (action) that must be performed. I feel we can make better use of our time and efforts while accomplishing the same goal. Currently, IMO, we use multiple processes and checks to accomplish verification of preparedness of a given task (PTW, JSA, SYLA/SWC, EIP, Logs etc., then we have HES stafff, V if you demonstrate instances of non-conformance you are punished directly related to that non-conformance event and too many instances of non-conformance arise you are fired. If you are not sure what the rules are SWA, if you don't follow the rules; SOL. If we want less HES persons actively supporting our operations we need more repercussions for violating policy, lack of appropriate direction, insufficient managment of activities and allowing incidents to occur. These process are meant to control the performance of our work (as all should understand). The buck can't stop with the rules, its stops with the people. Too many safety people in the ranks; that sentiment may in fact be true; but be ready to deal with the other side of the coin; too many incidents in our operations (all faucets). A new change oriented scenario may be less oversight from HES, and streamlined processes and guidelines; but to make that work; we will need harsher penalties for breaking the rules and swift, decisive negative repercussions for working in an unsafe manner. What comes forth (if any change at all) may be interesting. Do as required or work elsewhere; the number of incidents are troubling; its a challenging environment with many technical, environmental, equipment and human obstacles /challenges on-site supervisors must deal with everyday. But regardless what your position is within the corporation; we all serve the corporation; we have goals and we answer to those above us; HESC is not going away because we have measureable goals of performance tied to those concerns. If we were operating incident free that would be one thing; but the oil business is not an easy business; and negative things continually seem to happen. The best way to have the corporation simply any area of the operations including HES, get the job done right, under budget and without incident. How to consistently do that across the enterprise is the REAL challenge.

One major concern is that even with a ROM or department re-structure conducted, we as a corporation, could greatly benefit from simplification from the numerous processes being applied to serve the same aim; broadly stated as safe work performance. We have several strategies aimed at accomplishing the same goal, each with a document (form) and or process (action) that must be performed. I feel we can make better use of our time and efforts while accomplishing the same goal. Currently, IMO, we use multiple processes and checks to accomplish verification of preparedness of a given task (PTW, JSA, SYLA/SWC, EIP, Logs etc., then we have HES stafff, V if you demonstrate instances of non-conformance you are punished directly related to that non-conformance event and too many instances of non-conformance arise you are fired. If you are not sure what the rules are SWA, if you don't follow the rules; SOL. If we want less HES persons actively supporting our operations we need more repercussions for violating policy, lack of appropriate direction, insufficient managment of activities and allowing incidents to occur. These process are meant to control the performance of our work (as all should understand). The buck can't stop with the rules, its stops with the people. Too many safety people in the ranks; that sentiment may in fact be true; but be ready to deal with the other side of the coin; too many incidents in our operations (all faucets). A new change oriented scenario may be less oversight from HES, and streamlined processes and guidelines; but to make that work; we will need harsher penalties for breaking the rules and swift, decisive negative repercussions for working in an unsafe manner. What comes forth (if any change at all) may be interesting. Do as required or work elsewhere; the number of incidents are troubling; its a challenging environment with many technical, environmental, equipment and human obstacles /challenges on-site supervisors must deal with everyday. But regardless what your position is within the corporation; we all serve the corporation; we have goals and we answer to those above us; HESC is not going away because we have measureable goals of performance tied to those concerns. If we were operating incident free that would be one thing; but the oil business is not an easy business; and negative things continually seem to happen. The best way to have the corporation simply any area of the operations including HES, get the job done right, under budget and without incident. How to consistently do that across the enterprise is the REAL challenge.

Too many redundant processes adding zero value. Too many HES personnel doing them. Some BU's HES Departments ridiculous numbers (e.g NMA) BCG need to take the scythe to numbers, and CVX to process elimination. CVX been saying since 2015 that they were reducing paperwork.....But it went up.

HES is highly overstaffed at Chevron. If you think they are understaffed in any other BU, they are not. There is a lot of redundant work going on in HES groups. This workgroup needs to be paired down to essential staff doing essential work— and that’s all.

Tell us more; what do you know about the HES Study. I happened to see a few BCG consultants set up in a reserved conference room in the MIdland office this week. IMO, some HES teams are too heavily staffed, others too minimally staffed, the overall department could use a reassessment for better positioning of persons; lack of experience is becoming a concern; others seem to be coasting along without much intentional action. Suppose that its the same in many departments and many BUs. Will have to wait and see what happens; decisions are made way above my level. I survived the last ROM and honestly try to do the best job I can within the framework I must operate in. Keep your hands busy getting tasks down, your time aimed at being productive and use caution when speaking. What changes may come, we can't be sure of and don't really have much power to effect the outcome other than our own efforts to accomplish the aim of our respective positions. Its a competitive world and if another round of optimization arrives, all I can say is good luck to everyone.