Question

1. What are the advantages and disadvantages of Schlumberger’s approach to international human resource management?

2. Under what circumstances, if any, might Schlumberger find it necessary to change its international staffing strategy?

3. Based on the information in this case, would you like to work for Schlumberger? Why or why not?

4:38 Aa To a D SCHLUMBERGER'S INNOVATIVE HR STRATEGY 72 Reader Contents Notebook Bookmarks

Answer 1

1.What are the advantages and disadvantages of Schlumberger’s approach to international human resource management?

Advantage :

1.Innovative Human Resource Strategy:Schlumberger has adopted an aggressive and innovative human resource strategy that is based on diversity and partnerships with colleges and universities. Schlumberger hires potential candidates across the globe from the various colleges and universities by doing campus hiring.

2.Geocentric Approach:Hiring the best people regardless of where they are from. Schlumberger focuses on quality employees rather than the quantity.Firm has long hired in every country where it operates. Schlumberger knows hiring the right people for the right job with adequate knowledge and skill helps to gain the competitive advantage.

3.Hiring and Developing Female Engineers: Many research prove that Women are the more organized and best managers and hence Schlumberger opt the fact and focuses on hiring and developing female employees.

4. Range of service:The firm offers a complete range of oil and gas services, including engineering, construction, and project management.

5.Training and Development: Schlumberger provides a rigorous,comprehensive training and development that helps its engineers to work at the forefront of their fields.

6.Performance-Based Incentives:Incentives always motivates the employees to work hard. Performance-based incentives help to retain the best and brightest of the employees, and these well-defined career paths help Schlumberger continue to grow and nourish the talent and thus gain competitive advantage.

Disadvantages :

1.Competiors strategy: Competitors opted for more creative strategy and adopted the more global and integrated approach to human resource management.

2.Holding current Employees:Competitors in the industry often look to current Schlumberger employees when they need to recruit experienced people.Developing strategies to hold the current experienced employees is a major obstacle in the success of the firm.

3.Unevenly distributed supply of talent:Schlumberger and other large companies in energy-related industries depend heavily on a steady inflow of new employees. But an aging workforce and an unevenly distributed supply of talent continues to create challenges.

4. Shortage Of Engineers:There is a significant shortage of geoscience and petroleum engineering students.For example:North America and the Middle East regions where more people are needed faces shortage.

5.Finding Oil: Oil is the natural resource that is naturally available underground.But while the firm has little trouble finding oil these days since it is depleting day by day due to more utilisation.

6.Human Resource Management issue: Management of qualified personnel by holding and motivating them is major major challenge to Schlumberger.

2.Under what circumstances, if any, might Schlumberger find it necessary to change its international staffing strategy?

Schlumberger has adopted the bestest human resource management strategies.But petrochemical and other oil industries are facing a workforce shortage,therefore Schlumberger has to forecast the future human need and bridge the gap between the current demand and supply with future demand and supply for gaining competitive advantage.

Schlumberger opted for a geocentric approach to hire potential candidates but they need to adopt a more advanced proactive approach for hiring potential candidates since the knowledgeable individuals in the petrochemical industry are less and the companies are more therefore all the companies are trying to attract such potential candidates.So to gain competitive advantage Schlumberger has to opt for innovative staffing strategy.

Even though Schlumberger focuses on advanced training and development to their employees, advancement in those strategies is also required for gaining competitive advantage in future too.

3.Based on the information in this case, would you like to work for Schlumberger? Why or why not?

Based on the information in the case I would definitely like to work for Schlumberger because:

High salaries

Schlumberger provides high salaries as compared to other competitive firms in order to enjoy continued success by holding its potential asset.

Performance-based incentives

Schlumberger provides a performance-based incentive to the employee therefore if I work hard then definitely I will get a reward and that is one of the major motivations for me to join Schlumberger.

Training and Development:

Schlumberger provides rigorous,comprehensive training and development that helps me to work at the forefront in my field and helps me to finish my task smartly and easily and take me to a way for achieving the performance-based incentive.

Developing Female Engineers

Being a female candidate Schlumberger provides me greater scope to develop my skills as it focuses on hiring and developing the female candidates.

Well Established long-running firm

Schlumberger has its roots for more than 40 years and such a long standing firm always attracts the potential candidate and hence I also want to work with the Schlumberger.

Reputation of Schlumberger

Schlumberger is able to maintain its goodwill for more than 40 years,that's why each and every individual wants to join the company and so I.