topics include Employer Branding, PR
There was an article in Personnel Today in May which featured a variety of views on how much the current ecological disaster might affect BP's employer brand in the future.
To summarise, the opinions ranged from:' blaming the problem on suppliers makes BP look rather pathetic and undermines its values', through to 'it will all blow over soon and there are plenty of people queuing up for jobs'.
One of the big problems faced by the Oil industry in the past five years has been finding enough talented and experienced people to overcome the extraordinary challenges of finding and retrieving oil and gas from hostile environments. Indeed, BP's comment at the time of the article was:
"We want to attract people with ideas to prevent this [sort of] incident happening. From a personal ambition point of view of anyone thinking of career in the industry, these are the challenges that we want people to be able to prevent and deal with."
Since the article was written, the event, which has already had significant personal and ecological impact, continues to dominate the news and has even potentially threatened the 'special relationship' between the US and UK.
It is to be hoped that a solution both to the continuing leak and the ecological damage will soon be implemented. In time the media and all but those directly affected by the disaster, will have found something else to focus on, and BP will be able to rebuild its reputation.
But what this whole affair does emphasise, other than the need for every organisation working in such challenging environments to redouble their efforts in the Health and Safety arena, is how important it is for senior corporate officers to be well skilled in the art of modern day communications.
While admittedly under enormous pressure, rather than impressing and re-assuring with concerned and contrite confidence, the BP leadership have managed to score some spectacular own goals.