Oana Manuceanu, Managing Director OMV Petrom Global Solutions
- Tell us a few words about your company, services provided and type of roles you accommodate.
We are OMV Petrom Global Solutions (OPGS), the shared services center for OMV Petrom Group. Our portfolio of services includes Finance, IT, HR (Employee Services) and Corporate Real Estate Management.
We have a wide range of roles, from professionals to project managers, experts and senior experts, a mix that ensures quality and reliability of services, as well as competitiveness from a financial point of view.
- What makes your company a great place to work for?
Many factors contribute to making a place to work great, but I will outline two that I believe represent differentiators for OPGS:
i) constant focus on learning and development opportunities
To give a very concrete example, we have defined a program called Skills of the future that makes available a learning path and the related trainings portfolio tailored for each position/role so that anybody can get prepared for the upcoming challenges, be it in the digital skills area, data analytics, PM etc.
ii) having a real sense of purpose of our work
OPGS has the responsibility to support one of the big companies of Romania that has the mission to provide energy for the country. This means that my colleagues contribute indirectly to this mission and this by itself gives a great sense of purpose for our work. To this, I would add the involvement and contribution to the delivery of major projects of our partners in Upstream and Downstream, projects that bring many professional challenges given the complexity and criticality of the oil and gas industry, as well as great professional development opportunities.
Even though it can be a challenge sometimes, our capability to adapt to change and to identify solutions to respond to new business needs – I think it is also a great excitement.
- Give us more details about the company’s culture and working vibe/atmosphere.
Our company culture gravitates around strong principles such as team spirit, passion, pioneering spirit, accountability, performance. Nevertheless, beyond these words, most important is how people really perceive the culture and the working atmosphere. And this we check each year via the employee engagement survey: the open and honest feedback from my colleagues help us define new initiatives and address areas that need improvements. I was very happy to see in the survey that we ran this year the very high score received for collaboration: which is a strong point for a healthy working atmosphere.
- Do you ensure career paths to your employees?
Career path is a very important pillar of employee engagement and we ensure information, tools and advice for the career development: people development is a key focus for our leadership, colleagues and managers are guided by career development advisors from HR to have career conversations and develop career plans.
- What trainings do you offer?
Based on the needs of each employee, we offer professional training, technical, management and personal skills. We adapted our delivery methods in order to be flexible during the remote working period, making available a vast portfolio of online trainings.
Our learning approach is 70/20/10, so we encourage our employees to learn also from the job or from peers, not only from external courses.
- You know how dynamic our industry is – so what is your strategy to keep your employees engaged, motivated and boost their creativity so they can innovate?
We are constantly monitoring the market trends and adopting new ways of working in so that my colleagues have access to the new technologies and methodologies.
Another focus point is recognition: new solutions or continuous improvements (of tasks, processes, speed) are made visible in the organization to inspire others as well and are considered for performance rewards.
- We’re all unique, so how do you succeed to answer to different needs that your employees might have?
The answer is communication. We take seriously the feedback received via the yearly engagement survey and come up with new initiatives to better suit expectations.
On the same note, we focus more on further developing managers in the area of people skills, as for a big organization this is key to ensure effective communication both ways – top down and bottom up.
- Tell us more about your diversity and inclusion strategy.
In our Group, diversity and inclusion is an important part of who we are and what we stand for. For example, generational diversity helps our business be more sustainable as each generation enriches contribution to work values; also, gender diversity ensures the benefit of having varied perspectives. However, diversity and inclusion is not limited only to these aspects but it is also about experiences and ways of thinking. In our OMV Petrom Group there are different initiatives promoting Work Life Balance, Diversity of Thought and Experience.
- Our industry is well known for the employee’s benefits. Tell us more about the ones that you are offering (maybe something rare or unique).
Our organization is successfully covering a large area of benefits, being part of OMV Petrom. I would outline two of them, which I believe are unique and bring benefits to both professional and private life:
i) access to dedicated internal medical services provider, that besides the annual medical check-up ensures some extra preventive medical services, such as screenings, kinetic therapy or anti-flu vaccination; it is a big benefit in terms of convenience
ii) holiday allowance or holiday bonus: colleagues are encouraged to take time off and receive an extra bonus for each day of actual holiday
- What did your employees appreciated in your offices and how do you think the working (from the office) environment will change post pandemic? What are the new top features?
The main change is related to the new flexi desk concept that will be introduced post pandemic. We are carefully preparing the new offices set-up to make sure it accommodates new needs: IT equipment adapted to the hybrid working, personal lockers etc.
- Some of the employees appreciate WFH and also the flexibility it comes when choosing their location and program. Besides that, it’s a huge opportunity for companies to access new talent pools. Did your company consider working from anywhere? This includes anywhere in Romania or also abroad?
The WfH or teleworking program that we consider covers Romania (maximum 2 locations).
While I fully recognize the benefits of more flexibility in the context of location (abroad) and program, I believe it is too early to consider this as an option for the near future. The legislative framework is not yet fully aligned to accommodate such flexible arrangements (tax obligations, employer’s responsibility for safety, etc).
I am convinced that we will see further changes on this topic in the upcoming couple of years.
- Do you intend to have specific benefits for the ones that choose one way of working or another?
If before pandemic hybrid place of work was on the wish list, now this is the future of work. Here we consider the hybrid arrangement, which will allow our colleagues to work 8 days a month from home. It is a benefit made available to the colleagues. If the teleworking program is suitable for the specifics of their work, it is everyone’s choice what fits best for him/her.
- Is there a channel/web page where people can learn more about your company and career opportunities?
You can find out more at https://www.omvpetrom.com/ro or https://www.linkedin.com/company/petrom/