Employee engagement and development

Investing in our employees is good for business. It improves our company’s performance and strengthens employee engagement. We approach talent development and succession planning with the same rigor that we apply to our business strategy. We seek to attract, develop and retain employees through a combination of on-the-job learning, formal training, and regular feedback and mentoring. For our efforts, we have been recognized as one of Forbes’s 2023 World’s Best Employers, Fortune’s 2023 World’s Most Admired Companies and Newsweek’s 2023 America’s Greatest Workplaces.

Career development

We empower our employees to grow their careers through personal and professional development opportunities, including individual development plans, annual career development conversations with supervisors, a voluntary 360-feedback tool and training on a broad range of technical and professional skills.

Talent Management Teams

Skills-based Talent Management Teams (TMTs), made up of senior representatives from business units and corporate functions, guide employee development and career progression by discipline (e.g., Geoscience, Finance and Global Production) and location. TMTs help identify our future business needs and assess the availability of critical skill sets within the company. They also play a vital role in ensuring the integrity and equity in our talent practices and succession planning. 

Succession planning

Succession planning is a top priority for the ELT and the board of directors. This work ensures we have the talent available for critical leadership roles while limiting business interruption. Leaders at all levels review Individual Development Plans, provide feedback and facilitate career conversations on an ongoing basis to ensure that employees have opportunities to learn and grow. Annually, business leaders and TMTs meet to review succession benches, calibrate talent and provide recommendations to executive leadership and the board to ready our succession candidates for future leadership roles.

Formal training

In 2023, our employees completed more than 253,300 hours of virtual and in-person training on topics ranging from technical to professional development (an average of 25.6 hours per employee). We provide numerous training and development offerings to equip our workforce, hiring managers and leaders with the skills, knowledge and behaviors needed for success. We also offer all global employees access to thousands of professional and personal development courses on LinkedIn Learning. 

Leadership development

We recognize that supervisors play a key role in talent development, so we offer a supervisor development curriculum to help leaders effectively engage and develop their employees. Global courses focus on proactive communication, employee development and building trust.

Our Leader of Leaders program brings together the company’s top senior leaders from around the globe in small virtual cohorts to create an opportunity to connect on key business drivers influencing our culture. Every fall, senior leaders come together in person in Houston for our annual Leadership Forum meeting to align with the ELT on priorities related to strategy, technology, culture and topical employee engagement strategies.

Performance management

We use a performance management program focused on objectivity, credibility and transparency. The program includes broad stakeholder feedback, real-time recognition and a formal “how” rating to hold our workforce and leaders accountable for behaviors reflective of our SPIRIT Values and Leadership Competencies. Leaders are equipped with guidelines and reference materials to assist with their assessment of key “how” performance indicators.

Recognition is important to our employees and core to our culture. Our supervisor and employee-driven internal recognition program, The Mark Award, enables employees to recognize their peers for individual accomplishments through monetary and nonmonetary awards (Instant Thanks). Within our monetary program, a peer-to-peer recognition component enables employees to acknowledge and extend real-time recognition to colleagues for going above and beyond in their day-to-day work or completing project milestones.