Gazprom Neft among the winners at 2014 HR-Brand awards

The company’s “Let’s do the Gemba walk!” project won third prize in the “Federation” category, as well as receiving a special “The Client is Everything” nomination, awarded for those HR projects showing significant improvement in their client focus.

The HR-Brand awards are an independent annual awards ceremony, conferred by recruitment holding HeadHunter for successful work in building a company’s reputation as an employer. Winners are determined through a three-stage process involving both a jury and an expert advisory council, comprising senior specialists in business management, recruitment, HR consulting, and brand positioning.

The “Let’s do the Gemba walk!” project revolves around the managers and office employees of Gazprom Neft’s retail divisions, during the course of one day, replacing frontline staff throughout the company’s own-brand filling station network, working as tanker (refuelling) and filling-station operatives, till operators, or filling station management. These secondments allow various proposals on business improvement to be tested, the best of which are subsequently implemented. Fulfilment of this project has not only allowed improvements to service quality throughout the company’s filling stations, but will also significantly improve business efficiency, standardise business processes, and improve the training of new staff. Today, participation in “Gemba” forms part of a mandatory training programme in which employees from the Gazprom Neft head office and other company business units take part. More than 2,000 individuals have already been part of the project, through which 1,365 practical proposals have been developed, 20 percent of which have been implemented.

Deputy CEO for Administration Vitaly Baranov commented: “Gazprom Neft has been making a focused effort on managing its reputation as an employer for several years. In order to support the fulfilment of our long-term projects, strategies determined to 2025, we are building a system which will allow us to engage with and motivate those colleagues already working with us, as well as hiring the best specialists on the market. We are committed to implementing international best practices in human resources management, and are delighted that our success here has been recognised by the professional community.”

“Gemba” is the name given to the Japanese “change-for-the-better” management practice, which holds that understanding a situation demands undergoing “Gemba” — going to the place at which such work is conducted, amassing the facts, and taking a decision there, directly where the work is done.