Investing in our employees drives our company’s performance, so 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.

Career Development

We empower our employees to grow their careers through personal and professional development opportunities. Employees can identify opportunities through career conversations with their supervisors and by creating an Individual Development Plan, a development tool that captures employees’ long-term career plans. As part of ongoing development, we encourage leaders to gain insights on their strengths and areas for improvement using a 360 degree assessment tool to gather feedback from supervisors, direct reports and peers to help increase an employee’s overall effectiveness. In 2021, we expanded use of this assessment tool for individual contributors to leverage in their Individual Development Plans.

Talent Management Teams

Skill-based Talent Management Teams (TMTs) guide employee development and career progression by discipline and location. The TMTs help identify our future business needs and assess the availability of critical skill sets within the company. TMTs include senior representatives from business units (BUs) and corporate functions. These representatives are the interface among leaders, supervisors and employees. Dashboards of demographic metrics are utilized by TMTs to mitigate bias and inform promotion and development decisions. In 2021, the TMTs developed common DEI goals, creating alignment on key focus areas among all the TMTs. The TMT DEI goals are aligned to ConocoPhillips’ global multi-year DEI priorities and help drive progress toward the identified tactics. In addition, the TMTs diversified their representatives, defined a consistent onboarding curriculum which is inclusive of DEI training, and refreshed the TMT website to enhance employee visibility to these goals.

Formal Training

In 2021, our employees completed more than 184,400 hours of virtual and in-person training on topics ranging from technical to professional development (approximately 18.6 hours per employee). We provide numerous training and development offerings to equip our workforce, our hiring managers and our leaders with the skills, knowledge and self-awareness to advance our DEI efforts. In 2021, employees completed approximately 1,280 DEI courses, and nearly 460 hiring managers completed our inclusive hiring best practices course.

Leadership Development

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

We continue to evolve our Leader of Leaders program, which brings together the company’s top senior leaders in small cohort groups to align on key drivers of our culture on a quarterly basis.

Additionally, various business units and functions ran “Leaders Connect” programs, an informal community of practice where cohorts of six to eight leaders meet regularly to talk through topical leadership issues. The aim of the program is to help leaders establish a peer network, build trust and share and learn from each other about various leadership topics such as DEI, leading through change, employee engagement and communication. In 2021, we created a centralized platform to connect global teams and provide common access to resources they can leverage for local programs.

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 assess behaviors to ensure they are in line with our SPIRIT Values and leadership competencies. We have identified leadership competencies that provide a common baseline of knowledge, skills, abilities, and behaviors to support employee performance, growth, and success.

Recognition is important to our employees and core to our culture. We have an employee-driven internal recognition program, The Mark Award: Instant Thanks, that enables employees to recognize their peers for individual accomplishments. In 2021, 48% of employees received Instant Thanks awards and nearly 10,720 Instant Thanks messages were sent.

Employee Feedback Surveys

Taking steps to measure and assess employee satisfaction and engagement is at the heart of long-term business success and creating a great place to work. Since 2019, the ConocoPhillips Perspectives Survey has become our primary listening platform for gathering feedback on employee sentiment and strengthening our culture. Leaders analyze the survey data and comments and identify focus areas for action, striving for incremental year-over-year progress on results. Our employee feedback strategy is comprised of an annual engagement survey and shorter DEI pulse surveys as needed.

Due to ongoing cultural integration work in 2021, we delayed our 2021 Perspectives Survey to January 2022. We asked 24 questions on topics relevant to the health and long-term success of our organization, such as engagement, DEI, SPIRIT Values, company strategy, career development, leadership and well-being. We had a participation rate of 84% and received over 10,700 written comments from employees around the globe. Leaders will analyze organizational results and set key focus areas for relevant actions for their groups.