Executive Summary

During my internship, I was working at the company's headquarter in the Schlumberger Limited Company Saudi Arabia branch. My job at Schlumberger Company was that of the HR coordinator. My job title was HR234. My position of the HR Coordinator had four major responsibilities that I was supposed to accomplish. One of the responsibilities that were assigned to me in Houston offices was to carry out performance analysis of the employees. The second responsibility that I was assigned to the company was helping the HR managers in issues to do with recruiting effects, such as checking applicants' references and making arrangements for interviews on potential employees in the company. The third responsibility that I was supposed to accomplish as the company's HR coordinator was related to maintaining employees' records for purposes of aiding in the process of the future organizational planning as well as human resource development program. The last responsibility I was to perform as the company's HR coordinator was related to ensuring that workplace safety and health standards are observed by all employees. During the performance of my key responsibilities, I applied various course concepts that I learned in BUS 312, BUS 318, BUS 315 and BUS 325.

Summary of Work Experience

Organization           

Schlumberger Limited Company is the biggest firm in the world that offers oilfield related services to clients. The company was founded in 1926 in France. The company has four headquarters in various parts of the world, namely, in London, Hague, Houston, and Paris. One of the countries in which the company’s operations are located in is Saudi Arabia, where it mainly supplies oil equipment and offer oilfield related services to oil and gas exploration companies operating in this market. This organization has around 100,000 employees from around 140 nationalities working in 85 different nations. The company operates in the oilfield services and equipment industry. In the Saudi Arabia the company corporate offices are in Dhahran, and it operates an Oil Field Equipment Supplies store in Dammam. The company business activities include manufacturing of oilfield equipment and research services. It helps oil companies address various business challenges, such as oil exploration, dealing with oil spillage and others. The company over the years has managed to build a high profile of an organization that is committed to engaging in environmental friendly operations. It is also one of the best employers in the oil and equipment sector in Saudi Arabia

Position Held

              During my internship, I was working at the company’s corporate offices in the Saudi Arabia, Texas. My job at Schlumberger Company was as the HR Coordinator. My office title was that of HR coordinator. The position of the HR coordinator within Schlumberger Limited suits the needs of the company; as some major critical roles are performed by individuals holding the position The HR Coordinator is responsible for helping the company’s HR management unit deal with various HR tasks, such as staffing, record-keeping, employee training, employee benefits and others. The HR coordinator position within the company is critical to ensuring that all human resource management activities are completed in an effective way so as to help the company benefits from its human resources available. The position is crucial in building a highly motivated workforce within the company, especially, ensuring that the right programs are in place aimed at improving employees' skills and making the working environment attractive. For instance, the HR coordinator can perform training needs assessment within the company with an objective of determining performance and skills gap and make recommendations of areas that future training programs should focus on with the aim of improving on the competencies of the employees of the company. Therefore, the HR Coordinator position is critical to the long-term success of the company as well as that of its employees.

Key Responsibilities

            During my internship in the Schlumberger Limited as HR Coordinator, I had numerous responsibilities that were assigned to me. One of the responsibilities that were assigned to me in Houston offices was to carry out performance analysis of the employees with an objective of determining areas of weaknesses that needed improvement for purposes of enhancing the employees’ future performance. This is where I was present in the field, and I was assigned to analyze the job performance of each employee. This performance was measured regarding task accomplishment, professional behavior, interpersonal communications, and comparison with current company targets. The second responsibility that I was assigned to the company was helping the HR managers in issues to do with recruiting effects, such as checking applicants' references and making arrangements for interviews on potential employees in the company. This role was concerned with helping the HR unit as the HR Coordinator on issues to do with hiring and recruitment of new employees to fill various vacant positions. The role was instrumental in helping. The third responsibility that I was supposed to accomplish as the company’s HR coordinator was related to maintaining employees’ records for purposes of aiding in the process of future organizational planning as well as human resource development program. In this role, I was expected to maintain all records concerning employees being absorbed and leaving the organization to provide basis of plans concerning employee retention and attraction. The last responsibility I was to perform as the company's HR coordinator was related to ensuring that workplace safety and health standards are observed by all employees. In this responsibility, I had to design strategies for helping the company employ the best safety standards in the oilfield services and equipment industry to help ensure the safety of the employees as well as reduction in pollution levels arising from the company's manufacturing activities and their negative effects on the worker's health.

BUS 312 - Managing Performance through Training & Development

 One of the tasks that I completed during my internship was that of undertaking employees' performance appraisal for purposes of designing training and development programs. In undertaking this role, I applied the balanced scorecard model. According to Saks, Haccoum and Belcourt (2010) balance scorecard as a model of performance appraisal allows supervisors and managers to analyze the performance as well as contributions of employees within a firm in an objective manner. The use of this model allows for the prevention of subjective performance evaluation, through the provision of the clear metrics that are applicable for all employees. Therefore, use of the balanced scorecard model during employees' performance appraisal allowed for avoidance of undertaking the evaluation process in an unfair way leading to some employees being favored by the process. Also, Saks, Haccoum, and Belcourt (2010) when using balanced scorecard in performance appraisal it allows the HR unit to select the appropriate criteria in the four major perspectives- customer, internal process, learning and growth and financial so as to come up with a realistic contribution of an employee in a company.

            Thus, while using the performance appraisal model as basis of determining weaknesses and strengths of the employees, I employed the four major perspectives as the basis for determining the contributions of the individual workers who I had been assigned to appraise. One of the perspectives I used was financial, whereby, I determined whether the company's employees utilizes financial resources assigned to their respective departments effectively and whether they get appropriate compensation for the services they offer to firm. The second, perspective used was customer, especially for employees working in the customer service department. In this case, I determined whether the individual workers can maintain successful relationship with customers internally and externally for purposes of building customer loyalty and offering satisfactory services to them. Also, the appraisal took the internal process perspective, whereby, the focus was to determine whether resources are used efficiently by employees in their respective areas of work and completion of tasks done in an effective manner. The last appraisal perspective was about learning and growth and helped in collecting data related to effects being put in place to enhance individual employees’ growth and expansion of the company. The use of balance scorecard as means of appraising employees’ performance was effective.

 The second nature of tasks I completed as per my responsibilities as the HR Coordinator were about designing and implementing employees training and development program. For purposes of successfully completing the tasks, I applied the ISD model. According to Saks, Haccoum and Belcourt (2010) ISD model tends to be an organized procedure which outlines steps for designing, analyzing, developing, evaluating and implementing instructions to enhance the effectiveness and quality of instructions for purposes of improving the learning process within a firm. The first-course action about the model was carrying out organization, person and task analysis for purposes of determining performance gaps, hence coming up with appropriate training methods. The performance appraisal carried out in the field revealed that customer relations and resource management were some of the major challenges that employee in the company faces in the course of completing their duties. Also, the use of the ISD model helped in finding out that most of the company's employees are from different age groups. Thus, the methods of training to be employed in imparting them with right customer relations skills and resource management was one that considered this factor (Saks, Haccoum, and Belcourt, 2010). Also, the model ensured that there were clear objective and goals to be attained through implementing the training and development program that I was designing and responsible for implementing.   

            In completing the training program development tasks, the ISD model helped in selection of different training and instruction methods that were in line with individual employees training needs. The two major methods of training that were selected were role playing and lecture. The lecture approach involved organizing training seminars where experts in areas of customer care and resource management were invited to organize to educate employees and imparting them with skills, knowledge, and competencies required for them to manage resources assigned to their respective stations effectively and learn how to serve customers in the right way. This method of delivery was found to be effective as it took care of the needs of employees from the young and older generation. On the other hand, the role-playing strategy was employed for purposes of helping to demonstrate to employees how they are supposed to perform various roles, such as interacting with customers and use of resources in a practical way (Saks, Haccoum, and Belcourt, 2010). For example, the employees from the customer service department were assigned the roles of interacting with customers as part of demonstrating to them how they are supposed to serve them in a professional manner. This helped in enabling the employees to acquire practical skills that enabled them to improve on how they manage resources and build strong and positive relationships with customers.

            The last aspect of the ISD model was evaluating the effectiveness of the training program. As the HR Coordinator, I had the responsibility of ensuring that the training program and methods used in developing the skills and competencies of the employees in area of customer relationship and resource management were effective. Questionnaires were used as means of determining the effectiveness and success of the training program implemented under my leadership. I also used survey to analyze the performance of the employees and then suggested the ways that can be adopted improve the employee performance and reduce retention rates.

BUS 318 - Recruitment, Selection & Retention

            The second nature of tasks that I completed during in the internship as the company’s HR coordinator was related to employee recruitment and selection. One of the tasks that I performed during the internship as the company’s HR coordinator was to do with helping the HR managers in issues to do with recruiting effects, such as checking applicants' references and making arrangements for interviews on potential employees in the company. I undertook the role of completing interview preparation, especially about checking the applicant's references. Catano (2009) argues that pre-screening is one of the methods that is used in hiring the right people in an organization.

             Prescreening is concerned with undertaking background check of the applicants for the various positions, such as contacting their referees to determine whether the information they provide in resumes are accurate. In undertaking my role as HR coordinator in the area of hiring and employee selection, I used the pre-screening model as way of ensuring that I provided adequate information to the interview panel regarding the past behaviors, qualifications, and achievements of each and every candidate. In this case, I contacted all their referees as provided in resumes and used the information in preparing final reports concerning each and every candidates seeking employment in the company. I also used the interviewing model as method of determining the right employee to be selected for the various vacancies available in the company during my tenure as HR coordinator. I was helped in the HR interview team to design interview questions that would be asked to the various potential candidates as part of the interview process.

            The selection criterion I used was the competency model, where the competencies of the candidates for various positions would be used to determine the right candidate for each position. The competency selection framework was arrived at after considering the needs of the various positions available in the company and determining the skills and expertise needed for individual employee to perform responsibilities associated with the position. For example, in the course of my work, I undertook the work of designing the selection criteria for the position of customer relations manager. I looked at all the skills and expertise needed for this position and designed various competencies that would be used to test the capabilities of potential candidates to perform all duties related to it. In selecting the candidate for the customer relations manager position, together with the selection panel, we used the structured interview process, whereby, the potential candidates were asked certain questions carrying particular marks and expected to provide answers to them (Catano, 2009).

BUS 315 Workplace Health and Safety

 In the course of my work in the company, I undertook some roles related to designing the workplace health and safety models. As the HR Coordinator, I employed the risk analysis framework as the basis for coming up with the best workplace health as well as safety strategies. I undertook threat and risk analysis process, as basis of identifying various hazards that can occur in the company's operations, such as during the manufacturing processes putting the health and safety of the employees at risk (Garber, 2008). The threat analysis aided in identifying major threats, such as exposure to dangerous gasses, chemicals, fire, injuries arising from use of machines. Based on the findings of the risk and threat analysis process, the next course of action was to design the best approaches to dealing with the threats and risks. The main goal was to design the most cost-effective strategies and this aided in coming with programs that the company should implement as a way of complying with employee safety regulations in the workplace. The safety policies were developed and communicated to the employees through manuals, memos. Hence, the use of the concept of threat and risk analysis framework was effective in determining the major health and safety hazards to the company employees, thereby designing the best measures of reducing, minimizing and eliminating these threats.

BUS 325 Human Resources Management Systems

            The last task that I performed in the company during my internship was maintaining employees’ records. For purposes of carrying this role in an effective manner, I applied various concepts related to human resource management systems. The initial strategy involved data entry, where, data related the employees’ records, such as salaries, educational qualifications, experience, promotions, disciplinary actions, benefits was entered into the company’s HR software. The main objective was to record the data into the company’s system for purposes of easily retrieving it when the need arose. In the process of performing my duties in employee records, I was asked by the HR manager to complete employees’ analysis with an objective of helping in the area of designing retention strategies and remuneration package development.

            The first course of action in coming up with analysis report was to collect data related to employees turnover and current compensation packages and programs. The collected data was entered in the HR management software for purposes of helping in the analysis process. Once, the data was fully recorded, the next course of action was application of the data analysis methods, whereby, I used inferential statistics as basis of coming up with trend analysis. In this case, the trend analysis process aided in determining the employee turnover trends for the past five years within the company, hence complete a report on whether the trend was upward or downward.  Also, industry compensation trends were used as basis of coming up with employees compensation reports to the HR manager.

Conclusion

            During my internship, I was able to apply various concepts learned during various courses in third and fourth year of my program. I have gained vast work experience related to how various human resource management concepts, such as performance management, human resource systems work in real life. Hence, my internship in Schlumberger Company was a source of experience on how theoretical concepts learned in BUS 312, BUS 318, BUS 325 and BUS 315 is applicable in the work environment. The hands-on experience in the field was an additional point and enabled me to understand how to understand the underlaying factors within the field. The skills that we learned like understanding the interpersonal dynamics, carrying out the communication between employees and the workers were something unknown before the course. It is indeed true that the course focused on multiple factors and made me understand every aspect with particular focus on intricate details enabling successful drilling of concepts.