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Methanex Trinidad & Tobago - Building Capacity - Unearthing leadership talent
COMPANY CSR STRATEGY
Methanex Trinidad’s active Social Responsibility engagement is delivering long term value for local communities, its employees whose volunteerism is a big part of the company’s community outreach, and other stakeholders. Maintaining a focus on Responsible Care and leadership development, the company is creating and supporting programmes that contribute to the sustainable well-being of its fence line and national communities.
Guiding people to fully emerge their talent and develop leadership skills requires commitment. It is an investment that Methanex Trinidad is making to deliver capacity-building benefits to people, company and country over the long term.
The company recognises that everyone has potential to grow an innate ability that can yield extraordinary results, when developed and applied well. This belief is behind the engagement and development of its totally local workforce of 192 employees, in addition to vacation interns who come through its Point Lisasbased methanol production facility for a growth experience.
The local branch of Canada-based Methanex Corporation, global leader in methanol supply, is guided by the Responsible Care ethos in looking after people. The concept of Responsible Care was developed by the Chemistry Industry Association of Canada (CIAC) and demands the safe and environmentally sound management of chemicals over their life cycle. The ethic covers basic areas such as health, safety, environment and community outreach, but the overriding goal is the betterment of society and life as a whole. Methanex has aligned its Social Responsibility principles with Responsible Care in addition to the company’s core values of integrity, trust, respect and professionalism.
Unearthing Leadership Talent
Methanex Trinidad is engaged in capacity-building
Not only is the Methanex experience creating a pool from which future employees can be drawn, the company is helping to make young people more marketable to a wider Trinidad and Tobago.
A significant aspect of its Social Responsibility is unearthing and developing leadership talent among a workforce with an average age demographic of thirty-seven (37) years. While the traditional performance evaluation system is a useful contributor, the company distinguishes its talent development approach by incorporating the principle of volunteerism in the pursuit of some creative approaches and articulating what it takes to be a Methanex leader.
Mentoring: A Different Development Choice
The organization’s internal Mentorship Programme is a significant avenue for shaping talent. It was launched as a sixmonth pilot at the Trinidad site in 2012 with 5 pairs of mentors/mentees across several disciplines. The encouraging results have led to an extension of the programme to other Methanex locations.
The value of mentoring programmes in elevating knowledge transfer and enhancing professional development will have exceptional business value when disseminating learning across organizational, geographical and generational boundaries. The pilot in Trinidad served as a solid launch pad for a development method that can be leveraged as a collaborative space where people share ideas and knowledge generously, creating innovative solutions to real business issues.
Methanex Trinidad has built on the success of the pilot by engaging its total management team in mentoring employees drawn from a pool of professionals and high potentials as well as new appointees to supervisory/ management positions. During an 18-month period, which started in October 2013, 15 pairs of mentors/ mentees embarked on a journey of increased self-awareness and learning from one another within a trusting and supportive mentoring partnership. In June 2014, another round of the programme will be launched with supervisory/professional personnel as mentors, to ensure wider participation.
Methanex has defined leadership competencies for all levels, from Individual Contributor to Executive. The Mentorship Programme goes beyond this by providing an opportunity for employees to test their preference for a leadership role and allow young leaders to emerge by choice.
Beyond Boundaries
Our commitment to strengthen employee skills through training and development opportunities extend to overseas assignments at other Methanex sites around the world. In our eight years of operation, 43 employees have had the benefit of assignments in Canada, Chile, Egypt, New Zealand and USA.
Being part of a global company, our employees participate on global teams
where opportunities for benchmarking against best practices help our local operation, even as we share what works well at the Trinidad site. This cross-fertilization of ideas is beneficial for personal and professional growth, and advancing the site’s Reliability and Responsible Care goals.
The Methanex Experience: Developing Talent Early
The company is investing in local talent through its training programmes which allow tertiary-level students to receive on-the-job training. The Methanex experience is an incubator for personal and professional growth and development, and begins as early as the award of student bursaries in disciplines relevant to its business, in particular, Engineering. From bursaries to vacation internships and then trainee programmes, young people are exposed to the world of work and have an opportunity to learn but also to demonstrate their capability.
The training through rotations in several areas of the business, the mandatory involvement in community-giving, and the strong focus on volunteerism all help shape a young person’s business skills, values and personal development. Not only is the Methanex experience creating a pool from which future employees can be drawn, the company is helping to make young people more marketable to a wider Trinidad and Tobago. At the same time, employees who supervise trainees are honing coaching skills and refreshing their perspectives.
Each year Methanex Trinidad challenges its graduates-in-training, as well as vacation interns to conduct a Social Responsibility project. They must carry out a community needs analysis, identify a project, raise the funds (which the company matches), manage and implement the project and present a report to a team comprising their supervisors and the site’s management. All of this is done by a newly-formed team that is challenged to quickly learn about project management, decision-making, finance management and accountability.
Beyond technical skills development
and inspiring volunteerism, Methanex Trinidad is hoping that the experience of young people in its training programmes will be shaped by values that will strengthen their foundation and encourage them to step up to the leadership challenge, even as they are motivated to help others.
Transferring Skills through Volunteerism
A non-traditional and very powerful principle in strengthening competencies and skills is volunteerism. While there is no financial reward, the short and long-term benefits are numerous. These include practising professional skills beyond the substantive job description, thereby increasing skillset
and marketability, interpersonal skills, personal development and a sense of satisfaction.
Methanex Trinidad has established excellent opportunities for volunteerism both within the company and in the wider community. An example is how its Project Management Professionals (PMPs) are transferring PM skills to school principals and teachers who are responsible for managing school improvement projects that were awarded under the company’s community Eco-Heroes initiative.
The employee-led Social Responsibility Committee is another example. This committee allocates donation funds in accordance with the company’s Social Responsibility policy. Their task appears simple but
Susan Yorkshire, Contracts Supervisor and Noel Jones, Manager, Human Resources, benefitted from the pilot Mentoring programme.
Graduate-in-Training, Shivana Maharaj (centre) shared her Methanex experience with final year students at The University of the West Indies’ World of Work Fair 2014.
the responsibility in ensuring prudent allocation of funds through critically assessing a large number of requests, and doing so by majority vote, requires collaboration and accountability. At the same time, they are honing skills of interrogation, due diligence, risk assessment, cultural sensitivity and relationship management.
Through its Community Advisory Panel, Methanex is engaging fence line residents in understanding its business and encouraging them to stand out as leaders in their communities through Social Responsibility and other improvement projects that the company supports.
Mentoring Our Children
The award-winning ‘Mentoring Our Children’ initiative is another avenue for transferring skills and developing new ones. Conceptualised eight years
Developing Young People
ago by an employee, it is driven by employees and is totally voluntary. Initially, the outreach was mainly focused on academic support, but was expanded to embrace a more holistic frame of development (psycho-social, cultural, cocurricular) for children 12 - 15 years.
Mentors comprise employees, employees’ spouses and even former employees who are vested in it. The multi-disciplined mentors range from professionals to leadership team members who volunteer personal time on week-ends to provide academic coaching and mentoring.
One way to view the growth and success of a project is how well it can be adapted for use outside the company and in various locations. Part of the vision for the ‘Mentoring Our Children’ Programme is to develop a sound, proven and tested model that could be adopted by any community, anywhere in the country.
One hundred and thirty-two (132) participants have benefited from Methanex Trinidad’s development programmes over the past 8 years: 29 Graduates-in-Training, 73 Vacation Interns, and 30 Operator and Technician Trainees. GITs, Operator and Technician Trainees generally spend about 2 years onsite while Vacation Interns have a shorter 3-month stay before returning to university, for their final year.
Employee mentors are helping to shape young lives.
The Energy Chamber of Trinidad and Tobago’s 2013 CSR Award for ‘Best Social Investment Project’ is testimony that this is achievable.
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