Dave Howden, Director of Business Development at Red Dog Systems Inc. recently discussed his experience with generational change in the oil and gas workplace:
I think many people feel that as there are generational changes in the workplace, technology acceptance will accelerate. I can’t say that I have seen this in the work place. There are a lot of folks in my generation that embrace new technology and a lot of folks in the younger generations that don’t. Age is not the difference, willingness to adapt is.
Here is a trend that I see. The generation before me had to do everything manually (e.g. paper spreadsheets) and had to know all the details. My generation got some smarter tools (e.g. Excel) to help with the manual work but still had to learn all the details. The next generation will expect smarter applications to know most of the details and do most of the routine work. People will be more productive as they’ll have more time to focus on the non-routine work.
There was an article recently in The Economist that studied the growing inequality gap. One of the key observations was that workers who embraced technology were more valuable to companies and earned more while workers that did not embrace technology became less valuable to the companies and earned less or had to change careers. The workers who don’t adapt to new technologies and processes will be left behind as technology improves. This will continue to be a challenge for all generations.
Join us for a luncheon presentation about new technologies in the Energy Industry titled “New technology – BOTS, AI, Smart Contracts. Revolutionary or Evolutionary?” with speaker Dave Howden, Business Development at Red Dog Systems Inc.
Thursday November 15, 2018 11:30-1:00pm at The Calgary Petroleum Club
Sponsored by EnergyLink and BOEReport.com