1. The Team is the Business -
Building an effective team
June 2011
Confidential

2. Main Office in Portishead Aberdeen Office
Engineering, Senior Management & Admin Engineering & Asset Integrity Management
Established in July 2007 with £45k of initial working capital & three staff
Profitable in all three years of trading and debt free
40% year on year growth
Currently 20 staff (17 FTE), of which 15 are engineers
Confidential

3. Product and Service Offering
Design & Supply of Subsea
Equipment for Oil & Gas
Production Systems
Comprehensive Engineering Consultancy
Product and Services relating to Subsea
Service Offering to Control Systems
cover Life of Field
Asset Integrity Management
for Control Systems including
Obsolescence Management
Confidential

4. Turnkey Supply
Technical solutions offered for seabed
located equipment:
- Up to 3000m water depth
- Design Life of 25 years
- Hydraulic, Electrical, Mechanical Optical
Confidential

5. Safety
First
Customer Commit to
Focus Deliver
Vision
Foster Attention
Innovation to Detail
Empower
Employees
and
Develop
Talent
Confidential

6. Accreditations
Quality Management System – ISO 9001
Environmental Management System – ISO 14001
Health and Safety Management System – OHSAS 18001
Confidential

7. Staff Numbers (July 2007 - June 2011)
25
20
15
Total no of Staff
10 No of Technical Staff
5
0
Oct-07
Oct-08
Oct-09
Oct-10
Jul-07
Jan-08
Apr-08
Jul-08
Jan-09
Apr-09
Jul-09
Jan-10
Apr-10
Jul-10
Jan-11
Apr-11
Confidential

8. Employment with a Small Company – the pros
• Dynamic working environment
• Involvement in all disciplines (engineering, sales, supply-chain, manufacture)
• Job satisfaction (product development, company growth)
• Flexibility
Employment with a Small Company – the cons
• Lack of structured career path
• Limited benefits package
• Lack of job security
• Reduced training/development opportunities
Confidential

9. Recruitment – One of our biggest challenges
 We go for high potentials – even if a vacancy does not exist
 Generally via en-spec applications
 LinkedIn
 Newspaper Adverts
 Website – always advertising positions
 Recruitment Agencies
 Good and bad experiences
 One in every four ‘general’ telephone calls is from a recruitment agency
 We utilise Mimecast to block agencies that ‘spam’ us with CVs
 Now have four agencies on identical terms who we work with exclusively
Confidential

10. Factors in building the right team at Viper Subsea
 Home working option
 Profit share
 Training Can be
 Experienced engineers as co-workers applied to
any
 Good industry reputation – Award winning company engineering
 Celebration of key events and successes company
 Interesting technical challenges
 Minimal bureaucracy
 High percentage of engineering vs ‘non engineering tasks’
 Focussed benefits
 PR
 Branding
Confidential

11. Employee Survey Results for Job
Satisfaction Factors
FACTOR Ranking
Interesting job 1
Flexible working 2
Job Security 3
Good Working Environment 4
Opportunity for training and personal development 5
Opportunities for career advancement 6
Earning a high salary 7
Rewards for the organisations performance 8
Earning a reasonable salary 9
Good/competitive employee benefits 10
Rewards for individual performance 10
Being able to retire with a good pension 12
Being fairly rewarded compared to colleagues 13
Choice of benefits 14
Confidential

12. What can the Employer do at little or no cost?
 Show appreciation for a job well done
 Celebrate the successes
 Assist staff when they have problems outside of work
 Be flexible in working arrangements
 Communicate with all staff, and regularly
 Involve staff in decision making
 Seek staff advice (and explain to them if it is not taken)
 Provide mentoring
 Assist with Professional Development / Achieving Chartered Status
 Implement an Appraisal System – and follow-up on actions and targets
 Go for ‘Investors In People’ accreditation – it demands best practice
Confidential

13. Some Case Studies
1. Hire Slowly & Fire Quickly
2. Recruitment Agencies – good and bad practices
3. Home Working
4. Using your network of old colleagues
5. Get them out of retirement!
Confidential

14. Concluding Observations
 Getting and retaining the right team is one of the fundamental
requirements for growing a successful business
 Succession planning needs to be considered early in a business life cycle
 Ensuring a new recruit will ‘fit’ is critical when the team is small
 SMEs have unique opportunities to offer a better ‘total package’ than
large companies
 There are numerous factors, other than high salaries, that can be used
for attracting and retaining staff
 Concern about job security and career progression are the greatest
hurdles for new starts into a recently established SME
 It is not too costly to implement most of the large company employment
benefits
Confidential