Analysis

Is a ‘Digitally Enabled Workforce’ Necessary?

October 10, 20250408

-By Chidi Anosike

Taking a cursory look at the 20th century workforce which was largely an agrarian society with blue collar workers and manufacturing jobs until the early 1960’s when automation and technological advances began to drive a shift in consumer needs, the workforce began to shift from blue collar to white collar jobs which tilted much more towards management with a more intentional shift towards improved efficiency of production.

The dotcom era and the growth of the internet as the world approached the 21st century further spurred strategic initiatives and technologies focused on production cost reduction, improved security, improved efficiency, and improvements in equipment reliability.

With shifting focus to the 21st century workforce, the need to preserve ‘tribal knowledge’, which is the way job tasks are carried out in each organization became a priority. Tribal knowledge is peculiar to organizations. It is at the heart of an organization’s way of executing tasks and procedures. Tribal knowledge is mostly stored as part of Standard Operation Procedures (SOPs) which are currently paper based and in hard copy form. Tribal knowledge also resides with an organization’s workforce, undocumented but with a majority of workers having a good understand of ‘their way’ of doing things.

The challenge with this hard copy, paper based undocumented approach to preserving tribal knowledge cannot be over emphasized. Not only does paper-based documentation degrade over time, but the hard copies also prevent the ability for edits and improvements as new information becomes available even as best practice evolves. Also, the continuous cycle of staff churn necessitated by an aging retiring workforce and younger ones joining the workforce leads to an erosion of tribal knowledge. Every retiree leaving an organization leaves with a piece of information or an understanding that may not be accurately transferred to younger workers because it’s either poorly documented or not documented at all.

In recognition of these challenges around the preservation of knowledge and ‘know how’ in the oil and gas space and how it impacts safety, quality and production efficiencies, the Nigerian

Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission – NUPRC as part of its remit, requires that every Oil and Gas company operating in Nigeria’s oil and gas industry has all its standard operating procedures properly documented and well preserved.

To preserve these Standard Operating Procedures (SOP), and benefit maximally from them as a reliable source of information and a store of an organization’s tribal knowledge, it is important that organizations go beyond complying with NUPRC’s policy as they relate to SOP’s but deepen their exposure to the benefits of IT technology through the digitalization of these SOP’s.

The digitalization of SOPs will impact an organizations operation in the following ways –

  1. Provide a digital repository of knowledge with the flexibility to update same as new information in line with best practice becomes
  2. Provide organizations with the leverage required to equip their frontline workers with information including data and expertise, when and where they need it, by providing them with the means to access SOPs through digital wearables such RealWear Navigator Z1 realwear.com, an ATEX zone rated Augmented Reality wearable in the market today.
  3. Improve quality of Job and task execution through the elimination of variability associated with frontline workers carrying out tasks without reference to a single source of knowledge

and execution steps. If every frontline worker in an organization executes tasks from a single source of knowledge or reference point (digitalized SOP), this will greatly improve quality of job execution and reduce safety risks.

  1. A software solutions company such as Telepresenz https://telepresenz.com offers frontline technology that empowers frontline teams through the digitalization of SOPs and the provision of ‘remote over the shoulder support’ capability with which frontline workers can receive real time remote support to complete tasks or resolve maintenance issues around critical equipment and machinery in

This capability will enable the following –

  1. Improve Mean Time to Repair (MTTR) for critical equipment and machinery that is critical to operations.
  2. A reduction in operational down
  3. A reduction in carbon footprint and CO2 emissions associated with
  4. Increased Cost

With the Covid 19 pandemic, the lock down and its disruption to businesses and the global supply chain that followed, organizations and indeed the business world are looking more into technologies that support business continuity. The Oil and Gas Industry and Manufacturing are leading the charge in the direction of Digital enablement of their frontline workforce. While they benefit from improved production efficiency associated with digitalization, a preservation of tribal knowledge, they are also well positioned to survive adverse operating conditions that may be imposed on them by a ‘Force Majeure event’ in future.

Chidiebere Anosike

Chief Executive Officer

Ingres Quality Rollout Limited. info@ingresqr.com

*** Ingres Quality Rollout Limited is an authorized distributor and Reseller of Realwear Navigator Assisted Reality Devices and Telepresenz Smart Solutions for the Nigerian Market.

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