Statoil’s IT Step – Distributing the Technology

The objective is to increase Statoil’s productivity and profits through technology and innovation.
In this case mid and top level management should feel responsible for the overall outcome of the objective. Statoil’s IT step program is major initiative by management to increase knowledge of information technology and their ability to use that technology to personal and business advantage in the future (Andersen, 1998-2000). The success of the implementation of this program will ultimately affect the all employees.

Statoil a Norwegian is an oil company that has 15,000 employees that has an international presence. Distribution is mainly in the North Sea and their activities are all upstream and downstream oil exploration. Einar Eng wants to take the IT Step so he can increase the employee's knowledge of information technology thus having the ability to have a better business advantage for the future. The situation that Einar Eng is currently in is that there is decreasing birth rates, a tight labor market, and high employee cost. Going forward with the IT step can help productivity through technology and innovation rather than put more towards leadership. The IT step initiative consists of the distribution of a PC with free Internet connection. Only employees will receive this offer and no contractors.

The root problem in this case is how Statoil’s should incorporate the IT Step initiative into their company. Due to high employee costs, decreasing birth rates and a tight labor market changes must be made. Einer Eng had to come up with a way to invest in his workers with the expectation that rate of return would significantly outweigh the costs. At the time of the case study in 1996, the personal computer and internet were relatively new technologies. The majority of people were not familiar with them and they did not know how to use them. Statoil had the foresight to see technology was the only way the business would flourish in the future. They must identify the section of employees out of the 15,000 have participate in the program. It would be similar to training employees on how to operate a complex IT operating system today. Therefore, introducing such a technology to its employees and expecting productive results in a short period of time is a challenge. Usually, employees in any organization resist to a change. Especially considering the high level of change the company expects to make, there will be an intense resistance. Also, Statoil’s workforce is located in many geographical areas around the world and infrastructure needed for speedy and reliable internet connection cannot be expected. This would adversely impact the learning and use of IT resulting in lower returns for the investment or cause lower productivity.

Statoil realizes that if they do not adopt the technology in its operations, it will soon face the shortage of labor to keep up with its business and achieve revenue growth. Eventually, it will fail because of cutting down its operations and challenges from the expansion of other companies in the oil industry. The first alternative for Statoil’s IT step program is to focus on subsidizing PC’s to mid and top level management employees. The main advantage of this alternative is for the company to start seeing faster results and increase productivity at the top management levels through collaboration. It can also be used as proof of concept to be later rolled out to future groups. The disadvantage is other employees will not benefit from this program. The second alternative is to give all levels of employees the opportunity to participate on the program, irrespective of their level of confidence with computers. This approach grants Statoil the competitive edge in modernizing and training every person in the company and make sure IT knowledge is spread across the entire firm. The negative side to this option will be employees unwilling to quickly adapt to the new program, therefore creating conflicts among th e department teams. The third and fourth option is to first establish an in-house PC training course, before deploying the IT step program, in order to categorize which employee is willing to take a computer home and benefit from it. The challenge to the last option is the cost and time constraints associated with the training.

The optimal solution in this case is to offer the IT step program to mid to top level worker that would grow altogether from the utilization of projects for association and also responsibilities. Employees inside of the company that depend strongly on scheduling, planning and even the steady production of departmental printed material. For example, updates and preparing flyers. Once implemented participants should be encouraged to leave feedback to make sure productivity has increased as expected

The problem Einar Eng is currently facing is that there are decreasing birth rates, a tight labor market, and high employee cost. Going forward with the IT Step will help productivity through technology and innovation rather than put simply relying on leadership. The IT step initiative consists of the distribution of a free personal computer that will be able to access a free Internet connection. Only employees will receive this offer and no contractors.

In this classification, According to the appraisal of the related analysis, its reasonable pioneers would be Human assets, and additionally operational administrators who frequently need to set guidelines of methods that are followed. Additionally, I trust that the vast majority of the mid to top level money related workers should be included into the IT step, the reason being that the utilization of PCs in fund can prompt less human mistake and more responsibility. This would be permitting an organization to have framework that works with one another, and it would depend less on the manual section of budgetary information.

The present condition of Statoil is by all accounts transitional. The organization is experiencing a change that is both fiscally excessive and also operationally dull. Statoil is investing to a great extent on the advantages of its IT step program paying little regard to all the possible dangers. As a company they risk incorporating workers in there it step that will take their recently learned abilities and apply them for various organizations. This would add to their turnover as well as help their opposition in the meantime. Likewise the risk of employees utilizing the PCs for recreational purposes could possibly prompt a less profitable workforce.