An energy company: reviews that reach the people on rotation

An engineer who starts from their own driveway can go a year without a proper conversation about their work. A crew on a three-week rotation is rarely in the same building as the manager who owns their review form. This is how one energy company runs performance review in New Dynamics.

The company has asked us not to name it. We publish a customer's name, and the numbers behind a story, only once they have approved both in writing.

The organisation

An energy company with operational sites, a field engineering workforce, control room teams on shifts and a corporate population. Much of the workforce is in safety-critical roles. Supervisors see the work. Line managers own the review.

Before New Dynamics the annual review was, for some field teams, the only structured conversation of the year, and it was written from memory by someone who had seen very little of the work.

What the process had to handle

The supervisor knows, the manager signs. A shift supervisor or site manager has the useful view. The process has to collect it routinely rather than by goodwill.

Rotations and shifts. Conversations have to be planned around when people are actually available, not around a calendar set in head office.

Safety discussed honestly. Rewarding an individual for a clean injury record discourages reporting. The conversation has to be about behaviours: the quality of a risk assessment, stopping a job, closing out an action, reporting a near miss.

Competence assurance stays where it is. Formal assessment, authorisations and reassessment live in the competence management system. The review plans the next step and does not duplicate the record.

The process they run

Multi-manager reviews bring the shift supervisor, site manager or project lead into the review alongside the line manager, each with a defined contribution and their view attributed.

Continuous feedback is recorded close to the work, after a rotation, a drill, an outage or a site visit. A supervisor writing a few lines each month is the single change that makes the rest of the process work.

Goals and OKRs hold delivery objectives and one or two specific, observable personal safety commitments, revised when an outage or a programme change moves the work.

Workflows schedule the stages around rotation patterns, with reminders that land when someone is actually on shift.

Onboarding gives apprentices and transferring engineers a structured start with named owners and early check-ins.

Recognition is used for the decisions that cost time and were right anyway, such as pausing work in bad weather. Those are the behaviours the company wants repeated.

The cycle through the year

Start of year. Delivery objectives and personal safety commitments agreed, both specific enough to be observed.

Each rotation or month. The supervisor records a few lines while the work is fresh.

Mid-year. The line manager reviews with the supervisor's input and the competence record in view. Objectives adjusted for outages and programme changes.

Year end. The conversation, often by video during a rotation, with the year's evidence already gathered.

After the conversation. Next authorisation, next asset and transition skills planned as goals, with the formal assessment booked in the competence system.

What is measured

• Completion by site, team and stage, which shows where the rotation pattern is defeating the calendar.
• The proportion of reviews carrying supervisor input, which is the test of whether the process reaches the field at all.
• How much of the evidence was recorded before the final month, which separates a process that ran through the year from one assembled at the end.

Frequently asked questions

Should safety be part of an individual's performance review?

Discuss behaviours and leading activity: the quality of risk assessments, interventions, closing out actions and reporting near misses. Avoid rewarding individuals for low injury numbers, because it discourages the reporting a safety culture depends on.

How do you run reviews for people on rotation?

Plan the conversation around the rotation, collect the supervisor's view routinely through the year, and hold the formal discussion by video or on an onshore or office day. The evidence should already exist before the meeting is booked.

Does this replace a competence management system?

No. Formal competence assessment, authorisations and reassessment stay in the system built for them. The review refers to those records and plans the next authorisation or move.

Are contractors included?

Contractors are managed through their own employer and the contract, so they are not part of the client's review process. Feedback between your supervisors and contractor teams is still worth gathering in a structured way.

Talk to us about your rotation patterns

Bring your review form and your shift and rotation patterns. We will work through how the cycle would reach the people who are rarely in the office.