Communities of practice at Shell

Shell is a group of petrochemical and energy companies originated from Dutch and British. The company’s headquarters are located in The Hague, Netherlands. It has around 102,000 employees all around, in more than 100 countries and territories as per information provided by Shell website.

Sharing the learning process at shell and the team organisation:

As cited in online article by Sandra Haimila says few interesting things about communities of practice at Shell.

Working towards the objectives of global cooperation, Shell International Exploration and Production has formed different communities of practice through cooperation of software from SiteScape. Communities of practice are groups of people who like to share information, analysis and advice on a common interest or practice. With the new system, Shell says it is solving issues and harvest value through people sharing and application of talents, and learning resources internationally. Arjan van Unnik from Shell says that, “We connect people working in disciplines related to Shell companies worldwide to solve problems and share lessons learned and ideas. The great trick is to go beyond connecting people in the same disciplines. We got an excellent cross-fertilization of disciplines – for example, engineers and engineers from corrosion of pipes exchanging information and ideas, which find better and more complete solutions – that’s how we got great value through people sharing valuable information, talents globally.

Shell has created 13 communities of practice covering more than 10,000 users, three major communities in the subsurface, wells and surface disciplines, and 10 more small to support cross disciplines such as finance, procurement, human resources and health, safety and environment. Based on a total revision in 2000, Shell’s exploration and production companies realize the benefits of at least $ 200 million a year through its knowledge sharing initiative according to SiteScape, whose software is used in the Forum of the solution.” Timothy P. Butler, SiteScape CEO and president says that “Shell is a Forum client model”. “They started with a small group of seed members recognized the benefits and formed a natural community of interest, kept the process simple, and administrators of the community the task of reinvigorating interest groups to maintain and create content. Within a very short, Shell created multiple active communities that engineering of its continued success. ”

The Royal Dutch / Shell Group of Companies (Shell), which grew out of a 1907 alliance between Royal Dutch Petroleum Co. in The Netherlands and Shell Transport and Trading Co. in the UK, carries out operations in around 140 countries around the world. Exploration and Production is one of the best of five core businesses of Shell.